Carol Hollenbeck deposits her compost at a NOPE pickup location outside the Ginter Park Library in North Side.
Americans have a garbage problem. Every year, 167 million tons of trash wind up in landfills or incinerators, according to the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, a nonprofit advocacy group. Broken down, 21% of that includes food waste, followed by paper at 15% and yard waste at 8% — meaning nearly half of that garbage could instead be composted.
“When food scraps and organics go to landfills, they’re in an anaerobic environment,” says Ryan Owenby, account manager for NOPE Compost Co. “In other words, they’re in a covered environment with no oxygen, [and] they’re producing methane, which is a greenhouse gas, which is bad for the environment.”
Since 2009, NOPE has been trying to lessen the percentage of food and paper waste that goes into Virginia landfills by collecting and disposing of compostable waste from corporations, schools and individuals. Owenby says their bins are able to accept all food products, except liquids and paper products.
“If people are used to backyard composting, they’re a little confused when they hear that you can also include meat, bones, dairy products — things like that,” Owenby says. “Because we partner with commercial composting facilities, they can accept all food and [plastic-free] paper products.”
Once the compost is picked up, it’s taken to a facility in Waverly, roughly 45 miles outside of Richmond, where it’s processed and then redistributed. For each ton of food waste the organization keeps out of landfills, NOPE donates one 40-pound bag of finished compost to clients to use in gardens and landscaping.
Martez Smith, a collection driver for NOPE Compost Co., picks up food waste from a disposal site.
Chip Hall, a Henrico County resident, founded the company from his garage just over 15 years ago. “We got a good, solid start with larger customers, and that has grown steadily to the size where we are now, where we have eight trucks,” says Chip’s son, Marshall Hall, who took over the business in 2011.
Those large customers include restaurants, like Goatocado, and schools such as the University of Richmond.
David Donaldson, manager of the Rethink Waste program at UR, brought NOPE to campus in 2020, eventually relying on its services for marquee events, including graduation. “It just kept growing from there,” Donaldson says. NOPE’s footprint at UR now includes all retail dining locations and the football and basketball complexes. More drop-off bins are in the works.
In 2025, NOPE picked up its largest client yet: the city of Richmond. Working through the Central Virginia Waste Management Authority, NOPE gathers compostable trash from several public collection bins placed throughout the city.
“We were getting a lot of requests from residents about a food waste collection program,” says Kim Hynes, executive director of CVWMA. “We’ve also started up the program in Henrico and Chesterfield counties. NOPE has been a fantastic partner.”
“If you can pull those food scraps out of the waste stream that’s going to landfill, not only can you keep them from producing methane in the landfill,” Owenby says, “you can also use them to create this finished compost product, which has a myriad of benefits for the soil, such as increased water retention, nutrient cycling, plant growth, plant disease resistance — all these things. So it’s kind of a win-win.”
