A practical model for rural composting

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Client:

Big Lake Organics

Application:

Community food scraps collection infrastructure

Building a rural composting service that can hold its standard

Big Lake Organics has built a community composting model around a simple idea: make food scraps collection easy, affordable, and dependable enough for people to use it as part of everyday life.

Founded in 2021 by Northland College alumni Todd Rothe and Jamie Tucker, the company grew out of nearly three decades of campus composting at the Hulings Rice Food Center in Ashland. As demand for collection and finished compost increased beyond what the college could support, Big Lake Organics became a standalone business serving homes and businesses across the Chequamegon Bay region.

Today, the company provides a circular service model that includes food scraps collection, composting, and finished compost returned to local soils.

Why the inherited collection model was not sustainable

When Big Lake Organics took over a loosely managed community composting program in 2023, it inherited a setup that was already showing familiar weaknesses.

Open, unsupervised collection points had become magnets for contamination, pests, and misuse. Instead of supporting participation, they were creating mess, odour, and operational headaches.

“It was a free-for-all. People dumped yard waste, trash, whatever they wanted. It created mess, odor, and attracted wildlife.”

That challenge mattered even more in a rural setting. Big Lake Organics operates across a wide geographic area with a relatively small population, which means curbside collection is expensive to scale. Community collection points therefore need to work hard. They have to be clean, easy to use, and reliable enough to support a service that can sustain itself without municipal subsidy.

A cleaner and more controlled approach to community collection

To bring order and usability to the program, Big Lake Organics installed metroSTOR FXP 65 cart enclosures across Ashland.

The units use foot-pedal operation for hygienic day-to-day use and are paired with metroKEY access, using either keypad entry or smartphone access depending on the site and user. That gave the team a much stronger balance of convenience and control, helping reduce contamination while keeping the service accessible.

Each unit houses an unlined 65-gallon cart, which is swapped out during scheduled pickups. Power washing is carried out off-site at the company’s facility, and drivers carry cleaning kits to deal with smaller issues during service rounds.

Placement was also a key part of the model. Units were installed in high-traffic locations such as grocery stores, medical clinics, and near college buildings so residents could incorporate composting into existing routines rather than making a special trip.

Lower contamination, cleaner sites, and stronger user trust

Since the new units were introduced, the program has become much easier to manage and much easier for users to trust.

Big Lake Organics has maintained clean, tidy, and well-used collection points while keeping contamination extremely low. The controlled-access setup has helped reduce misuse and pest issues, while the durability of the enclosures has allowed the service to operate reliably through harsh winters and in locations where wildlife is a real factor.

“Since implementing the metroSTOR units, we have completely eliminated the issues we had with contamination and pests. These enclosures have held up to everything… snow, raccoons, even bears..”

The access model has also helped the operator balance inclusivity with control. By combining keypad and app-based entry, Big Lake Organics has been able to support different users while still maintaining stronger structure around who can use the sites and how.

A values-based model with room to expand

What makes this project especially compelling is that it is not built around grant dependency or a heavily subsidized municipal model.

Big Lake Organics has developed a service designed to stay affordable while supporting a cleaner, more reliable composting experience for residents. That clarity helps users understand what they are supporting: a practical local system that reduces methane emissions, improves soil health, and makes composting easier to keep using over time.

“Our model is values-based. We are not trying to make a profit; we are trying to make composting accessible and affordable.”

Cleanliness is also treated as part of the user experience, not just an operational detail.

“Cleanliness is essential. We clean every bin regularly and make sure drop-off points are tidy and odor-free. The perception of composting matters; if it looks clean and smells fine, people are more likely to keep using it.”

With a durable system in place and strong community response, Big Lake Organics is continuing to expand access through additional units in strategic locations.

The team is also exploring hybrid access models to make the service easier for different user groups and is building stronger partnerships with local businesses. In some cases, that includes offering free commercial pickups in exchange for hosting residential units, helping the network grow in a way that works for both the operator and the community.

That makes this more than a successful local composting service. It is a practical example of how rural food scraps diversion can grow when the infrastructure, economics, and user experience are aligned.

“Working with metroSTOR and metroKEY has been great. They have supported us every step of the way. We are looking forward to expanding our program and continuing to show what rural composting can look like when done right.”

Todd Rothe
Co-founder, Big Lake Organics

What this shows for rural composting programs

The Big Lake Organics project shows that rural composting does not need to rely on loose, informal infrastructure to stay affordable.

When collection points are open and poorly controlled, contamination, pests, and maintenance problems quickly erode the service. But when infrastructure is durable, clean, and easy to use, it becomes much easier to maintain participation and run a financially viable model over time.

For rural operators, that is a powerful lesson. Better infrastructure does not just improve the look of the service. It can help make the whole model work.

Looking at community composting infrastructure for your own program?

We work with organics operators, municipalities, and program partners to design collection infrastructure that supports cleaner participation, lower contamination, and more reliable day-to-day performance.

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