
Hilltopper Refuse & Recycling's Brandon Knudtson presented at June's Sustainability Chats highlighting Hilltopper Refuse & Recycling's organics composting program and special events recycling initiative. If you missed it live, you can now watch the playback by clicking the Sustainability Chats picture below.
Hilltopper Refuse & Recycling saw a community interest and demand for organics composting and knew they could be the bridge to a solution. They began offering their purple dumpsters to local businesses such as Festival Foods and People's Food Co-op for their pre-consumer food waste. These dumpsters are lined to be able to handle all temperatures and help to divert waste from our local landfills. Instead of heading to the landfill, Hilltopper takes the food waste to Green Earth Compost for processing. It is a win-win scenario as local businesses can save on their waste hauling costs by separating out their organics for composting, and composting offers environmental benefits such as reduction of methane gas in landfills and helps with water retention in soil.
Currently, Hilltopper Refuse & Recycling has hauled 377.50 Tons = 755,000 Pounds of food waste for compost through this program. They hope in the future to engage with more local businesses for this service and potentially offer a curbside residential option as well.

In addition to their organics composting, Hilltopper Refuse & Recycling has identified a large

need for services at local festivals and events. Brandon Knutson spoke about his personal push to increase recycling efforts at events in our area. Hilltopper Refuse & Recycling agreed that this was something that needed to be done. Not only was recycling at these large events the right thing to do, it was an opportunity to increase awareness and education around recycling. They have partnered with many fests and fairs in the area providing services, staff, equipment and education to increase recycling efforts. They even marched in the Oktoberfest parade handing out blue recycling bags for parade route goers to collect and bag their recyclables. The first year was a trial, but so successful, they plan to continue! Since inception, each year Hilltopper Refuse & Recycling has increased their total lbs of recyclables collected from their Special Events Recycling. I wonder what 2021 will be?!


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