OMAHA COMPOSTING SERVICES
ABOUT
Looking for professional composting services? Lucky for you, we operate the Greater Omaha area's only industrial composting facility. Unlike composting at home, we can take anything that comes from nature (all pre & post-consumer food waste, paper towels/napkins, and bio-plastics) and turn it into nutrient-dense soil that goes into local gardens, landscapes, and farms.
Businesses place compostable material into a 64-gallon cart we provide. Our service team empties the carts at least once a week and transports them to our facility where it breaks down into nutrient-rich soil before going back into our community to help farmers, landscapers, and gardeners (or back to the business itself) to grow plants & foods without the use of chemicals.
FEEDBACK
“Not only have we been able to achieve Zero Waste thanks to Hillside’s composting service, but as an employee perk, we encourage our team to bring their compostables from home.”
— SERAPHIM MULLINS, ALLEY POYNER MACCHIETTO
"Hillside has helped us get closer to our ESG goals, while successfully handling our volume of compostable material and specific service needs across multiple buildings.”
— TIM MALIK, DIRECTOR OF PROPERTY MANAGEMENT AT FNBO
Carlos Mendez of Au Courant and esteemed chef Tim Maides have opened Dolomiti, a Millwork Commons pizza spot. They’ve joined Coneflower, Kros Strain, and Clean Slate who are using our composting and recycling services inside the Ashton Building. They also have a wine shop, so all bottles consumed on location are recycled.
Bonus points: first Omaha restaurant to ditch plastic & convert single-use service-ware to compostables. Plus, locally sourced farm-to-table food and one of our OG composters.
Best example of the circular food movement: Not only do they compost with us, but they also buy tomatoes from a local organic farm, Stream Meadows, that uses our soil. Then they compost what’s left to start the process over again. Watch here.
Smallest carbon footprint & waste output of them all: it’s Omaha’s only vegan coffee shop, they ditched single-use cups for a glass-jar/reusable program in 2019, and most recently ditched single-use cutlery — even for to-go orders!
Lots of successful food concepts have more than one location in Omaha. But when they do, it’s rare that they duplicate their eco-friendly practices in all places.
But with Heirloom, their catering kitchen on 72nd & Cass, as well as their cafe and market at 1210 Nicholas St inside Millwork Commons, both uphold a high standard.
They compost coffee grounds and food prep waste. They offer composting and recycling options for guests in our dining space. They host a Compost Club drop-off site. They prioritize sourcing from local, low-waste, and ethical vendors.
Bonus points for being Omaha’s first all-organic juice shop, offering a glass-jar buy-back program, and doing clever reuse hacks like making snacks out of juice pulp.
Only Omaha coffee shop that doubles as a house-plant store. They compost the coffee grounds and the plant store, Nodest, uses our compost in all of their plants.
Black and female-operated non-profit catering service that does things zero-waste style.
French-inspired Old Market gem that loads us up with a few carts of food waste every week … Uh, yes, give us all those clamshells!
Composting coffee grounds + a central Omaha hot spot for studious UNO students & business casual networking vibes. For real, it’s kind of a scene in there.
This coffee shop changed the whole game in Omaha. We suckers were drinking burnt carbon this whole time until they opened our eyes.
As they say, it’s not the cow, it’s the how. And how you gonna pass up this dairy dreamboat when you know they’re composting 100% of pre-consumer food waste?
Black & female-operated non-profit with a mad cute cafe inside No More Empty Pot’s Food Hub. Director Nancy Williams is known as one of the gatekeepers of the local foods movement.
Fancy casual hip spot for southern flare & killer cocktails. Plus our compost piles go nuts for leftover grits. Bonus points: they recycle all of their wine & beer bottles with us.
Think Paris cafe, without uppity-tude of the Paris people. They compost all the pre & post-consumer food waste, and sport certified compostable take-out materials.
We know first hand, anything they do, they put a lot of thought & care into it beforehand. Great neighborhood-focused shop that composts, hosts a Compost Club drop-off site, and thinks continuously about their eco-impact.
