Community cooperative compost

Has anyone heard of communities, or neighborhoods, who create cooperatives, or something similar, who gather yard waste at a central location and compete in a sense with the local recycling center. When I look for commercial compost the recycling centers is really cheap but of course carries a large amount of pesticides, plastic, etc, but the next option are way more expensive. Not much of a gradient. A group of individuals or neighborhoods which were undertake such a project, would have obvious concerns that those participating were adhering to certain standards such as no, or limited, pesticide use

Hi Matt,

Yes I have heard of such an initiative, although it is urban and thus not so much about yard waste but more about fruit and vegetable waste since most participants don't even have a garden. In fact I made a short webdoc (subtitled in English) about this project:


The Wormhotel is a community initiative based in the famous 'Pijp-neighbourhood' in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The Wormhotel is an 'urban streetcorner worm composter': a large, custom build worm bin, located on the sidewalk in the Frans Halsstreet. Neighbours were asked to separate and collect their fruit and vegetable waste and deposit it in the Wormhotel. The lid of this composter is locked so only participants can open it. Currently around 20 households are using this composter. The project is sponsored by the municipality and all participants received a free green plastic bin for collecting the waste and a key to open the lid. The composter has been in service (quite problemfree) since summer 2015 and two loads of healthy vermicompost have already been harvested. The concept is now slowly spreading in Amsterdam.
Two relating weblinks (in Dutch): the Facebook group 'Buurtcomposteren' and the website of the company that designed and build this Wormhotel: Le Compostier.

Hope this helps,
Styn

Thanks Styn- That is very cool and I hope to post it at my site as something for localities to aim for