Editor’s note: In case you missed it, we are publishing this post again as we head into fall when we are all likely to have an abundance of organic materials—namely fallen leaves, garden debris, and kitchen waste—that would be better diverted from local transfer stations and landfills. In addition to picking up this matter, Tommy’s Compost Service can deliver finished compost, ready to add back to your garden.
Along with countless other people, Mary Stucklen had a serious ‘aha’ moment during the pandemic when she had time to reconsider her career trajectory—and spend time toiling in her garden.
“I have a passion for science and teaching, and I loved my job,” says Stucklen, who lives in Cheshire and has taught at W.E.B DuBois Regional Middle School and other schools in the area. “But I decided I wanted to do something that would make a tangible difference in terms of the environment and climate change.”
Being a single mother of an infant (Tommy, now 2 1/2 years old) also affected her priorities. Besides needing a flexible schedule to fulfill her parenting responsibilities, she had a heightened concern for the future her son would live in. “I wanted to do what I can to ensure that he would grow up in a livable, sustainable world,” she says.
Armed with a bachelor’s degree in biology from Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts and a background working with initiatives such as the Berkshire Environmental Action Team and Berkshire Zero-Waste Initiative, Stucklen decided to pursue a career in composting. As she explains, composting helps in two ways: first, it diverts a significant portion of the solid waste stream and converts it into a productive resource; second, composting is a critical strategy in reducing the greenhouse gases contributing to climate change.
“Composting can make a big difference in the amount of greenhouse gases that are released,” she says. “Ultimately, its effect can be comparable to the effect of actions such as the conversion to electric vehicles. So this was a way I could physically contribute to reducing climate change.”
Launching a business organically
This realization led her to launch Tommy’s Compost Service in 2021—named in honor of her son, whose influence is driving the business.
She started off on a test basis while still teaching, picking up food waste from a few friends, and then adding more customers. In the summer of 2022, she decided to leave her job and operate the business full-time, participating in the Entrepreneurship for All (EforAll) training and support program to help plan and launch the company.
Today, Stucklen has routes across Berkshire County with about 135 residential, business, and institutional customers. After collecting buckets of food scraps and other organic waste—including leaves, grass clippings, and branches—from these accounts, she delivers the waste to two local farms (Meadow Farm in Lee and Holiday Brook Farm in Dalton) for processing into compost.
“It’s one of my business expenses because they are set up to do that in a professional way,” she says. “The waste I deliver to farms is placed in controlled areas, and additional organic material such as wood chips, leaves, and the residue of crops are added to it. The combined mixture sits for about three to six months and is periodically turned.”
Since starting the service, Stucklen has collected some 281,130 pounds (and counting!) of food waste for conversion into compost—and regularly updates the amount on her website.
How composting works
Composting is a natural process that transforms organic waste into a clay-like substance that is mixed with soil as an amendment, resulting in nutrient-rich matter for growing food crops and other vegetation in home gardens or larger-scale agricultural production. The finished compost can also be used as mulch to stave off weeds and aid water retention.
The benefits are many. Used as a soil amendment, compost reduces synthetic chemical fertilizers that harm wildlife and pollinators and enter waterways. By reducing the amount of organic waste that’s incinerated or disposed of in landfills, composting reduces the amount of the greenhouse gas methane that’s released into the atmosphere, considered to be a major contributing factor to climate change. (The aerobic composting process produces no methane.) In a similar vein, the use of compost is part of sustainable soil management practices in agriculture and other industries because it increases the ability of soil to capture carbon that would otherwise be released into the air.
According to Stucklen, her customers have several motivations for hiring a composting service. “The environmental benefits are a powerful incentive,” she says. “People want to do the right thing for the environment and recognize that composting is an important and specific step they can take.”
She also points to practical incentives, including convenience for people who want to use compost in their gardens but don’t have the space or know-how to do it themselves. “People choose to use my service because they find that composting takes too much time and effort, as well as worrying about the possibility of pets and other animals getting into it,” she said.
Creating a composting loop
As part of her basic service, Stucklen provides residential customers who want to use compost in their gardens with a cubic foot of finished compost in the spring and again in the fall. She donates any remaining compost to community gardens. The processing farms also include the compost in what they produce for their own use or for sale.
Stucklen says her commercial customers are motivated at least in part by regulatory incentives. For example, in 2014, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP) banned organic waste disposal into the conventional solid-waste stream by businesses and institutions that generate one ton or more of these materials per week. In 2022, MassDEP lowered that one-ton threshold by half, requiring more entities to comply.
Stucklen says her commercial customers run the gamut. “One would think the low-hanging fruit would be restaurants and food vendors, but a majority are schools, hotels, corporate offices, and other businesses and institutions with on-site food-service operations and commercial kitchens.” She offers a one-time pickup service for events, too.
Her monthly residential rates are $18 for every-other-week pickups and $28 for weekly pickups with a five-gallon bucket. Commercial rates, which depend on frequency and other factors, average about $100 monthly. Tommy’s offers three sizes of buckets— 32, 48, and 64 gallons.
Stucklen notes that in some cases, composting can reduce the overall cost of trash disposal by lowering the total volume of waste that has to be disposed of otherwise.
Growing the service incrementally
At present, Tommy’s Compost Service is a one-woman operation. “I’m the owner, business manager, salesperson, collector, and driver,” she says. However, Stucklen has ambitious goals for the business. “I want to compost one million pounds by the end of next year.”
She explains her plan of growing the operation in stages. “I anticipate adding two more trucks and two more staff people over the next two years,” she says. “When I reach 300 customers, I plan to hire another person and add another when I reach 400.”
Stucklen has already upgraded her equipment, purchasing a heavy-duty Ford F450 truck to replace the small Chevy Colorado truck she started with. Although that increased her capacity, it still wasn’t enough. So she recently upgraded to a Ford F350 truck, financed with a $55,000 grant from MassDEP and a $50,000 low-interest loan from Berkshire Agricultural Ventures, a non-profit organization providing support to agricultural enterprises.
“It is a major improvement,” she comments. “Before, I was using a trailer and loading by hand; the new truck has a loading device on the bed with a grabber that lifts the buckets and drops the contents into a container, somewhat similar to a dumpster.”
Stucklen, who works six days a week, schedules her runs for pickups with routes based on the location of clients in different service areas. She uses a software program that helps her determine the logistics and plan the most efficient routes and schedules.
Acknowledging that working with waste products is by no means glamorous, she says there are rewards during the day that make it easier. “When I’m collecting, and people come out with big smiles on their faces, it warms my heart and keeps me going.”
Stucklen also maintains a positive attitude about the issue of climate change. “With all of the obvious effects we’re seeing, climate change is something people can get scared about,” she states. “We obviously have to act and don’t know what the future will bring. But I don’t fear climate change. I try to look at the positive side. We can still reverse it if we take action. I think the cumulative effect of many businesses like mine that are dedicated to solving the problem can make a big difference.”
