Now Open!
Creating quality compost and compost products for gardeners, landscapers, and farmers in the Roanoke Valley, we offer the area’s only food waste and organics recycling program at our permitted compost facility.
Click here to learn more about Residential Food Waste Recycling Services
We are a worker-owned, ecologically driven business filling a void in our local food system. We currently provide food waste collection and plan to sell finished compost in Summer 2024.
Our facility features five aerated static compost bunkers, set to produce more than 780 cubic yards of compost yearly. We expect finished compost to be available for purchase in July 2024.
Building Star City Compost has been a 5-year process, including multiple iterations of design for the facility, drafting an operating agreement to establishes us as a worker-owner business, and completing all steps to obtain a permit with the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality. It's been a tremendous undertaking to get us to the point we are today. Click Here to Learn More About Our Story.
Compost Fest 2024
We invite you to join us May 5th as we celebrate the opening of Roanoke's first Community Compost Facility. The Break Down is a day of family fun, new friends, compost, and learning. With a full day of Music, Learning Courses, and Family Activities, we hope to see you there!
Plus, join us a day early on Saturday May 4th for an extra Service Learning Opportunity with the Master Gardners and Agriculture
9 AM -1:00 pm - Vegetable Garden Workshop with Virginia Cooperative Extension Agent Shawn Jadrnicek and the Master Gardeners, including a tour of the compost facility.
The Break Down is FREE, and open to all. But you can support our compost facility and community agriculture by buying a ticket.
Sign up for the Roanoke Composts Newsletter!
Why is composting important?
The US EPA estimates that 20% of what arrives in landfills in the United States is food waste. When this food waste arrives in the landfill it breaks down in the absence of oxygen discharging methane – a greenhouse gas 33x more potent than carbon dioxide. According to the EPA, these emissions from landfills are the third largest contributor to climate change in our country.
Conceptually, Americans must realize that the food we produce extracts minerals and nutrients from our soil with every season we grow. Conventional agriculture utilizes nutrient inputs that require fossil fuel intensive industrial practices to produce nitrogen or strip mining to get phosphorous and potassium. Composting is literally tending the natural cycle of life by building the biological activity in our soil to be sure our soil is creating nutrient rich food that is just as healthy for us as it is for the soil and the climate.
Thus, your commitment to compost is not just about getting compost for your home garden, it is about combating one of the greatest existential, but very present threats to our civilization – climate change and the loss of healthy soil. There is only one civilization in the history of the world (our own) that has been able to break the natural cycle of life and replace it with industrial means. Star City Compost provides Roanoker’s with the option to think globally and act locally.