Emma Peacock had just recently moved to San Antonio, her husband’s hometown, when she asked her friend Pilar Molak which composting service she used.
At the time, Molak didn’t even realize composting services — which take food waste, compost it and then distribute the compost back to customers and others — existed.
Both were looking for new careers; Peacock was in finance and Pilar was the marketing director for Shetler Wade Jewelers.
“So we decided to start our own composting service,” Peacock said.
“My friends say I went from diamonds to dirt,” Molak said.
They launched Mission Compost in 2022, and as part of their research, the pair reached out to Kate Jaceldo and Betsey Gruy, founders of another local and women-owned compost service.
Jaceldo and her mother Gruy started Compost Queens “around 2017,” said Jaceldo, after her mother saw a documentary about a woman who had started her own company. “My mom always has lots of ideas,” Jaceldo said, “and I researched it, and saw that it was a really solid business model.”
When Compost Queens launched, the City of San Antonio had already started its green bin program, which included not just yard-based green waste but also food scraps and food-soiled paper. At that time, most of the tiny municipalities in and around San Antonio didn’t have a similar program.
Compost Queens found customers in those towns, in multi-family buildings that weren’t served by the city and eventually, commercial customers which generate food waste, like restaurants, schools and offices.
The women partnered with local farms, including Talking Tree Farm in Schertz, to bring the food scraps and turn it into compost. Their company supplied customers with bins and as well as handmade bokashi, which is Japanese for “fermented organic matter” to aid in the breakdown of the food in a way that also mitigates smells and deters pests and pathogens. That in turn allowed Compost Queens to pick up food waste monthly.
Over the years, Compost Queens grew, garnering positive media reviews and growing its customer base.
But last year, Jaceldo said, she and her mother began considering selling. The company was poised for more growth, but taking it to that next level felt overwhelming, especially after operating through the pandemic.
Jaceldo had also found an “awesome opportunity,” working for the city as its first Climate Adaptation Manager. In that role, Jaceldo manages a couple of grant programs and is working to identify ways the city can help low-income neighborhoods become more resilient to urban heat and other climate change-related stressors.
“Neither my mother and I are really business people, and it was getting a little overwhelming,” said Jaceldo. The women listed the business with a broker and began reaching out to people in the community they thought might be interested in buying.
Peacock said it was clear that Jaceldo and Gruy sought a buyer with similar values. “Their number one priority was making sure their clients were taken care of,” she said. “They approached us and we had lots of conversation about it. Both of us got comfortable with the idea, and decided it was the right move.”
Since January, the women of Mission Compost have been working with the women of Compost Queens to create a smooth transition for their customers. Mission Compost, which offers weekly pickups and didn’t use bokashi, will keep that option for customers who want it. “We spent a lot of time with Betsey and Kate, to really understand their daily operations and what their clients expected,” Peacock said.
They bought an additional truck, and made their first employee, Alex Atkins, the company’s full time operations manager. Mission Compost also employs six part-time drivers.
Molak and Peacock chose Earth Day as the day “we’re bringing everything under one umbrella.” That includes launching a new FAQ on their website about the acquisition. In addition to home and business pickup, Mission Compost also offers its services for events and conferences.
Selling to Mission Compost “felt really natural, rather than selling to some big waste management company that was just dabbling,” Jaceldo said.
She said selling the idea of a compost service has gotten easier over the past several years, as more people and businesses understand the stakes. When deposited into landfills, food waste, because it decays so quickly, creates more methane emissions than any other landfilled material, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Food waste makes up just under a quarter of all municipal solid waste in landfills, but causes 58% of the methane emissions. In a study to quantify the impact, the EPA found that while total emissions from municipal solid waste landfills are decreasing, methane from landfilled food waste is increasing, and is equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions from 50 million cars on the road.
Diverting food waste doesn’t just reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Turning it into compost helps create sustainable food cycles, as farms and gardens use it to grow food in a nutrient-rich environment. Compost helps improve soil structure, and even increases its ability to sequester carbon, or hold it in the soil.
Mission Compost decided early on it wanted to quantify for customers the impact they were having. To date, the company as diverted 1,239,376 pounds of food waste from local landfills, which they calculate is equivalent to reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 886,154 net pounds.
Peacock and Molak said they’re excited to build on what the Compost Queens created, and to be part of San Antonio’s sustainability movement.
“There are so many great people,” said Molak, who especially loves talking to young students about composting. “We’re having so much fun with it.”
