Food waste composting for assisted living communities throughout Texas.

Moonshot Compost helps assisted living communities, memory care facilities, and senior living operators in Austin, Dallas–Fort Worth, Houston, and Waco divert food waste from landfill through a system that is clean, sanitary, and measurable.

Our service includes routine pickups, clean container swaps, and diversion reporting that helps your facility track impact over time , without disrupting resident care or adding complexity to your culinary team's daily routine.

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Assisted living communities operate commercial kitchens that run multiple meals a day, seven days a week. That volume of food preparation generates consistent, heavy food waste. In facilities where cleanliness and infection control are non-negotiable, how that waste is handled matters.

Many senior living operators are already working to reduce waste where they can. But even well-run kitchens generate unavoidable food scraps, expired inventory, and preparation waste. Too often, that material ends up in landfill, where it decomposes without oxygen and produces methane.

For assisted living facilities, that's not just an environmental concern — in some cities it's also a compliance issue. Austin's Universal Recycling Ordinance requires properties to provide one gallon of compost capacity per resident unit. Meeting that requirement while keeping back-of-house operations clean, safe, and predictable is where many facilities struggle to find the right solution.

Composting redirects unavoidable food waste into an aerobic process that produces a useful soil amendment instead of landfill gas. For assisted living teams, that means a cleaner, more practical way to manage kitchen waste — one that supports compliance, reduces strain on existing infrastructure, and gives sustainability teams the data they need to report on diversion over time.

A composting program designed for assisted living operations.

Compliance with local mandates

Austin's Universal Recycling Ordinance requires assisted living properties to provide one gallon of compost capacity per resident unit. Moonshot designs programs around that requirement — right-sizing container counts and pickup frequency so your facility stays compliant without overbuilding infrastructure or straining your operational budget.

Clinical sanitation standards

Assisted living facilities operate under strict infection control expectations. Moonshot's clean drum swap is built for that environment. At every pickup, full containers are removed and replaced with clean, washed drums so there is no reuse of soiled containers on-site and no compromise to the hygiene standards your facility maintains.

Back-of-house focus, no resident disruption

Composting at an assisted living facility happens entirely in the kitchen and at the loading dock. Residents experience no change to their daily routine. Moonshot works with your culinary and facilities teams to set up a collection flow that fits the way your kitchen already operates, from container placement to pickup scheduling.

Reporting for sustainability and leadership

Every container is weighed at pickup and logged against your account. That data flows into your Diversion Dashboard in real time, giving sustainability teams and senior leadership a clear, shareable picture of how much food waste your facility is diverting and what that means in terms of landfill impact avoided.

Divert your food waste in 3 easy steps.

1

Set aside compostables

Place food waste in your Moonshot-provided container at the point of generation, whether that's the prep kitchen, the dish station, or anywhere else in your back-of-house operation.

2

We collect your food waste

We pick up on the agreed schedule and replace full containers with clean, washed ones so your kitchen always has a sanitized drum ready to use.

3

We report your impact

Each container is weighed at pickup so you can track pounds diverted and carbon equivalencies through your Diversion Dashboard.

Assisted living programs backed by measurable impact.

Moonshot's assisted living programs are built for the food waste generated across commercial kitchens, dining rooms, and food preparation areas in senior living communities. The data below shows aggregated pounds diverted across Moonshot's assisted living customer programs, along with carbon equivalencies that help put that impact into context.

Assisted living operators need clear, accurate documentation of their diversion activity — for compliance, for corporate reporting, and for sustainability initiatives that have to hold up to scrutiny. Whether you're demonstrating adherence to local ordinances, updating a parent company, or supporting a broader ESG commitment, the data needs to be easy to access and easy to share.

Moonshot's Diversion Dashboard gives your team real-time access to pounds diverted, carbon equivalencies, and monthly trends — by location, without requiring a login. That means your facilities director, your sustainability lead, and your corporate team can all see the same numbers.

Diversion data your facility can use.

See the Diversion Dashboard

Discover advanced reporting with our Diversion Dashboard.

For assisted living operators with ESG commitments or corporate sustainability targets, composting diversion data provides a measurable, documentable contribution across environmental and governance reporting, one that connects directly to how your facility manages its operational footprint.

See how else composting can help your ESG efforts.

Making composting work in a senior living environment.

A clean container with every pickup — built for facilities where hygiene standards are non-negotiable

Staff training designed for busy kitchen teams, including bilingual support

Simple sorting rules your culinary staff can follow and maintain across shifts. See it here.

What happens to your food waste?

