Nudge Compost business hopes to nudge Wichitans toward composting

Jesse Marks wants to give Wichita a nudge — literally.

He’s started Nudge Compost, a curbside pickup service for people and businesses to do something with food scraps.

“Food waste is particularly bad for the environment when it goes into a landfill,” Marks says. “Essentially, it doesn’t break down appropriately.”

He says it creates methane that’s “more impactful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.”

Nudge Compost’s tagline is “Sometimes you need a little nudge.”

Marks felt a nudge while in his final semester of earning a master’s degree in public administration at Wichita State University “and started to kind of freak out about food waste” while doing research on it.

He says 40 percent of food that’s created doesn’t get eaten.

“We produce plenty of food, but we just don’t have the systems in place to get it to people who need it.”

He says composting is at the bottom of the hierarchy of efforts to not waste food, but he says it’s still an important step.

“It’s really not a difficult thing to do. It’s just a matter of wanting to take one small step.”

Nudge Compost costs $20 a month for residential service, which includes what Marks calls a fashionable 5-gallon bucket with a compostable liner and an air-tight lid.

Customers can donate their compost to community gardens or have it returned to them once a quarter.

Marks says he envisions having a fleet of composting trucks eventually like other cities do. He wants to educate children in schools as well.

Once people are trained in composting, it becomes more than routine, Marks says. For instance, he says if his wife now sees a banana peel in a wastebasket, she demands to know who the culprit is.

“It really gets to you,” Marks says.

He says people start to wonder why they were oblivious previously.

“It’s not long before you make a really big difference,” Marks says. “I want this to become cool.”

This story was originally published October 25, 2018 at 2:35 PM.