Tommy's Compost Trying to Make Composting Easy and Accessable
Mary Stucklen provides the colorful buckets for customers to place their organic waste for pickup.
"Climate change is important because we have evidence of it everywhere we go. Whether we have 60-degree days in the middle of winter or wildfires in California or droughts in many parts of the world. We are on a path that does not look great for future generations," Stucklen said.
Customers can fill a company-provided bucket with their organic waste that they can have picked up weekly or bi-weekly.
Stucklen felt the urge to create this business before other companies saw the potential in it and the county relied on outsourcing for its composting needs.
"I also feel that if I didn't do it, other people would be doing it for us from outside of the county and it just doesn't sit right with me," Stucklen said.
The single mother is trying to instill the values of leadership and green living in her 14-month-old son.
Prior to opening Tommy's Compost, Stucklen was involved in the non-profit Berkshire Environmental Action Team and Berkshire Zero-Waste Initiative. She's now a teacher in Williamsburg as she works on expanding her small business that she expects to work full time in a couple of years.
She fought to get into the competitive 12-week, nonprofit program Entrepreneurship For All, which teaches new business owners ways to accelerate their business. She was awarded class president and one of the prizes the program gives to exceptional students.
Stucklen wants her service to be accessible to everyone and hopes to have a subsidized program through local municipalities.
"I absolutely 100 percent want this to be accessible to everybody. Right now, I don't have any subsidized programs," she said. "I would really like the cities to subsidize a program where people can sign up and say, 'I want to do this,' but the city pays for it. And then they get it paid for by their town."
The service is fairly simple. Upon signing up, customers receive a bucket, a list of what can go in the bucket, and a "Bucket Guy."
The Bucket Guy is a piece of paper on which customers can stick the non-compostable labels from fruits and vegetables. Customers who cover the "Bucket Guy" with stickers and tape it to the top bucket will receive a $5 coupon.
The company provides a pick up service that can be weekly or bi-weekly for residents, schools, businesses, and restaurants. Currently the cost of this service is $28 a month for weekly pick up and $18 a month for bi-weekly pickup, mostly in Northern and Central Berkshire.
"So my business is on the road. I'm the middle woman, middle mom. I have my equipment at my house but all I do is I go pick up the food waste, put it in the trailer, and bring it to the farm," Stucklen said.
Customers can see where their waste is going through Tommy's Compost's portal page. The service has already collected more than 1,000 pounds of organic waste. Stucklen wants to keep the waste in the Berkshires and has been working with Meadow Farm in Lee and has been in communication with other farms in Berkshire County.
"I like to keep the food waste in the area as much as possible. So it'll always definitely be in the Berkshires," she said. "But I'm working with other farms now. Like I keep waste from Lee in Lee and waste from Stockbridge in Stockbridge."
With budget season approaching, Stucklen hopes Pittsfield takes a compost program seriously because of the amount of money it could save the city and the good that it would do for the environment.
"Especially coming into budget season, I really hope that they do take it seriously. Because 30 percent of your trash is compostable. So even if all of Pittsfield reduces their waste by 30 percent per person by composting, we would save so much money," she said.
Stucklen said the city is open minded about the prospect of creating a program that makes composting accessible to everyone but COVID-19 has lowered the priority of the project.
"I know that the city is very open-minded when it comes to this stuff, but it takes time. It's experiencing and understanding all of the data," she said.
Stucklen hopes that her business will not only impact the environment but also bring jobs to the Berkshires.
"I just really want to help my community and this is like the most efficient, effective way I know how that has big returns in terms of climate change, like reducing the impact that you have on climate change," she said, "It can support me and I can hire local people. That's a huge thing. What I want to do is hire local people and keep jobs in the Berkshires."
Tags: new business,
