Today I went to meet with Carey and her intern, Amanda, from LESEC, at their 7^th Street composting drop off garden (between avenue B and C).  Carey showed me how people drop off bags of compostable items into a bin by the gate.  She then took them out of the bags and put the compostable items into different bins.

Compostable Items:	Non-Compostable Items:
Fruit peels	Meat
Vegetable peels	Bones
Coffee grounds	Dairy
Tea bags	Oils
Egg Shells	Greasy foods
Cooked vegetables
Beans
Rice
Bread

Then we went to another public composting garden, La Plaza Cultural on Avenue C.  At that garden I saw large vermicomposting bins.  Vermicopmposting is composting with red wiigle worms.  In one metal bin there were the greens (biodegradable food), in the other metal bin there were browns (tree branches) and then they were mixed together in the third metal bin.  After a couple of weeks the mixture is transferred to three large wooden cratess with red worms.  We churned and mixed the compost with a compost crank and a garden fork.  It’s crucial to churn and mix to get air moving within the compost otherwise it doesn’t break down into organic material.  The worms eat the food, then poop it out which decomposes the food.  At the same time bacteria (which needs air) breaks down the mixture even more.  One thing that Carey said that was very interesting was that the red worms are not put in the compost, they just find their way to the compost where they plant more eggs, which creates more worms.  It takes three months to a year for the material to compost in the wooden crates.  She also showed me a compost tumbler with an air tube inside that makes composting go even faster.

Question: Why do you do all this?
Answer: Waste reduction, and you also get free compost material to grow more plants. I asked Carey what the difference is if you throw an orange (for example) out in a landfill vs. composting it.  She said that biodegradable food decomposes improperly in a landfill.  “Anaerobic”, meaning without air, is how she described it.  The garbage gets all smushed together without air and releases methane and ammonia, which are greenhouse gases.Then we walked over to the library and sat down and we talked about the other things LESEC does:

• Electronic Waste Recycling and Advocacy
  • E-Waste drop off dates are on their website
  • Helped have a bill passed so that companies that make electronics are responsible for recycling them·
• Stewardship
  • Volunteer days where people can paint, decorate, compost in their public gardens
• Environmental Education
  • Estuary Education (The East River is an estuary)-different classes where students come and learn about the rivers
• C.H.E.R.P.
  • Citizens Hooked on East River Park
• Go into schools and teach about climate change

There are several possible volunteer opportunities.  In the end of March and beginning of April, they will be conducting a survey at the Farmer’s Market at Union Square.  It’s a compost drop off survey so they can find out where people who compost are living and composting, so in the future LESEC can set up more composting drop off centers.  Right now, there is compost collection at the Union Square Green Market- Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday from 8am to 5pm.  I collected a lot of information from LESEC and I think that we could do a lot of good work with them! 🙂