We caught up with the brilliant and insightful David Bloovman a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

David , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

I was at a conference on textile recycling in 2015 and saw a pie chart of landfill composition- around 5% of landfills were textiles, but closer to 30% were food scraps that I knew could be composted. I came home from the conference and started a conversation with my wife, Michele, about starting a composting business. We both thought it would set a good example for our two daughters and decided to go for it.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Food scraps should not end up in landfills! When they do, they don’t break down properly and release methane gas into our atmosphere, which is up to eighty times more damaging to our environment than carbon dioxide. When we make food scraps into compost instead, the compost absorbs CO2 from our atmosphere and is used by gardeners and farmers to grow healthy plants. Also, since the same composting site can be used to make compost over and over, indefinitely, whereas landfills fill up and are no longer useful, so municipalities are always in search of more land to use for landfills- it’s not sustainable. We started our business to solve this problem! We pick up food scraps from household by e-bikes with trailers and by motor vehicle, and we pick up from commercial accounts using pickup trucks with liftgates. We’re honored by the growth we’ve experienced to date where we operate in Philadelphia, and our goals are to continue growing our composting services while also offering new products and services that align with our values.

Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?

In late 2023 we were almost out of cash. We decided to raise our household pricing for the first time since 2017, with the new pricing taking effect January 1, 2024, but we allowed existing customers to prepay up to 1 full year at our old pricing. Many customers took advantage of the prepay option, and that surge in cash flow helped us get through to 2024 when our new pricing took effect.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Word of mouth is far and away our best source of growth. We encourage our customers to refer us to friends and neighbors, and we incentivize them via a personal referral link that gives them money off their subscription as well as an initial discount to the friends they refer.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.circlecompost.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/circlecompost
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CircleCompost
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/circle-compost