It’s an overcast Saturday morning at the Chestnut Hill Farmers’ Market, with a bit of drizzle just starting to fall as the region prepares for an oncoming nor’easter. But there are plenty of customers at the market, located at Germantown Avenue and Mermaid Lane, and a line at the table of Bennett Compost, where orchard assistant Mike Mumford is busily explaining the company’s services and handing out seed packets.

Bennett Compost, headquartered in Northeast Philadelphia, was founded by Mt. Airy resident Tim Bennett in 2009. Since then, it’s grown from a startup with $100 in the bank into a citywide company that picks up kitchen scraps, and more, from over 6,500 households and 120 businesses every week. The company — whose motto is “dirty hands, clean soul” — says that last year alone, it kept more than four million pounds of food waste out of landfills.

In starting his company, Bennett said he wanted to compost and realized the service wasn’t offered by the city, “so I thought, maybe there’s something here.” Now, 16 years later, “I didn’t have any idea that it would get to the level that it’s gotten to.”

Here’s how it works: The company provides five-gallon buckets with lids, which residential customers fill and then leave outside in the evening before their weekly collection day. The buckets are emptied and given back to the customers. They can then order composted soil, which contains a combination of food scraps, wood chips and leaves. There are commercial plans for larger customers. Bennett also offers seasonal services for items such as Christmas trees, lawn clippings and pumpkins.

The products and prices vary, including potting mix; compost; vermicompost (made from organic matter decomposed by worms); rice hulls; and a blend of crushed glass, compost and charcoal for succulents and cacti. The company says its products are used by many urban gardeners and farmers including Weavers Way Farms and the Germantown Kitchen Garden.

Bennett also is involved in a number of initiatives and education programs, working with the Philadelphia Department of Prisons, Parks & Recreation, city schools, and individual neighborhoods and community groups.

For example, Bennett collaborates with Walter B. Saul High School in Roxborough to help it compost cafeteria waste and livestock manure, which the company says saves the city thousands of dollars in disposal fees as well as reducing the school’s greenhouse gas emissions. Bennett also provides educational programs for students at Saul, a magnet school for agricultural science.

The prison initiative is another innovation: Bennett provides paid internships for those in early release programs and says more than a quarter of its employees are previously incarcerated people with no prior experience in the composting business. The company also works with the city to compost prison food waste, collecting food scraps and composting them at an on-site prison facility. Since 2022, Bennett Compost has managed the city’s prison greenhouse and orchard program, producing more than 10,000 pounds of fresh fruit and vegetables, as well as offering vocational training. The produce is served to prisoners, with the excess going to local food pantries, and those who work in the orchard can receive vocational certificates through partnerships with organizations including Temple University, according to the Department of Prisons. The two-acre orchard and farm, with its fruit and nut trees, berry bushes and crops, is located on the grounds of the Philadelphia Industrial Correctional Center in Northeast Philadelphia.

Bennett says he hopes that eventually, Philadelphia will start composting for households, as is done in cities such as New York and Washington, D.C., but “the commercial stuff won’t go away.”

“We’re seeing growing interest,” he added. “So it’s been kind of great.”