Featured Case Study

Los Angeles’ Compost Solution

Serving as LA Compost’s community impact tracking platform since 2021.

HOW IT STARTED

When COMPOSTARS founder Lauren Turk started volunteering with LA Compost in 2019, she saw the multi-benefit opportunity of streamlining food scrap data collection for haulers, and calculating and celebrating impact for participating residents.

A woman with curly hair wearing a wide-brimmed hat, a skull graphic T-shirt, and light jeans, standing outdoors in front of lush green foliage. She holds a notebook and pen, with a colorful scarf around her neck and a large turquoise ring on her finger.

Months of talking to people at food scrap collection sites confirmed that people want to know the positive impact of their composting, as well as support LA Compost to grow. At the time, many LA Compost sites were at capacity, and Lauren hypothesized that data on demand and environmental impact would help fund expansion efforts.

People collecting discarded items along a sidewalk, likely participating in a cleanup event, with bins in front of lush greenery and street scene in the background.

WHAT WE BUILT

Lauren assembled an amazing mission driven team to build and white label LA Compost’s first impact tracking web-app and analytics platform.

Screenshot of the LA Compost admin dashboard showing environmental impact metrics such as total pounds of landfill saved, total compost created, total CO2 prevented, and total vehicle miles offset, along with significant changes in location activity for various farmers markets.
Mobile app screen showing environmental impact stats: 154 lbs of waste saved from landfill, 96.2 lbs of compost created, 52 lbs of CO2 emissions prevented, and 44 miles of vehicle use offset.

THE IMPACT WE MADE

Despite launching during COVID, within 3 months of launching the platform, participation doubled.

6 months later, 93% of people were still using their account.

5 years later, thousands of people track their impact on our platform across 20 locations.

86,000+ compost actions

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800,000+ lbs food saved from landfills

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700,000+ lbs CO2e avoided emissions

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86,000+ compost actions 〰️ 800,000+ lbs food saved from landfills 〰️ 700,000+ lbs CO2e avoided emissions 〰️