My partner and I love to cook. We take pride in the fact that making our own meals allows us to reduce the amount of waste we produce. Unfortunately, when we first moved to Ashland, all our food scraps ended up in the trash alongside plastic bags and packaging destined for the landfill. It didn’t feel right that our onion skins, carrot ends, and apple cores were headed towards an environment where they couldn’t break down properly or return their nutrients to the earth. We figured there had to be a better solution, so we googled  “Ashland Massachusetts composting” and found that composting was not only available, but easily accessible and affordable for us, even as renters. 

Black Earth Composting. Those three words and the incredible company they represent reinvigorated the relationship my partner and I have with food and cooking as Ashland residents. For just $70 we got access to six months of weekly, curb-side compost pickup on the same day as our trash goes out. As renters, we are so grateful for how seamless it has been to incorporate this composting service into our lives. We also encouraged neighbors to add their scraps to our compost container because even on our busiest weeks we can’t come up with 7 gallons of food waste. I can’t stress this enough - it’s just so easy! And if that alone doesn’t convince you to sign on, did I mention that your annual subscription comes with a complementary bag of fresh, locally produced compost to use in the spring? There’s something so beautiful about that, and I can’t wait to share this nutrient-filled bounty with my friends and neighbors.

We signed up for Black Earth Compost as soon as the company offered curbside pickup service in Ashland, and we've been very happy with the service. We keep the compost bin in our kitchen for easy access. The bin's lid seals well, so we don't have to worry about smells escaping. The bin's lid is also easy to open with just the back of one hand, which is especially helpful when we've got our hands full of food waste from our cooking and kitchen cleaning adventures. :-)

The liner bags are sturdy, and haven't broken. The bin is sturdy and well made. We put the compost out once a week, and we can lock the lid to keep animals out of the compost. Black Earth always sends reminders and communicates promptly about any pickup delays, and they've never missed a pickup. In addition, it's easy to buy more liner bags online when we need them, and Black Earth just puts the new rolls of bags in our bin after they've emptied it. We've been using this Black Earth Compost service for nearly 3 years, and we highly recommend it! It's a great way to divert a lot of our normal household waste away from a landfill and towards being reused. As a result, we need fewer trash bags.

One of our neighbors noticed our compost bin, asked about it, and has also signed up for Black Earth's service. She's been happy with the service, too. Since she has a smaller household, it means that she doesn't have to put out the regular trash every week anymore. She can put it out every other week, which saves her a lot of money on trash bags.

And we keep an eye out for each other. More often than not, our neighbor very kindly brings our emptied compost bin back to our house when she brings hers back home, too, so our compost bins have become an opportunity to connect with our neighbor more, in addition to being better for our environment! :-)

We have been using Black Earth now for two years and it cannot be easier.  They provide a link to their website where you can order the compostable bags for the rollable bin that we keep in our garage and for the small container on our kitchen counter. Black Earth drops off the bags when they pick up the compost.  We were amazed by how much we could actually compost each week, including food scraps, coffee grinds, food-soiled paper towels, and more. It is all picked up at the curb reliably every Friday morning.

Since Black Earth partnered with Ashland and Holliston, we were very happy to hear that we reached the goal of 500 Black Earth customers together, which reduced the cost of weekly curbside compost pickup to $69.99 for 6 months and, most importantly, significantly reduced our use of orange trash bags. 

It feels great to be putting all my food scraps, coffee filters & tea bags into compost and my usual trash output is less than half of what it used to be!

Since I’m on their every other week pickup plan, I have Black Earth send me email reminders the day before I need to put my bin out at the corner.