School food waste composting across Texas

Moonshot Compost collects food waste from daycares, schools, colleges, and universities in Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, and Waco.

We offer simple, flexible plans with next-level diversion reporting, and guide you through every step of the process.

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A recent estimate suggests that food waste from schools in the U.S. could amount to as much as 530,000 tons per year, costing anywhere from 9.7 million to 1.7 billion dollars.

Pre-consumer food waste - which includes things such as spoilage, product expiration, production mistakes (messed up orders), overproduction, and trim waste (food scraps removed from the production process - accounts for between 4-10% of school food waste.

When food waste breaks down in landfills, it releases methane, one of the most harmful greenhouse gasses. That’s where composting can help.

Composting diverts food waste away from landfills, reducing methane emissions while contributing a useful resource full of nutrients that can be added back to the soil.

Composting as a daycare, school, college, or university can help your institute comply with local environmental regulations, give you the opportunity to give back to your community, and create a culture of sustainability amongst the future consumers of our society: your students.

A premium service to meet the challenges schools face

High volume of food waste

Schools create a lot of food waste every day. Some schools 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 educational institutions have fluctuating schedules throughout the year - such as summer terms with fewer students - schedules that come with a changing level of food demands. 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

Educational institutions 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 which minimize both unwanted 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 institutions with multiple locations. Moonshot helps guide you on the regulations for your various locations, making sure your school campuses are meeting the local regulations.

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.

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

Diverting food waste and inspiring learning at Fay School

The Fay School in Houston worked with Moonshot to incorporate composting into a Project-Based Learning (PBL) program for fifth graders, who shared their new knowledge with the broader campus community.

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.

See the Diversion Dashboard

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 bin 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.

See How Your Trash Becomes Treasure

School composting FAQs

For our commercial services we typically use 55-gallon drums, though container selection is part of our onboarding process.
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.
Meat, fruit, veggies, grains, and more are all acceptable. See the full list of compostables here.
We collect from schools, colleges, and other educational institutions 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.