Frequently Asked Questions

Residential

Am I in your service area?

We service most of the Madison area. Our exact service area can be found on our home page. You can sign up through our residential signup process, and you will not be charged before your address is verified as lying within our service area.

Do you offer drop-off service?

We do not, however the City of Madison offers drop-off locations that can be found here.

  • How does pick-up service work?

    On your service date, we pick up your full bucket, and leave you a new, clean bucket. This swap will take place between 7:00am and 5:00pm, so we ask that members have their buckets out by 7:00am to ensure successful service. We take your full bucket back to our facility to compost the contents and clean and sanitize your bucket so that it is ready for the next person/swap. You fill up your bucket until your next service date, when the process begins again.

  • Do you offer referral programs?

    We do offer referral programs for residential members. If you refer a friend, you both get $10 off of your next bill.

Apartment

How are building programs structured

There are two options. Green Box Compost can either supply each individual tenant/member with their own Green Box, or we can supply the building as a whole with a certain number of carts. This can be discussed during the bidding and scope portion of the process. Different buildings have different requirements that make one option better than the other.

  • Who is billed?

    This is determined on a case by case basis. We can charge building management, the co-op board, individual tenants, or a mix of these, depending on the situation.

  • Is there a discount?

    There is always a discount for larger number of members participating under one entity, with the exact discount to be determined by the program parameters.

Commercial

Do you offer green promotional materials?

We do supply promotional materials. These include diversion metrics, as well as decals and cards to give your customers. If you would like other promotional materials, we can supply those, just email us and with a description of what you would like.

  • Do you have suggestions for compostable containers?

    Please email us and we will send you a comprehensive list of containers that will work for your business and for our composting process.

  • Do you offer wholesale for these compostable items?

    At this time we do not, however we are working towards being able to offer this service.

Industrial

What is your tipping fee?

The price is worked out in our bidding process, and is based on volume of your compostable waste.

What is your contamination policy?

We allow a certain amount of contamination in each delivery that you bring to us, and a contamination overage charge, both based on our agreed upon service contract.

Our Process

What do you compost?

You can find a full list of items compostable through our service here. All food scraps can be composted, as well as some compostable containers.

How do you compost?

Our process relies on in-vessel, aerobic composting. This drastically speeds up the process, and limits possible vectors such as bugs and pathogens that could otherwise be created in the process. Our system is incredibly clean, and efficient. If you would like to see it, you can email to see about setting up a tour.

  • How long does the process take?

    Our process takes less than 2 months from start to finish, about 12 days of active composting, and another 4-6 weeks of curing.