While spending more time than usual in their homes, many families and students in the College Station community are recognizing the amount of trash they produce and are wanting to be more environmentally conscious.
Jesse and Melissa Stowers, founders of Happy Earth Compost, decided to provide accessible composting services for the Houston area this last spring and have recently expanded into College Station.
Jesse said the inspiration behind Happy Earth Compost came from his family’s own struggle with generating large amounts of trash. While he was separating out recycling consistently, Jesse said he felt it wasn’t sustainable enough and wanted to devise a better solution.
“I did a bunch of research and the concept of composting came up, which we had tried in the past, but we did it more from a gardening mindset, not as much the sustainability-focused mindset,” Jesse said.
When beginning their composting journey, Jesse said his family purchased the equipment for composting but found themselves with a lot of fruit flies and a big mess.
“There’s gotta be an easier way than this,” Jesse said. “I reached out to different companies and the company we ended up working with is New Earth, a large commercial composter.”
With the help of New Earth, the Stowers family was able to run a small neighborhood test where they could gather food waste from their neighbors and take it to New Earth in Katy. Through this trial, they created the idea of Happy Earth Compost.
“Before Jesse ran the whole neighborhood checklist with New Earth, he started looking for other options of [composting] that somebody can pick up,” Melissa said. “He came to the realization that most major cities in the country had the service already provided for the last couple of years except Houston. So we learned that there was an insufficiency here in regards to having a service like this available.”
The Happy Earth composting process is simple for both customers and the company.
“We get your buckets, and then they [New Earth] take that and it worked nicely,” Jesse said. “We just thought maybe more people would be interested in this, so we launched on May 1 and now we’re here.”
During the pandemic, Jesse said the business has been growing as people become more environmentally conscious.
“The pandemic [has] definitely instilled in people to be more environmentally conscious and become health-conscious people with a conscious view of taking care of our world and taking care of ourselves and building a sustainable future,” Jesse said. “You’ve got more and more people looking into sustainability and to things like composting. Consider the fact that people are eating at home and staying at home more often. They’re generating more food waste, and I think it’s very visible to people.”
Business sophomore Grayson Pendergraft said he began working for Happy Earth Compost in College Station this past summer as an intern.
“When I started, there were maybe 75 people signed up, so hours and work weeks were short at the start,” Pendergraft said. “As weeks went on, numbers went up like crazy and it was really inspiring to be a part of that. I have loved working with Happy Earth. Everyone I worked with and the people I interacted with were all nice and appreciative.”
Pendergraft said he encourages students and the College Station community to take part in resources like Happy Earth Compost because of its simplicity and the environmental benefit it provides.
“What students should know about Happy Earth is that we make composting such a simple task,” Pendergraft said. “We provide you with an instruction sheet that tells you how to do it, and we give you all the supplies you need. I believe it can fit within anyone’s household and is definitely worth trying.”
For more information on Happy Earth Compost, visit their website.