Food waste collected from your kitchen is delivered to a TCEQ-permitted composting facility, where it undergoes aerobic processing and is transformed into finished compost.

For assisted living facilities, that permitted processing chain matters. It means the material leaving your loading dock follows a documented, compliant route, one you can point to when demonstrating due diligence to regulators, ownership groups, or corporate sustainability teams.

See How Your Food Waste Becomes Compost

Assisted living composting FAQs.

Compliance & Regulations

  •  In Austin, yes. The Universal Recycling Ordinance requires certain commercial properties, including assisted living facilities, to provide composting capacity for organic waste. Moonshot designs programs that meet those requirements. For facilities outside Austin, composting requirements vary. Moonshot can help you understand what applies in your market.

  •  Austin currently has the most established composting mandates in Texas, but other markets are moving in a similar direction. Building a composting program now puts your facility ahead of future requirements rather than scrambling to catch up when they arrive.

Getting Started

  •  No. Moonshot uses sealed 55-gallon drums that contain odors and prevent pest access. At every pickup, full drums are removed and replaced with clean, washed ones so there is no open or soiled container sitting on your loading dock between pickups.

  •  Every drum is removed and replaced with a clean, washed container at each pickup. There is no reuse of soiled containers on-site. The sealed drum design prevents leakage and odor, supporting the hygiene standards your facility is already maintaining.

  •  No. Moonshot's program is focused entirely on back-of-house culinary operations. Your residents experience no change to their daily routine, and there is no sorting requirement outside of the kitchen.

  • Yes. Moonshot can design a collection setup that covers multiple waste generation points within a single property — mapping container placement to where food waste is produced and building a pickup flow that fits your site layout.

  •  Volume estimates at the start of a program are rarely perfect. Moonshot monitors container weights from the first pickup and adjusts container counts and pickup frequency based on real data so your program scales to actual volume rather than a guess made at onboarding.

  •  If a driver identifies contamination at pickup, they photograph it and report it to your account manager immediately. Your team is notified so the issue can be addressed with targeted retraining. Smaller containers make contamination easier to spot and resolve quickly.

  • One rule: if it grows, it goes. All food waste — raw, cooked, expired, meat, dairy, produce — goes into the Moonshot container. The only items that don't belong are packaging materials like plastic, metal, and glass. That simplicity is intentional — it makes training easier and keeps contamination low.

Operations & Sanitation

  •  Moonshot works backwards from your kitchen's existing waste volume, looking at trash container size, pickup frequency, and generation points to build a starting estimate. That estimate is refined over the first few weeks using real weight data from your pickups.

  •  Moonshot provides on-site training for your culinary and kitchen teams, with bilingual signage in English and Spanish. Training is designed around a simple sorting rule — if it grows, it goes — and can be repeated as needed to accommodate staff turnover or shift changes.

  •  Moonshot provides retraining as often as needed at no additional cost. Bilingual signage stays in place in your kitchen as a persistent reference, and the simplicity of the sorting rule makes it easier for new staff to get up to speed quickly.

  • Moonshot typically uses sealed 55-gallon drums with a capacity of approximately 250 pounds. Container selection is part of the onboarding process and is matched to your kitchen's layout and waste volume.

  • Pickup frequency is set during onboarding based on your estimated volume and adjusted over time using real weight data. Most facilities start with a weekly cadence and adjust from there based on diversion activity.

  •  Not typically. Moonshot works with your existing layout during the site visit to identify the best placement for containers and the most practical path from your kitchen to the loading dock.

Reporting & Data

  •  Yes. Every container is weighed at pickup and that data is available in real time through your Diversion Dashboard. This data can be used for compliance documentation, corporate reporting, or sustainability disclosures.

  • The Diversion Dashboard is Moonshot's real-time reporting tool. It shows total pounds diverted, monthly trends, carbon equivalencies, and location-level data. It requires no login and can be shared directly with ownership groups, corporate teams, or external stakeholders.

  • Yes. The Diversion Dashboard is accessible without a login, making it easy to share with anyone who needs visibility into your program's performance, from your facilities director to your corporate sustainability team.

  • Composting diversion provides a measurable, documentable environmental contribution that fits directly into ESG reporting frameworks. Monthly diversion data and carbon equivalencies give sustainability teams the specifics they need to report accurately and credibly.

  •  Yes. For senior living operators with more than one location, Moonshot provides location-level data so you can track diversion performance by site and roll it up into aggregate reporting for your portfolio.

Start building a cleaner, more compliant kitchen operation.

Talk with Moonshot about a composting program designed for the realities of senior living — clean container swaps, simple staff training, and the diversion data your facility needs to stay compliant and report with confidence.