About Us
Denver Compost Collective is a small company with a reverence for the wholeness of life. Brought to life in 2015 as a community effort in the Montclair neighborhood in east Denver, we expanded to serve residents and community farms in more neighborhoods. The enterprise formally registered as an LLC on Earth Day 2017. DCC is the longest running compost collection service specifically for apartments in Denver.
Since day one, the high-quality, small batch compost we produce is never sold for profit. Rather, it’s donated to community farms in support of the critical role they play in providing healthy food access for communities in Denver.
Denver Compost Collective sets the bar for what composting in apartments should be, channeling our “waste” to the right places, in the right way, so communities in Denver thrive.
Shawn Hendrickson
Knee-deep in compost piles for the past 16 years! Early on, Shawn guided a student-driven effort to implement composting on Auraria campus in Denver. Shawn’s ability to inspire and rally people around composting has developed into DCC as we know it today. With Denver’s sights now set on city-wide composting, Shawn’s goal is to engage entire apartment communities, transform their “waste” into resources (compost), and channel those resources to community farms.
As a proud dad of two wild ones, Shawn’s vision is to demonstrate to them that “work” can be a space where every worker knows their worth and gets out more than they put in.
Worker-Owner, Founder, Master Composter
Zac crandall
Head of Operations
Accounts Manager, crew leader, project developer, and compost operator. Born and raised in Minnesota, Zac has years of experience in project management, largely focused on safety, compliance, and training. Zac joined DCC to bring his skills, along with a long-standing connection the to mission of the company, to build up the communities that we serve.
Jimmy Bacon
Community Farm Organizer
Land steward and farmer at Counter Beet organic urban farm. Jimmy hails from Lincoln, NE and brings a post-punk, grassroots community activist energy to his urban gardening and education work. A former employee of, and current collaborator with Denver Compost Collective, Jimmy now bakes his beans as a paralegal for the State Public Defender.
In the News
Westword
Cheshire, Catie. “Denver’s New Compost Carts Are Rolling out Slowly.” Westword, Westword, 16 May 2024, www.westword.com/news/over-100000-denver-households-waiting-for-compost-carts-20714221.
Purple Turtle Co.
Sloan, HK. “The Importance of Composting.” Purple Turtle Co, 9 Nov. 2020, purpleturtleco.com/en-us/blogs/news/the-importance-of-composting.
Rocky Mountain PBS
“Denver Compost Collective Helps Grow Plants and the Community.” RMPBS, www.rmpbs.org/blogs/rocky-mountain-pbs/denver-compost-collective-helps-grow-plants-and-the-community/.
The Poor Prole’s Almanac
Development, PodBean. “Urban Community Composting with the Denver Compost Collective | the Poor Prole’s Almanac.” Poorprolesalmanac.podbean.com, poorprolesalmanac.podbean.com/e/urban-community-composting-with-the-denver-compost-collective/.