About a week ago my group and I attended the Gowanus Canal Mulchfest and Trash Cleanup session for about two hours. Mulchfest is an event done every year after Christmas where many people go out, find thrown away trees, and bring them back to specified areas to be mulched. The Gowanus Canal Conservatory is one of those specified mulching areas. When we got there all of the volunteers were separated into three groups; searchers, transporters, and compost makers. The searchers job was to drive around and pick up thrown out Christmas Trees. The Transporters jobs were to search the trees for left over ornaments, and then move them from the truck too the mulching deceive. The compost makers helped with the compost piles that they had set up all over the place. We helped transport the trees, and other twigs and sticks, to the mulching device. To do this, we split up into two teams. Each team got a wheelbarrow and partners took turns filling and pushing the wheelbarrow. We had to transport they trees from the street entrance, past the composting grounds, through a huge deep dirty puddle, and over to the workers at the mulching device. Each load took about five minutes there and back. Although transporting was what we spend the majority of our time doing, we also helped search through trees, and bags of tree derbies for anything that wasn’t biodegradable. Once searched, we duped them into a large pile where some were to be used by other volunteers in the compost, and some to be mulched along with the trees. The purpose of Mulchfest is to reuse trees that would otherwise be put into landfills with all of the other trash. This is just another way of recycling things that would otherwise be sent to the trash which is something that everyone should do.
