We like to measure the performance of everything at Foodoro. So when we heard that San Francisco—our hometown—was going to mandate the composting of all waste, we were curious if it would be worthwhile to separate our trash into yet another bucket (the law already requires that we recycle).

The results were quite surprising:

Foodoro's Waste: Composting, Recycling, Trash

Over the course of 15 weeks, we composted half of our waste! Coupled with the 33% that we recycle, our true waste output was 18% by weight. We’re not quite at “zero-waste” like some companies (see related NYT article), but our goal is to get above 90% by the end of the year.

On a personal note for Foodoro, we were thrilled to find out that our compost actually goes to growers and gardeners around the Bay Area, including some of the farmers actually selling products through our marketplace!

A wonderful thing, to go full circle.

Note 1: The two biggest weeks of compost output was a result of watermelon rinds and corn husks. Ah, summer!

Note 2: Our methodology was simple. One of us stood on a scale with the bag of composting/recycling/trash. Sometimes messy but effective.

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