Ep. #956 - Why Compost?

Matt DeCoursey 00:01
And we’re back! Back for another episode of Startup Hustle. Matt DeCoursey here to have another conversation I’m hoping helps your business grow. Speaking of making things grow, if you’re a gardener, you might add compost to something. We also might talk a little trash today, but maybe not the same kind of trash that you’re used to talking about. We’re gonna talk about compost; it’s pretty simple. Now, before we do that, I got a couple things that I need to update everyone. So as a reminder, this entire week, we’ve been shining the light on the impactful work happening in my hometown and where Startup Hustle is, the hometown of Kansas City. That’s Kansas City, Missouri. I know, I blow people’s minds when they learn that Kansas City is mainly in Missouri. But it kind of goes in both places. I actually live in Kansas. But thanks to the great people over at the Economic Development Corp of KCMO. That’s Kansas City, Missouri. For those out of the area, today, I have the pleasure to speak with another founder that’s involved with the Keystone Innovations Group’s Social Venture Studios cohort. And with that, a reminder that today’s episode of Startup Hustle is brought to you by the Economic Development Corporation of KCMO. That’s the EDCKC; if you can say that five times in a row really fast, good for you. But they’re proud to support the dreamers and doers in our great city through a variety of programs, including LaunchKC and KC UP. If you’re in or around the Kansas City area, you can learn more by visiting EDCKC.com. There’s a link for that in the show notes, which makes it really easy. You can also go to launchkc.org. We’ve talked about them a lot in the past. Really great program. With me today, I’ve got Kristan Chamberlain, she is the founder and executive director of KC Can Compost. Guess what? There’s a link for that in the show notes, too, without further ado, straight from my hometown. Kristan, welcome to Startup Hustle.

Kristan Chamberlain 02:01
Thank you so much for having me.

Matt DeCoursey 02:04
I mentioned we were going to talk trash. And before we get into that, I’d like to hear a little bit more about your backstory. Because it might help me formulate my trash talking.

Kristan Chamberlain 02:13
I want to help you formulate that trash. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. So the idea and impetus for KC Can Compost developed in 2016 when I met the executive director at the time of the Kansas City rescue mission. And his ambition and goal were to help people transitioning out of homelessness and incarceration, and other difficult circumstances. Find living wage employment that would help them move to the next stage in their lives and the next stage of independence. So I jumped on board to really begin investigating what would help those individuals dealing with barriers to employment and, at the same time, fulfill a real market need. And compost really rose to the front very quickly for me.

Matt DeCoursey 03:16
Okay, I mean, that’s, I mean, just realistically, that seems like an interesting business to get into. Just overall. And by the way, I really want to commend you for what you’re doing because I really am a green earth kind of person. And I really appreciate people that blaze the trail and make it possible and easier to just do that. I think that I mean. Unfortunately, we got to nudge some people along to have a greener existence. But I think more options on how to do that are certainly great. So, I mean, when it comes to upcycling your food scraps, I mean, and all that is that the main thing is more about. Wait, what is compost? Let’s just define that. What is compost? Okay, up here a little bit. Yeah, sorry. I mean, cart way before the compost cart was way before the horse there.

Kristan Chamberlain 04:09
That’s okay. Um, yeah, even if we even start talking trash, we can start with food waste. You know, food waste in our country is the single largest component of our landfills. So when you think about that and then understand that it creates that organic waste in the landfill, it creates methane gas, which is about 86 times more potent than CO2, right? So our landfills and that food waste are massive contributors to our climate issues, which we’re seeing all around us right now. So, essentially, and you brought this point up just a second ago, how do you make things easier? We’ve got, too, as a culture as a country, to begin diverting that waste away from the landfills and into another upcycled and purposed use. And compost is essentially the natural process for the decomposition of our food waste. So it’s something we’ve been doing since the beginning of time, and we just stopped doing it a little while ago. We’re now paying the price. But that’s what it is. And it can be used as an amendment to soil and to grow things in a healthy environment. So basically, all the nutrients in that food waste are put back into our soil and compost. Is that really rich? Content, basically.

