EarthKeepers has ended collection services as of June 1st, 2023
To All Our Amazing Supporters -
With heavy hearts we come to you with tragic news: EarthKeepers is dying and our last collection date will be May 31st.
We are so sorry it has come to this, and after you all have been such an amazing community of support and proud members of the EarthKeepers Alliance! However, the sad reality for us is this: Economic volatility from the past 3 years and a County zoning-change at our prospective 2nd facility have put a definitive end to our unique business model.
It has been hard for us to come to this conclusion and we are grateful to our accounting and legal support for helping us to see the situation with clarity, even though the clear picture is one we would rather not see: Inflation is squeezing our entire client-base, it is squeezing us, and interest rates are no longer favorable for small business growth...mix that up with a zoning change and things very suddenly became direly constrained.
As you've heard from us, too, part of the squeeze on us relates to the increasing time and expense we have gone through in dealing with growing levels of contamination in all segments of our client-base...But even if that disappeared overnight, the major economic shift of the last few years is the unavoidable culprit: even if the County wasn't re-zoning the land at our prospective 2nd facility, paying for the build-out and equipment would come at an exceptionally high price at current interest rates, too high for us to see a light at the end of the tunnel.
You all have done a great and honorable work to support this innovative community service effort. With your help, EarthKeepers has saved over 1,000 Tons of food waste from the landfill and converted it into thousands of yards of soil-restoring compost! Farms and gardens of Monroe County have benefited from your loving commitment in ways that will live-on. The Earth thanks you for your diligent efforts and stalwart commitment, as do we. Plus, there is so much you can continue to do, to fight climate change, protect our local environments, and build community in Bloomington & Monroe County: from your own efforts to reduce the food you waste, to composting the residuals at home or with neighborhood friends, to volunteering for & financially supporting any of the amazing resilience nonprofits in our area, like the Center for Sustainable Living, the Sycamore Land Trust, the Peoples Market, or even things like the Bloomington Commission on Sustainability or the Monroe County Soil & Water Conservation District. Keep going! Keep being EarthKeepers! We will always be with you in these efforts, even if not in this current form: we will continue to heal the soil with you, continue to grow nutritious food with you, and continue to build this community with you, on that you can count.
We invite you to check out our final, 2023 Benefit Report, which is a summary reflection of the community impact of the EarthKeepers and our Alliance of supporters like you (click HERE to download the report). We thank you for being such a dedicated supporter of the EarthKeepers mission and we wish you all the best.
Per Aspera Ad Astra,
Andrea & Ryan Conway
In the wisdom of Nature, nothing is ever wasted and nothing is thrown away: the loop, though wide, is always closed and self-contained, as one season’s leftovers become the next season’s source of new life.