Missouri Organic Recycling (MOR) is a composting and soil building company that operates in the Kansas City metro area. CEO Kevin Anderson and Education Director Stan Slaughter (in photo above) tell us about their operations and wide array of products.
Q How did you get started with using biochar in your composting operations?
Kevin About five years ago, we had some organic growers approach us about the quality of our compost. They were not happy with it. They introduced us to David Yarrow, a gardening expert, who showed us how to use biochar, rock dust, clay and a few other ingredients to improve the compost. Biochar improves the composting process, too. It helps a lot with the odors. The smell of ammonia is the smell of nitrogen loss. Our Green Frontier compost has more nutrients and greater stability according to the tests we run that are approved by the US Composting Council. And the organic growers really like it. Some of them won’t use anything else.
Q How many of your products use biochar?
Kevin Our Garden Soil Blend and our Raised Bed Mix both use the Green Frontier compost. We also have a product called Soil Restoration that is a 50:50 mix of biochar with Green Frontier. When you include the biochar content of the Green Frontier compost, it has a total of 66% biochar.
Q How important is education to your business? And what strategies do you use to get the word out?
Kevin Education is everything!
Stan I do a lot of public speaking to garden clubs – I think I have spoken to every garden club in the city. We also sponsor an all-organic farmer’s market and have a booth there where we give away 5-pound bags of compost. And then we have our school programs. I have done many programs in schools over the years, but this last year we had a grant to really expand our reach. I wrote a curriculum that meshes with the state science standards so it is really helpful to teachers. It is based around four ten-minute videos and after the students work through all the material, they do their own science project with compost, worms or soil. We were statewide in 44 schools this year. We also have food waste collection in an entire school district with 45 school buildings participating. We help kids understand the problem of food waste – 40% of food we produce is never eaten. Then we help them be part of the solution.
Kevin When we expose the younger children to information about compost, food waste, and soil, then when they get to high school they do science fair projects about those topics, and by the time they are grown up, they are educated consumers. It’s working. Right now, we are selling all the compost we can make.
Q You have these huge programs and operations for composting, gardening, food waste recycling, urban wood recycling, soil building and education. Is there any other composting company that is doing anything like this?
Kevin Well, you know, everything’s up to date in Kansas City!
Visit the Missouri Organic Recycling YouTube Channel for educational videos on a ton of topics!