We were lucky to catch up with Adison Evans recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Adison thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

The pandemic was a pivotal moment for me, as it was for many. As a professional musician with a 6-month long canceled tour in Asia, I spent much time meditating and reflecting on what I planned to do next. The idea of a compost pickup service came to me in a meditation. It aligned with what I was already passionate about: community and supporting our planet’s health. And I had an abundance of time on my hands to ground myself, return to nature, and spend time at my parent’s farm in Northwest New Jersey.

With the world seemingly teetering on edge, I decided to give back to my community. I had no idea if people would be interested in composting services, and I didn’t discover until later that organic collection services actually do exist (albeit not in my neighborhood.) However, I knew food waste was and continues to be a huge problem worldwide. There are so many food-insecure neighborhoods, but I had the resources to do something about it.

I started Neighborhood Compost to help residences and local businesses divert waste from landfills, where it creates harmful methane gases. In addition, I launched a food rescue program to combat food insecurity and keep food from going to waste in the first place.

The EPA estimates that over one-third of all uneaten food goes to waste. So, we are connecting that food with communities in need while replenishing the soil’s nutrients by composting the rest. Thus far, we have diverted almost 250k lbs of waste from landfill, donated 700 lbs of food, and offset 9k cars’ worth of carbon emissions.

Adison, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Adison Evans. I’m a farmer and a Grammy-award-winning musician. I realize that’s not a sentence one hears very often! I come from a musical family and am pursuing a career as a professional saxophonist, composer, and educator in New York City. I attended The Juilliard School and have shared the stage with artists such as Beyonce, JayZ, and Demi Lovato. I’ve also worked with prominent jazz artists like Arturo O’Farrill, Wynton Marsalis, and more.

I’ve always possessed an entrepreneurial spirit and have a deep wonder and reverence for nature. The pandemic forced me to take a break from performing, opening up space for me to create something new in my life. I developed a sustainable waste management system rooted in community and circularity, which was more in demand than I initially imagined.

Neighborhood Compost provides a hassle-free service that allows our neighbors to divert food scraps and organic material from landfills. By giving this back to the earth, we’re regenerating natural ecosystems. I am also proud to continue fostering a vibrant volunteering community for our farm. We practice regenerative agriculture in harmony with our livestock, goats, alpacas, rabbits, dogs, and beehives. We live circularly in every possible way, like selling alpaca fiber for clothing, pollinating our crops with our bees, replenishing nutrients in our soil with homemade compost, and more.

We offer a service that everyone can use and is in high demand. Not only do we provide an opportunity for neighbors to divert their waste from landfills, but we also have a food rescue program that delivers edible food to communities in need. And our zero-waste circular shop has home and pantry essentials, which our subscribers can order and have delivered with their compost pickup. Lastly, we’re excited to utilize our finished compost in the first growing venture on our farm, which will provide the community with fresh food in return for their food scraps. I have to say, the circularity we created at Neighborhood Compost is the most satisfying part of this entire journey.

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.

I balance running the composting and farming operation with my career in the arts. I love performing and teaching music every week and plan on continuing to do so. Thanks to our employees and community, I’ve managed to scale the composting business to accommodate this. Some key milestones were when we bought our first commercial van and installed a lift gate on it. Before that, I would have to borrow my neighbor’s pickup truck to do compost pickup. Another milestone was generating enough revenue to hire a small team, a driver, and several farm hands to manage the compost every week. Now we are quickly approaching a really exciting period for the business, which is our first growing season on the farm. We can finally spread all of the finished compost into our soil and use it to grow nutrient-dense vegetables for our community. This final step closes the loop completely.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

My stepdad, John, grew up on a farm in the area. He was looking forward to returning to homestead farm life with my mom in their retirement years. They bought our farm a few years ago. He taught me about hot composting on a large scale and graciously lent me all the resources I needed to actually run the composting operation. Unfortunately, he passed away suddenly in May 2020 from a heart attack at the age of 61. After putting the business on hold to allow myself space for grief, I came back to it more inspired than ever. I wanted to utilize my family’s resources to shift the planet toward a more sustainable and equitable place, starting at a local level. I had the resources, funding, passion, and inspiration; how could I not want to make Neighborhood Compost a blooming business?

I miss my stepdad dearly, especially when it comes to things like teaching myself (from YouTube, of course) how to drive our new tractor or how to fix the old one when it breaks down in the middle of the field. I know he would be so proud to see how far we’ve come.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.neighborhoodcompost.com/
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/neighborhoodcompost?igshid=NTdlMDg3MTY=
• Other: https://g.page/r/CWavihdCvlOjEAI/review