Business collects household waste for composting

Matthew Rostetter started Compost Now to help people who want to be green but don't want to manage piles of rotting food scraps in their backyards.

"I always wanted to compost, but I felt like I never had the space," Raleigh homeowner Beth Neel said.

Now, Neel puts her family's food scraps on the doorstep Thursdays, and Rostetter comes by and collects them.

"People want to go green – they want to compost – but there's that extra step. The stuff isn't making it to compostable facilities. It's just ending up in the landfill," he said.

People who enroll for Compost Now services pay $25 a month for Rostetter to collect their compostable waste once a week. He sends the material to a specialized composting facility in Chatham County, and customers get back compost soil.

"If it was once a plant or animal, it can be composted," he said, noting that meat, bones and paper can all be put into a compost pile.

"A lot of people tell me that, now they're composting and recycling, the trash is almost next to nothing," he said.

Neel said composting has changed her mindset of what goes in the trash, and she said she hopes her simple changes will make a big difference.

"As I'm doing this now, I'm realizing how much I threw away," she said. "It's a win for everybody. The landfill folks aren't filling up the landfill. That's helping the environment."