Matt DeCoursey 05:47
So you mentioned food waste, and you know what a luxury here in the United States is just throwing away food, which, you know, in so many places around the world would probably not as much be the case. Now, speaking of around the world, I’ve had the privilege of traveling worldwide due to my business Full Scale FullScale.io, if you’re interested, but you know, so many countries are actually really proficient at recycling their food waste. So a lot of the Asian countries have, like, easy accessibility and bends and stuff like that. I mean, is that the future model that we need to follow here in the US? That’s our goal.

Kristan Chamberlain 06:24
That’s what we’re doing with KC Can Compost. So the idea is, you said earlier, we need the nudge, or we need it to be easy. We need it to be clean. We need it to be systematic. And we need to have a sort of consistent methodology across our city, the Greater Kansas City area. So that’s what KC can is set out to do with our business model was to create the infrastructure for whether you’re a big business like Nelson Atkins museum, or a Chipotle or Starbucks, or a food truck or a local cafe, a school household, we want this system to be the same and access the same way across all of those sectors. So our infrastructures, that’s what we’ve tried to do with the KC Can Compost model.

Matt DeCoursey 07:21
What do you think the driving factor has been with some of the foreign countries that have led the way with us? I mean, was it just early adoption? Was it a lack of landfill space government support? Like, maybe you don’t know? I don’t know. I’m just curious about why there are some countries that, and I don’t have exact samples, they might have been Korea or Japan or somewhere where you know, like, I was watching a program at one point, and I’m kind of shooting from the hip here. But you know, they had some pretty astonishing numbers as far as the percentage of actual food waste that made it back into a composting or responsible upcycling scenario.

Kristan Chamberlain 08:00
It’s amazing. And we have, we’ve really spent about two years researching different models in different countries. So you are spot on with how they’re managing it way out in front of where we are in the US at this point. Hopefully, not for long, because we’re trying to rectify that. But you know, I don’t have an exact reason for that. But one is farming. You know, we use a lot of chemical pesticides and chemical fertilizers, and our farming industry has relied on a lot of that, and other countries have used compost as a natural fertilizer. As a natural pesticide, it repels, you know, the purse. So I think somewhere along the way, we really went astray with that natural kind of natural process.

Matt DeCoursey 08:54
Yeah, compost is the natural fertilizer. Am I correct?

Kristan Chamberlain 08:58
Yeah.

Matt DeCoursey 09:00
Maybe I was wrong about that. I mean, I don’t know that.

Kristan Chamberlain 09:03
And vermiculture, which is worms, they really, they’re amazing little creatures, too, that add a ton of, you know, nutrients to the soil, but yeah, it’s a natural process.

Matt DeCoursey 09:15
So here’s a crazy stat for those of you listening each day in the United States, approximately one pound of food per person is wasted. And that equates to 103 million tonnes, which is 206 billion pounds of food waste generated in the United States. And that was a 2017 stat. That’s 30 to 40% of the food supply. It’s mon people leave it and leave it in the buffet or something. I mean, that’s crazy.

Kristan Chamberlain 09:44
It’s crazy to put a visual on that to help your listeners, and you could probably take this to any city across the US in terms of a stadium, but for those local listeners, picture Arrowhead Stadium filled out every single day to overflowing with food waste every single year, that’s the amount. So if you can kind of visualize that or the Rose Bowl, it’s an astonishing amount of waste. And if food waste were a country, it would be the third largest emitter of greenhouse gasses in the world, behind the United States and China. So that stadium full of food waste is a massive environmental problem for us. And it’s been identified by a group called drawdown as the number one threat or number three, sorry, a solution we’ve got to tackle to reverse sort of the climate trajectory.

