NYC Entry 3: The City-Wide Composting Track
An entry from Opportunity Gardens Program Coordinator Trish Woolbright
Columbia Center for Urban Agriculture was invited to the HORT’s annual Urban Agriculture Conference in New York City, so all the managers of CCUA went to learn more and share their ideas. I was thrilled to see the Composting track in the workshop, and started geeking out on BIG: Build It Green NYC, even before leaving for New York by looking at their website.
I have a passion for compost because healthy soil communities make healthy plants while so much of our food waste goes to the land fill mixed in with plastics and trash, instead of nurturing the next meal with all those vitamins and minerals and nutrients. The group of people on my tour were also passionate and all a bit too excited to see decomposing matter. I’m thinking we were quite a group of characters for our lovely HORT tour guides. Several of us are facebook friends now and keep in touch about our projects.
trish composting collage
After we arrived by subway, passing through the world’s largest public housing projects, we headed straight for the Queensboro Bridge for the piles of black gold. However, we were supposed to go up two blocks to BIG, so once we figured that out, we enjoyed a great but condensed slide show by several of the leading composting organizations and leaders of compost in NYC. It was incredibly inspiring, we had lots of questions, and I took a lot of notes. I’m going to try and break it down for you here. (Beware the compost puns along the way)
First: What is compost?
Compost is the product resulting from the controlled biological decomposition of organic material through the generation of heat and stabilized to the point that it is beneficial to plant growth.
NYC sanitation department hosts the Master Composter classes that help passionate volunteers conduct projects suitable to the areas they live in. The NYC sanitation department also works with BIG to collect and compost the city food waste. Food waste is either collected or dropped off in bins, then brought to the Queensboro Bridge.
From there, it is put in the Jay-Lor, a large mixer with two large augers in the middle. The wood chips from fallen trees, leaves raked from parks, and other carbon are then added in the right amounts to the Jay-Lor and mixed together. After mixing, that carbon and nitrogen combo is put into a pile under a Gore-Tex cover that has pipes in and around it giving it air and water. It is on a non-permeable surface. The cover helps to stop methane from escaping and smelling up the place. We stood there comfortably for an hour, no smells. It just smelled earthy and like dirt mostly.
The Gore-Tex cover is also hooked up to sensors that monitor the air and water flow into the mass. This sits like this for 1 month. When it is finished, it gets moved over to another windrow of compost and it sits some more, this time without a Gore-Tex cover. It may be periodically turned with machinery. Then after 3 months from time of pick up, they send it to get sifted. They do have a large sifter; it’s just not large enough, so the city comes and picks it up, gets it into the large sifter, then bags it.
This compost is made available for free to community gardens, tree plantings in the sidewalks all over town, and other parks and natural areas in town.
Equipment list:
18’ box truck
Jay-Lor A 100 feed stock mixer
Toter mobile cart lifter
Case 420 skid steer
Gore Cover system
10,000 sf operating area
FACTS:
NYC provided organics recovery at 12 events = 6,500 lbs redirected away from the landfill from events
They have composted over 400,000 pounds since July 2013.
They have provided a whole lot of compost with the help of 416 volunteers in the past year.
Some of the coolest project ideas I heard about coming from Master Composters:
An eldercare high rise is taking the residential food waste, composting it, and then they have built a LARGE screen table that the residents can sit at and sift compost. They have produced 4 yards of compost for their garden and neighborhood / year.
Event composting run by volunteers.
Bus stop compost drop offs, commuter compost drop offs, and drop off’s at the library.
Educating lawn care and landscaping companies in a program called, “leave it on the lawn” where they are taught reasons to mulch the grass back into the lawn and diverting thousands of pounds from the landfill and giving nutrients for free back to the lawn it came from.
Educating schools and doing composting for school cafeterias.
AND SO MUCH MORE!
When I returned, I was all excited about stepping up my composting game. I turned to the city of Columbia for help and they have begun a master composter class, which I’ve just completed. I plan to help another classmate and friend out with addressing possible event composting ideas, and maybe partnering with some other organizations to start onsite composting in a few locations.
If you have been reluctant to start a pile or had some bad experience with smelly, yucky compost, I encourage you to come to the composting class held by the master composters:
The following is the 2014 schedule.
Tuesday, 04/22 at 6pm Tuesday, 08/19 at 6pm
Saturday, 05/31 at 10am Saturday, 09/27 at 10am
Saturday, 06/14 at 10am Saturday, 10/18 at 10am
Saturday, 07/12 at 10am Saturday, 11/08 at 10am
Attendees are eligible to receive a free basic compost bin or a deluxe bin for $20. Registration is preferred. Please visit our webpage for additional details such as directions, etc.
http://www.gocolumbiamo.com/PublicWorks/Solidwaste/Volunteer/learntocompost.php
Or you may come visit the Urban Farm at Columbia Center for Urban Agriculture at Smith & College and take a look.