Only pizza shop in Omaha participating in composting. Bonus points for everything they hand to customers either being recyclable, compostable, or reusable.
Long before the craft, small-batch ice cream craze emerged, Ted & Wally’s was showing us what good ice cream should taste like. The Benson location composts & recycles with us.
Fast-casual with super-duper healthy options. Best acai bowls we’ve had. And boy, do we love composting all those banana peels.
Based in Bellevue but still the Omaha areas first zero-waste catering service. They basically utilize every recycling & composting service we have and are a Comopst Club drop-off site.
One of our original composting partners and present at all 3 locations! A Green America Certified Business, they’re committed to using business as a platform for social change.
Compostable service-ware that actually gets collected on-site for composting, plus these cute “newspaper” wraps for food make this a lovely breakfast & lunch spot in Omaha’s Little Italy neighborhood.
This is one of those places you go to when you’re ready to spend some money and get blown away with amazing northern Italian fine-dining food. Just so happens the chef drives an electric car and is an avid recycler & composter.
Imagine a 1950’s soda fountain, but for adults. Adults who like boozy shakes with Fernet Branca. Or hamburgers with wagyu beef. And like to order from a corded phones hanging in the booth. But the cherry on top? They compost and recycle glass with us.
Everyone knows they kill the game when it comes to Vietnamese sandwiches. Even making the bun in-house. But not many know they’re composting food waste on the back end. Give it a shot if you’re in Bellevue.
Incredible riverfront view. Fun optional outing with the Kiewit Luminarium in the same building. Plus one of Omaha’s top chefs making really fun food (get the burger!). But we love it most for the mindful eco-efforts they make, such as compostable single-use items and making all of our streams available to the guests when tossing leftovers.
There’s a coffee shop. There’s a bookstore. And they have Sunday worship services with a super open-minded audience. Here’s their newest feature to celebrate: having a superb recycling & composting program.
One of Omaha’s top catering companies has gone all in on landfill diversion. Upgrade and get the zero-waste package when hiring!
Meet Emmy Brubaker, shop manager at Happy Mango Bakery, caught in action doing the sweetest thing — recycling like a pro!
LEARN
PROBLEM: What most people don’t know is that food waste in a landfill doesn’t safely break down. It puts off noxious methane for 10-25 years, creates a toxic sludge that threatens our water, and shortens the lifespan of our landfills.
WHY CONSIDER COMPOSTING: As demonstrated wonderfully in the Kiss The Ground film on Netflix, we now know that growing things without the use of tilling or chemicals is the best thing we can do to reverse climate change. Our finished compost replaces chemicals, and when you participate in composting, you reduce your carbon footprint and link together the circular food system of soil to plants, plants to consumption, and food waste back to soil.
WHO’S DOING IT: Heavy hitters like Methodist Hospital, Creighton University and HDR to small businesses like Le Bouillon and Coneflower. Over 20 schools to 1,500+ residential folks using Compost Club.
WHERE IT GOES: All items collected through our composting service are sent to our affiliate company, Soil Dynamics. Our main composting site is in Ashland, Nebraska, right next to the Wildlife Safari Park. From there, it is mixed, turned, and set to compost for up to 1-year before being screened to remove contaminates. Then, local farmers, gardeners, landscapers, and construction companies use the finished product to add ground fill or nutrients back into our community’s soil.
HOW YOU CAN START COMPOSTING: Most organizations imagine composting to be way more complicated than it is. But we got your back. We give away all the secrets in our free step-by-step Quick Start Guide, and if you want us to take a more active role in your implementation, we customize training resources and provide hands-on consultation to big and small projects.
Training Video
Imagine your employees watching this to learn what composting is, why it matters, and how they can participate.
Behind the Scene Video
Here’s where it goes and what it becomes. This is a video that NRC put together when giving us an award.
Pics: A slideshow from start to finish
JOIN
Residential
Residents can join Compost Club and self-haul food waste & other compostables to drop-off sites. Plus you get soil back!
Commercial
Offering businesses a 64-gallon tote pickup program or industrial solutions with 20 and 40-yard roll-off containers.