Matt DeCoursey 10:49
Well, and here’s the thing, it’s not just about the food that’s been wasted. I mean, what part of what also gets wasted as the energy and the water that it takes to grow harvest transport packages, you’re putting, you know, some of these foods packaged in plastic, which then has a whole nother issue with it. And you know, that if that food, the food, not only the food, goes to the landfill and rots, you know, as you mentioned, it produces methane. And it’s pretty powerful stuff. And, you know, I’ve got some more notes here that the production of lost or wasted food generates the equivalent of 32 point 6 million cars worth of greenhouse gas emissions. Right. Yeah, I mean, this isn’t, you know, when it comes to climate change, and it’s real people, it’s not made up if you got a problem with that. Hate me on Twitter because it’s a science, but you know, this, there’s not? Yeah, I think when it taught people talking about climate change and all this stuff, there’s not like this one-stop solution that’s going to fix all that it’s a whole bunch of shit that we’re doing wrong, or we’re doing too much of and, you know, I’m excited. You know, we talked about where Kansas is or where Missouri and Kansas have actually made a lot of progress and become top producers of wind energy, which 10 years ago, it’s not the case. And you know, I’m seeing solar panels pop up. I am switching. I’m driving an electric guitar and an electric car. I’ll still play guitar. But, you know, some of that is, if it’s, it’s, the solutions are required from a pretty wide swath of industry and people, and you know, it’s not going to just be one thing that fixes all of it. So I also got another stat here that says the average person in my hometown produces 102 tons of garbage in their lifetime. That’s 224,000 pounds of trash. The average lifespan for a male in my hometown is 77 years, which is 28,105 days. So man, yeah, that there’s a solution. I’m gonna quit iron stuff.

Kristan Chamberlain 13:02
Liquid stuff eating.

Matt DeCoursey 13:05
But how did I need to actually, so I’m okay with that, too?

Kristan Chamberlain 13:11
But no solutions. I mean, I think that’s the thing. It’s the whole climate trajectory, the weather events we’re seeing now, and the heating temperatures. If we, as a culture, have the tools, the foresight, and the innovation, we have the intellectual capacity to alter these things. And food waste is really, by creating a system it’s something that all households, or businesses, large or small hospitals, all the way down, like I said to a cafe should be able to participate in our program. And by that divert, you know, really millions were up over 2 million pounds, KC cans diverted over 2 million pounds of food waste at this point. And we’re, we launched in 2019. So the capacity for us as a city or region is tremendous. It’s tremendous.

Matt DeCoursey 14:11
Well, let’s grow KCMO, that’s the Economic Development Corporation, a KCMO tagline. And it was and it represents how we work with businesses large and small. And just starting in order to locate and grow our great city of Kansas City where we’re gonna make less trash, you go to EDC, kc.com and learn more. So let’s talk about that for a second. I mentioned the social venture studios, and that’s what you know, this week’s episode is focusing on a wide range of businesses, some of which I’ve been involved with, one of which I’m an investor in. But there’s a whole lot of different businesses in there seven and and for those of you that aren’t familiar with the term cohort, That is like a class group of people and businesses that go through an accelerator or some type of business mentoring program. How did you get lined up with the program?

Kristan Chamberlain 15:14
That’s a good question. Um, I applied. I had met Father Justin from Reconciled.

Matt DeCoursey 15:22
And he’s been on the show, we call him father, startup father startup.

Kristan Chamberlain 15:26
He’s inspiring. He’s doing amazing, amazing work. And he’s really creating a culture and helping to create a culture around this idea that business and social benefit do not need to be mutually exclusive. And so that was our vision for KC from the get go. So meeting and being inspired by him was really my introduction to Kevin McGinnis, and social venture studios. So that’s how Alex started.

Matt DeCoursey 16:02
Yeah, father. Justin has been on the show a long time ago. And yeah, I recently recommended that if he wants to raise more money for donations, he should start absolving startups of their sins. He was who he was, he thought that was an interesting concept. However, I’m pretty sure he’s not going to go forward with that. But hey, if he changes his mind, he also runs what’s called Damas kitchen, which is here in Kansas City. And it’s a charitable operation that donates food and meals to people that need it. And I have a feeling he probably doesn’t have much food waste.

Kristan Chamberlain 16:44
I know we compost for thumbless kitchen. So you go to all of their food waste twice a week.

Matt DeCoursey 16:54
That’s what after the compost, how long does it take? So let’s say I have a bunch of food waste? And then how long does it take to compost a process of decomposition that basically creates dirt or sludge or something? That’s good. Good for your garden? How long does that take?

Kristan Chamberlain 17:12
Yeah, well, and I should qualify here. So can you see Ken focuses on the collection infrastructure for the city. That’s our goal. And we actually partner with an organization called Missouri organic, who does the actual processing at this point in time. For us, but I believe, if I’m not mistaken, you know, once it’s, it’s gone through this grinding process. And I think it’s about three to six months that it takes to actually be termed several times so that the air is in there, and you keep all that activity going. Basically, you’re breathing life into it. That’s how it works. So it takes about three to six months to make sure it’s foil and healthy and vibrant.

