The original mission of the IVCC was to provide a free and accessible organic waste collection service for the community of Isla Vista. While this mission was ambitiously and inarguably executed to its greatest ability, IVCC must assess its priorities in order to expand any further. 

After carefully reassessing some of our initial assumptions, we have realized that the amount of resources needed to run this collection service is preventing us from carrying out our true mission; which is to provide a free and accessible composting service to Isla Vista. 

One of our initial assumptions was that collecting food scraps is the hard part whereas composting is the easy part. We have designed our program based on these assumptions by using around 80% of our resources (time) collecting the waste, and around 15% maintaining the compost piles. 

While composting is one of the single greatest actions a community can take to combat climate change, it is also an extremely complicated scientific process requiring precise, time-consuming, and physically strenuous maintenance over a period of months. When maintained incorrectly, the emissions reduced through composting shrink significantly, and instead of amending soil, the final product can be potentially toxic/hazardous to the environment. IVCC was established as a collection service before our community was aware of the lack of capacity of our local compost operation. Now that we are aware of the complexities of composting, we feel that ensuring a quality composting product is more aligned with our mission than spending a majority of our time collecting a minor ingredient to make the compost which has prevented us from having the capacity to properly manage the composting process.

IVCC plans to pivot our focus to the creation of high-quality compost. We are also brainstorming ways to expand edible food recovery efforts in addition to a food waste collection program that better aligns with the current capacities of IV community compost piles. 

While we do not currently know the exact length of this pause, we are still offering all of our other services in the meantime, including community drop-off at our IV compost pile locations! Thank you for your support and patience as we prepare to make a greater impact than ever before.

Board meeting link

To learn more about our ideas and analysis, use the link below:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/13wLzGPSOc5yA-MCZ5FooHwaEe3NbSZAv

Stay Updated links 

To receive updates on our service and where we go from here, follow us on your preferred communication platform:

Instagram: ivcompostcollective

Facebook: Isla Vista Community Services District 

Email Newsletter: https://islavistacsd.ca.gov/sign-up-for-our-newsletter 

Questions? Email compostcollective@islavistacsd.com