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Mother Compost empowering Delaware County community to make sustainable choices

Mother Compost in Delaware County working to keep food scraps out of landfills
Mother Compost in Delaware County working to keep food scraps out of landfills 04:41

UPPER DARBY, Pa. (CBS) -- Food scraps are often thrown in the trash, filling up space in local landfills. A local business is making good on those scraps and putting them to good use.

Mother Compost in Upper Darby has been working to educate and empower the community to make sustainable choices.

"Food scraps are not waste," Mother Compost owner and co-founder Gwenn Nolan said. "We can recycle them effectively and turn them into all-natural fertilizer."

In 2018, Nolan had a goal of making composting simple and easy for her fellow Main Line residents.

"We provide our residential subscribers a bucket we pick it up every other week we clean the container," Nolan said. "We also send reminders."

The waste is then taken to a local farm, where it is processed by Kitchen Harvest and then transformed into compost.

Mother Compost serves more than 1,400 customers.

Meanwhile, Nolan says it's never too late to begin.

"We create a ton of trash in this country and composting is a way to effectively recycle a quarter to almost half of what we are throwing away," Nolan said.

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