We recently connected with Xavier DeRoos and have shared our conversation below.
Xavier, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What was it like going from idea to execution? Can you share some of the backstory and some of the major steps or milestones?
Growing up in southern California has allowed me to be educated on sustainability and eco-consciousness. After moving to Florida I was deeply disappointed in the lack of effort and accessibility of sustainable living. I then started to compost on my own in my backyard. After a while, my friends started asking me if they could add their food waste to my compost and I was happy to do so! This sparked the idea that a compost pick-up program could be a great way to make composting easy for the community. After a few months of composting in my backyard, I quickly began to realize that good quality compost needs to be made at a larger scale. I then partnered with a local farm for some land space and I started picking up compost from residential members. That was almost 3 years ago and now we have multiple residential routes located in South Florida as well as Northern Florida! As we grew we found that businesses were also interested in diverting their food waste. We now have a number of commercial clients who we compost for including Starbucks, Four Seasons, all Fresh Kitchen locations in FL, and more!
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?
After growing up in southern California and moving to Florida I was shocked to see the lack of effort in sustainability practices. I then set out to make sustainability accessible for everyone. Renuable provides residential and commercial compost pick-up services. Members receive a bin that they fill with their organic waste and our team comes weekly or biweekly (we also have drop-off options) to pick up the organic waste and swap the bin with a clean one. We also provide event composting services for those who want to make their events zero waste! Our composting process allows us to accept things such as meat, dairy, and bones in our compost which makes things easier for the customer and diverts more waste! Renuable is not just a composting service. Something that sets Renuable apart from other sustainable businesses is that we have multiple different business sectors. In addition to our compost pick-up services, we also have a K-12 curriculum where we teach kids about composting, permaculture, and sustainability, landscaping services, waste audits, compost consulting, and composting workshops. Spreading education about sustainability is one of our main goals and we make a great effort to educate the youth and the community on how we can work together to make a better future!
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
Building a reliable reputation with our market is the most important aspect when looking to grow a business. We set out to create strong relationships with our members. Our members know they can always reach out to us with any questions or concerns and we will do whatever we can to resolve any issue. Our goal is to get everyone composting and we believe that starts by creating trusting relationships between us and our members. On top of having a great relationship with our members, we also make an effort to produce the highest quality compost possible. We do this by monitoring the temperatures of the compost throughout the process as well as testing the finished compost to ensure the quality is up to our standards.
We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.
Keeping in touch with our members is one of the most important and fun parts of running the business. We are always keeping our members up to date on what’s going on at the farm, upcoming events, and any fun news via Instagram posts and stories. We recently introduced a sticker sheet raffle where members fill up the sticker sheet with their produce stickers, once the sheet is full they submit it to us on Instagram for a chance to win a free month of composting services! The sticker sheet is free and can be ordered right from the customer dashboard. Our members are dedicated individuals who want to make a difference in the environment and we let them know how much they are contributing by having impact statistics available on the customer dashboard. The impact statistics break down the amount of food waste they diverted, how many miles have been offset, the number of seedlings planted, and the gas offset. The visual of the impact statistics motivates our members to keep up the good work and encourages them to continue making a difference!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.liverenuable.com
- Instagram: @liverenuable
- Other: Tik Tok: @livereuable