Evanston woman's mission to fight climate change through compost collection co-op

CHICAGO (WLS) -- Here's some food for thought: Wasted food is responsible for 58% of landfill methane emissions.

Methane is a harmful gas that contributes to climate change and cause health issues.

That's why a North Shore woman has made it her mission to collect and help transform your kitchen food scraps into compost.

"If composting were easy, more people would do it," said Erlene Howard, the founder of the Collective Resource Compost Cooperative.

Erlene Howard of Evanston said she had that lightbulb moment back in 2009 when she began collecting compost for her neighbors, using her own Toyota Camry.

"We would fill the back trunk with buckets, but we also tarped the back seat- and put buckets on the floor, and buckets on top of buckets," said Howard.

She still has the Camry but now she and Collective Resource Compost Cooperative have a fleet of six cargo vans and four boxed trucks to help serve 3,000 residential customers and nearly 300 commercial customers across Chicago and the suburbs.

"Anything that was once alive can go into the bucket so that makes it easy," she said. "We do the hard part."

Customers throw their food scraps into a bucket or tote. Co-op drivers pick it up and swap it out with a clean container and drive it to their facility in the north suburbs. They then move hundreds of thousands of pounds of food scraps to local composting facilities.

"All of the food scraps become soil amendment," said Howard. "Farmers are getting this material to grow healthy food in."

Patricia Murray, who lives in the Mayfair neighborhood, is a residential customer and owner of the cooperative.

"Most emissions come from big companies," explained Murray. "As individuals, there's really not a lot that we can do to contribute to global climate change so composting to me is something that's really easy and manageable to do and integrate into my daily routine."

Murray said she composts just about anything including food waste, coffee grounds, napkins and even cardboard. "I fill a little container in my kitchen, and there's a filter on it so it never gets smelly, and then once that's full I just take it outside to my five-gallon bucket and Collective Resources picks it up every two weeks."

A Collective Resource Compost Co-Op subscription costs about an average of 30 dollars a month.

"A dollar a day to live my values, that's worth it to me," said Murray.

Chris Dallas of HarvesTimes Foods in Lincoln Square became a Collective Resource Compost customer in April.

"There's nothing we can do with food that doesn't generate compostable material - meat trimmings, wedges that are left over in the deli, whether it's cheeses meats produces, we constantly make compostable stuff."

And while composting hits his bottom line, Dallas said the climate is worth it and he hopes other business owners will follow his example.

"It's okay to talk to about the environment but there is a point where you have to take a stance."

There are different subscriptions services as well as opportunities to become a co-op owner.

To date, Collective Resource Compost Cooperative reached a total collection milestone of over 13 thousand tons

Last year, the Collective Resources Compost Cooperative reached a total collection milestone of 10-thousand tons.

This story is part of our Climate Ready series - a collaboration between ABC News and the ABC Owned Television Stations focused on providing practical solutions to help you and your family adapt to extreme weather events and the current challenges of climate change.