Matt DeCoursey 17:59
So when you have to create a food waste collection infrastructure, and as you mentioned, like where do you start with that?

Kristan Chamberlain 18:05
Yeah, we began with research. So just what you said, his country.

Matt DeCoursey 18:10
Probably smart.

Kristan Chamberlain 18:13
We did a lot of homework. And essentially, we began the process by looking at the barriers, what are the barriers to keeping our city or culture, you know, we’re thinking on a large scale for our operation. What’s keeping us from making this just an integrated, natural part of our habit? And we tackle those barriers one by one. So the first was infrastructure, there was no method, there was no identifying, you know, process. The process had been very kind of dirty and messy, and things like that. In the past, there have been lots of confusion around it, lack of education, and really lack of ease. So we took the infrastructure similar to a kind of a ripple purple color, if you’re local and understand that that’s our glass collection, we are orange equals organics, and we’re moving to automated kiosks systems that will also be orange. And those will be placed around the city and in schools and other places. We use liners to keep everything clean for collection so people aren’t grossed out by the sorry. And we what else? We’ve taken all the education out of it. So businesses don’t need to think about where I am going to get my equipment. Where am I going to get my education materials? Where am I getting my signage? We literally come in and you know, it’s a very turnkey, we analyze their entire space. We create a system for that kitchen based on space, so food truck or hospital you know, We’ll we’ll work with everything. And then we hand them everything they need to do it. So we’ve really taken each one of those barriers out of the way.

Matt DeCoursey 20:12
Is this a for profit enterprise?

Kristan Chamberlain 20:15
It is a nonprofit enterprise. Yep. And we’re looking to potentially at some point, maybe start a for profit subsidiary of that nonprofit.

Matt DeCoursey 20:27
So has up until now, this has been funded by philanthropy or donations,

Kristan Chamberlain 20:34
revenue, right? I said revenue. So it’s a revenue model, it’s restaurants, businesses, you know, Starbucks, Chipotle, these people pay to be sustainable. And so we have been funded by philanthropy and definitely got started that way. And definitely wouldn’t be here without those funders. And I could name a number of them right now. But, ultimately, the business though, it’s a social enterprise is designed to, you know, be self-sustaining, and not be a typical, you know, donor based organization.

Matt DeCoursey 21:17
You know, I’m a big advocate of businesses needing to leave good, they need to be involved in having a healthy footprint, in and around, you know, any community that they operate. And it’s, we just did something that Full Scale. So you know, I’ve got almost 300 employees worldwide. And we do what we call outreach day, where we make it easy for our employees to get involved in a whole and a wide variety of philanthropic type causes, you know, so we put in less than $10,000. And then we got to add some, we got to add some elbow grease in there. So we did everything this year from, we did Coastal Cleanup, we donated solar panels to off-grid school, so most of my employees are in the Philippines and the infrastructure there is a challenge sometimes. We even adopted Eagle this year, that’s you haven’t? We haven’t named it yet. But yeah, we did a whole whole lot of different stuff with that, and planted trees, a whole lot of stuff. So for those of you listening, you know, if you make it easy for your employees to make it if you make it really turnkey, you talk about the the ability, like the I mean, how much effort and energy can nearly 300 people put into something, it’s a lot, lot, you know, I mean, you look at it, 300 people times an eight hour day, it’s 2400 hours of something, right. And I think the thing that we’ve learned as this is the third year that we’ve done it is that you just get like we keep saying about the compost itself, you gotta make it easy for for this to occur in our case, you know, like, it’s even, like, it’s kind of a company holiday of sorts. So it’s been great for morale, it makes people feel really good about the company that they work for, and we leave a great impact on a lot of places and organizations that need the help. It’s so yeah, he’s gonna make it easy. And you know, I mean, it’s, I think that that’s the key to all of it. It’s like when we look back at the evolution of recycling, when we made it a little easier when you got the recycle cans in your garage. That made it a lot easier for people to do it and if that’s what it takes, so is that the future of food waste is like an individual collection at people’s homes?

