Bringing food waste composting to Texas higher education.
Moonshot Compost partners with colleges and universities in the Lone Star State’s largest cities to make composting simple and accessible.
We currently offer service to Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, and Waco that’s backed by deep reporting and guidance through every step of the process.
Colleges make up a sizable portion of the 100M+ tons of food waste sent to landfills every year in America. Once there, it begins to break down anaerobically, or without oxygen, as more trash is piled on top of it. The result is methane, a greenhouse gas more than 28 times as potent as carbon dioxide.
Not only does composting keep this organic matter out of landfills, compost piles allow those banana peels, apple cores, egg shells, and used coffee grounds to decompose aerobically, which produces only a tiny fraction of the methane. It also creates an amazing soil additive, improving its structure, water retention, beneficial microbe count, and nutrient levels.
Partnering with Moonshot makes it easy to turn food waste from your campus into a steady stream of beneficial compost. It’s a great way to instill care for the environment in your students while giving back to your college town.
A premium service to meet the challenges universities face.
High volume of food waste
Colleges and universities create a lot of food waste every day. Some institutions have campuses with multiple kitchen facilities, and multiple campuses. At Moonshot Compost, we are well equipped to handle large volumes of food waste. We will collect the pre-consumer food waste from your kitchens, diverting it from landfills for you and getting the compost it creates to the places that need it.
Fluctuating volumes
We know that higher ed institutions have fluctuating schedules throughout the year–such as summer terms with fewer students–that come with changing levels of food demand. That’s why Moonshot will work with you to create a pickup schedule that works around your needs, no matter how they change throughout the year.
Complex logistics
Colleges with multiple kitchen facilities on-site can add complexity to the storage and collection process, but Moonshot can devise a program that meets your site-specific needs, with the capacity and flexibility to collect from multiple locations on campus.
Food safety and storage
We provide bins with airtight lids that minimize pests and odors. We can advise you on the various best practices concerning bin placement and use, pickup location, and other steps to maintain high food safety standards. In addition, we leave you a clean bin after every collection.
Assistance with operational changes
Starting a composting program naturally brings a change to your current kitchen operations. Moonshot is here to walk you through every step of the process to make the transition easy for you and your staff. We can advise on best practices for bin placement and pickup locations, as well as provide you with signage that makes it clear what can be composted.
Our full list of compostable materials can be found here.
Helping meet regulatory compliance
Environmental regulations vary from city to city or county to county, making compliance tricky for schools with multiple locations. Moonshot provides guidance on the regulations in each jurisdiction, helping you understand and manage the requirements that apply to your sites.
Start up consult
At the beginning of our service, we will consult with you to learn the scope of your desired composting program. We are TRUE AdvisorTM certified and can plan as robust a food waste diversion program as you need.
Divert your food waste in 3 easy steps.
1
Set Aside Compostables
Put your food waste in a Moonshot Compost-provided container.
2
We Collect Your Food Waste
3
We pick it up according to the agreed schedule and swap it with a clean container.
We Report Your Impact
We calculate the pounds diverted from landfills and three carbon equivalences on your personalized dashboard.
Proud to partner with these Texas universities
The following schools are leading the way in sustainability in education by working with Moonshot to handle their food waste streams the smart way. Click any of their names below to view their diversion metrics, powered by the Moonshot Diversion Dashboard.
Moonshot Compost's impact on education facilities.
Rice’s composting program surpasses 1M-pound milestone
Rice University reached a significant milestone - diverting more than 1 million pounds of food waste from landfills - with the help of Moonshot Compost.
Read how Moonshot helps bring Rice’s compost program to fruition
Baylor brings composting to all six of its campus dining facilities
Since starting a pilot program in Fall 2023 and diverting 190,000 pounds of food waste from area landfills, Baylor University has gone all in on its composting partnership with Moonshot by expanding the program to all of its campus eateries.
Share how much waste you’re diverting.
Your food waste diversion achievements are easy to track and share via your personalized Diversion Dashboard. Here you’ll find monthly and overall stats on how many pounds of food waste you’ve diverted from landfills, the equivalent amount of emissions avoided, and more that you can use in your ESG reporting and sustainability reports.
Discover Advanced Reporting with Our Diversion Dashboard
Although the environmental aspect of composting is the most readily identifiable, it also bears positive fruit within the social and governance elements.
See how else composting can help your ESG efforts.
Making composting easy.
A clean container with each collection
Employee training to ensure your compost is uncontaminated
Simple list of what’s collectable.
See it here
What happens to your food waste?
We are pretty enamored with the natural composting process of how spoiled food and leftovers break down to become a valuable commodity when given enough time and a place to relax. Where is that, you ask?
Your Moonshot food waste collections are transformed into compost at commercial composting facilities, after which it finds multiple practical applications.
University composting FAQs.
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We typically use 55-gallon drums, though container selection is part of our onboarding process.
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As part of your onboarding, we consult with you to determine a pickup schedule that works for you. In most cases, we collect no more than twice per week.
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Meat, fruit, veggies, grains, and more are all acceptable. See the full list of compostables here.
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We collect from college campuses with large volumes of food waste in Austin, Dallas, Forth Worth, Houston, and Waco. Our territory is always expanding, so check back often to see if we’re in your area.
All your questions answered – more commercial composting FAQs.
Start turning your food waste into compost!
Get in touch with us to reduce your ecological footprint, give back to your community, and demonstrate your ESG commitment.
