Soil Cycles: A New Composting Service for Our Friendly City

​A great, one-of-a-kind new service has just hit Harrisonburg, and they want your compost. Soil Cycles, a nonprofit started in June by two Harrisonburg locals, are looking to fill the void that was left from the shutdown of Harrisonburg’s recycling services by collecting the compostable waste themselves. The venture has already started to gain momentum with collection from both residences and local businesses, and it is all accomplished via bicycles.
 
We caught up with the founders Nidhi Vinod and Amelia Morrison about their vision for the town. They are aiming at offsetting the waste going into the landfill and instead transforming their collected scraps into usable soil. This soil can be used for lawns, gardens, or area farms, with as little of this as possible going out to the dump. The organic waste that is sent to the landfill produces methane and becomes unusable for the local people, “and that’s a real shame”, says Nidhi.
 
The price for their service is $25 per month, and the team will stop by every week to collect the compostable waste and take it to one of their compost hubs. From there, the bins at each hub are transported to Black Bear Composting where, over time, the scraps are broken down into usable compost. Soil Cycles offers reward cards for all their members each month for discounts at local businesses. Nidhi states that there is “a huge opportunity to expand our service, and we are looking at lowering the cost once there are more subscribers on board with us”.
 
They can be found at www.soilcycleshva.org, as well as Soil Cycles on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/soilcycleshva/