Kristan Chamberlain 23:49
Well, that’s that’s a question I think out there. You know, when you look at your environmental footprint about you know, kind of going house to house curbside, to pick up a five gallon bucket, I think there’s some evaluation that needs to be done with that model what what we’ve created instead, at least for right now is we’re moving to an automated kiosk system. So the kiosks will be placed all around the region. Both sides of the state line here downtown where there’s, you know, high density, location shopping centers, schools, places like that, and residents will be able to access those kiosks to tip or dump their food 24/7. So they have, you know, they have an app on their phone. It tells them which KC cans are full or which ones they can go to which ones are closer to them. And I think that really has the potential to revolutionize how we as a city and as a culture here begin to manage it by making it easy and accessible and cool. He does all three of those things.

Matt DeCoursey 25:03
Once again with me today is Kristin Chamberlain. And she, as the executive director and founder of KC Can Compost. Go to KCcancompost.com. There’s a link in the show notes. Now, when you go there, you can do what I just did, which is click the button in the top right corner, this yellow that says, donate, I just donated $100. So thanks, really easy. So there you go. And if you’re listening, try doing the same. Try doing the same. I mean, there are people out there that are doing the stuff that needs to be done. And it’s that simple. Like, I don’t know why we were talking. We were talking trash. And I’m donating at the same time. That’s the key. So you know, it’s, and by the way, that was fast and easy. I do recommend that. I’ve talked to people that are raising money or doing different things. And they’re like, well, I need more donations to make it easy for people to donate. I did it with one hand, too. Well, thank you very much. One hand, please. All it took to drop off. 100 bucks. All right, so you talk. I’ve got some notes here about some of the benefits of composting, and we talked about reducing the waste stream. So obviously, we kind of got into that by cutting methane emissions from landfills. Another important one. How about improving soil health and lessening erosion.

Kristan Chamberlain 26:29
Yeah, that’s an interesting one. So when you make this healthy product, it’s dense, it holds water, and it has this amazing water retention capacity. Such places like Texas, the Department of Transportation in Texas actually requires compost for new buildings and the sides of roads because it prevents dangerous runoff. What’s happening across the world is called desertification, where our topsoil is drying up. And When water hits that topsoil, we’re hearing about it, right, they’re predicting it for California coming up, which is where I’m from, San Diego, and where my parents live, you know, it’s dry. And when they do get heavy rains, that water is going to hit it, and it’s not going to, you know, be absorbed into the soil there, it’s just going to run off. And that’s what causes those mudslides, and it pulls all those chemicals out of, you know, farmlands and other places and pulls all of those toxins into our water streams. So compost really has an amazing water retention capacity, it actually sequesters carbon, so it helps pull it down. So those are some, you know, just the benefits of that.

Matt DeCoursey 27:58
Well, the next thing on my list was water conservation. So you nailed it. It says research has shown that water retaining capacities of soil increase with the addition of organic matter. In fact, it is a 1% increase, and soil organic matter helps soil hold up to 20,000 gallons more water per acre.

Kristan Chamberlain 28:19
It’s a lot. That’s a lot, right.

Matt DeCoursey 28:21
So we seek justice, and climate justice is a big thing here. And I’m gonna give a quick definition of that climate justice insisting on a shift from a discourse on greenhouse gasses and melting ice caps into civil rights movements that were the people and communities most vulnerable to climate impacts at heart, and that was from the former president of Ireland. But yeah, climate justice is a term and more than a movement. Are you familiar with the term climate justice?

Kristan Chamberlain 28:55
Absolutely, yes. Okay.

Matt DeCoursey 28:57
Well, when you think about it, what comes to mind? Yeah, well, he did.

Kristan Chamberlain 29:00
He did a good, good job summing it up. I mean, I think what we are seeing, let’s just take this region, you’ve got certain locations around every city that are disproportionately going to be impacted or already have been, you know, you look at Katrina or something like that, by climate-related weather events, these extreme events. So flooding, fires, and heat in the EPA have this wonderful tool called a vulnerability. It’s a vulnerability map, basically, and you can look at certain regions. So there are certain areas around Kansas City where there’s no green space. So as we see those days of consecutive heat over and over again, you know, economically disadvantaged neighborhoods are disproportionately impacted by that heat because it will get hotter in those areas. And so the idea of, of climate justice has a lot of different, you know, components to it, but one is trying to bring equity into our, our neighborhoods and, and our region, so that we’re sharing the burden of these types of things and sharing resources. So one of the things our new program with our residential drop-off programs are doing is, you know, ensuring that people have equal access to being able to compost all around the city. It’s not localized to certain neighborhoods. So those are a couple of the kinds of climate issues.

Matt DeCoursey 30:44
Yeah, kind of switching lanes ever so slightly here is that you know, one thing that’s not on this list, but you did mention is now this whole thing, this creates jobs and an economy that I mean, it’s that we can get to work on not throwing stuff away and collecting it. I mean, it’s just more industry, it’s more things and, and you talk about farming and agriculture. Now here in the US, we’re, if you’re listening, you’re not in the United States, we’re right in the middle of it, right in the middle. We grow a lot of food here. So compost is a pretty good thing. Once again, today’s episode, Startup Hustle, was sponsored by the Economic Development Corporation of Kansas City, Missouri. If you’re in the KC boundaries, or anywhere, you really anywhere near that, you can find out who your business development officer is at EDC kc.com. We encourage you to connect with these folks out there, making a big difference in our business community. You know, I’ve talked to so many people over the years that I want to get a business started. I don’t know how to do it, you know, whether you’re in Kansas City, or you’re somewhere else, look for these types of organizations, economic development, they exist to help early-stage businesses or business just businesses in general, move forward. And, you know, they’re given out here, the EDC, KC, is given out grants this year, which is actually how that program started, it pivoted a little bit into the launch kc.org side of things where they paired a lot of businesses with, we’ll say, a corporate partner, which I thought was effective, and they’re back to doing grants again, 50 grand, what would 50 grand do for your business? I mean, that’s pretty. That’s a decent check. I don’t think anyone can scoff at 50 grand. So you know, all right. So, once again, I want to commend you for doing this stuff. This is good. And you know, there’s so many, this is why I’m so excited about the Kansas City Social Venture studio because we’ve got all different kinds of businesses in there. I mentioned being an investor in one that’s healthy hip hop, then I’ve been involved with that for years. You also have one pair, which is from a local store that is teaching kids how to do business, and I donated a whole lot of shoes there. I went and dropped it off. I have a shoe problem that is almost for a difference. We can almost have an episode about I have to bring my wife and complain about that we’ve really, we’d really stretched that explicit tag that’s on there. But we, I mean, there are all kinds of businesses in there and doing it, you know, that’s what we’re going to talk about a week. So, you know, thanks for being a part of that. Now, as we begin to run out of time. Here on today’s episode, it’s time for the founder’s freestyle, which is how I like to end my episodes to say my episodes. I am not the only host to Startup Hustle people. Make sure you tune in for the weekly episodes from my business partner FullScale.io Matt Watson, and you know, mana do episodes together. That’s kind of how we do one of those every week as well. Tune in for Lauren Conaway, the founder of innovating her Que si, and also with Andrew Morgans, who really knows a lot of stuff about selling more things on Amazon. So here we are, at the end of our episode, Kristan, what do you want to leave the world of listeners? Like how can we talk trash on the way out the door?

Kristan Chamberlain 34:28
All right, talking trash. Let’s see, I think you summed it up. Its compost is easy. It’s not complicated. So I just encourage listeners, wherever you live, to, you know, check out what’s happening regionally. It is easy. And I think the second thing is it doesn’t have just an environmental impact. It has a social impact on lives. So when you’re participating in that process, it really is two goods with one solution.

Matt DeCoursey 35:02
Yeah, that’s great. And, you know, once again, I think it’s so important to have businesses like yours, whether they’re profitable or not-for-profit. It is still a business. It has to have funds and has to do stuff. I like the sustainable model of creating revenue and not just relying on donations. Now, with that, I donated 100 bucks. How much are you going to donate, people? Go to KC Can Compost and leave a donation. I think I’m gonna make a post about that on Facebook as well and try to get some people, you know, to look. A few bucks here, a few bucks there really make a big difference for all these organizations that are trying to be impactful around our community. Kristan, thanks again for joining me, and congratulations on being part of a really cool program with the KCEDC.

Kristan Chamberlain 35:53
Thank you so much. It’s been fun.

Matt DeCoursey 35:55
And I’ll check in with you down the road and see what’s good.