Monday, March 06, 1995
Composting at the Union Square Greenmarket
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
This may seem too early to talk composting, but Spring is just around the corner, when birds do sing, hey ding a ding ding!
To leave Shakespeare and return to earth: composting our vegetable, fruit and garden refuse will reduce the need to find space to dump garbage, for this nation, by 20 percent. This fact has been known for years, and many suburban and rural communities, the people with lawns and trees that drop leaves, are acting on it, providing within their regular recycling programs (newsprint, glass, plastic and metal - just like us scorned NYers) a separate pickup of compostables. Unfortunately, that still involves plastic-bagging, and unbagging. Home composting is much better, but many suburban householders resist it, particularly those with small properties, because of the perceived odor. This ignores the fact that composting goes on, on their own properties, continually. It is nature's own way of recycling leaves and dead plant life into fertile soil. By sending the autumn leaves out to the town compost heap, the householder is robbing his own soil of potental natural nutriments for the plants. We have a potted palm in the office, and have had to replenish the soil twice over the years, that is how plants rob the soil of nutriments.
You may now well ask - what has this got to do with me? I'm an apartment dweller, and have no garden and no soil to replenish.
True, but let's think for the city, for the country, for Planet Earth. An average NYC household throws away two pounds of organic waste daily - fruit and vegetable scraps..bread..coffee grounds.. tea bags.. egg shells..old potting soil. 27,000 tons of garbage go to the Fresh Kills in Staten Island daily, creating mountains larger than the Cheops Pyramids. These dumps are reaching their capacity and will have to be closed within the next 10 years. If we New Yorkers don't generate a recycling plan for the compostables, that day will come so much sooner.
The Lower East Side Ecology Center will take your compostables on Wednesdays (8AM to 5:30 PM) and Saturdays (9AM to 5PM) at the Union Square Greenmarket. Or bring them to the Center (East 7th St between Aves B and C), Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, 8AM to 5PM, Wednesdays 4PM to 7PM. Please do not bring meat, chicken, fish, greasy scraps, dairy items, kitty liter and feces, diseased plants and potting soil. To avoid smells and fruit fly invasion, it is best to accumulate the scraps in a closed plastic bin (available at the Greenmarket with a 50c deposit), or in your refrigerator in a single plastic bag or used waxed milk or juice carton (one bag only, please!). I know many of us are shuddering, just thinking of this mess - but think a bit further. The Center's compost piles can nohow accept all our compostables, but if we show that New Yorkers are amenable to the composting inconvenience, we may get the city to add composting to its recycling stream.
The Department of Sanitation is already sponsoring composting demonstration projects in the four Botanical Gardens in the outer boroughs. These are aimed at homeowners who can compost in their back yards. I will give you the 25c tour, in case you have a back yard ar know someone who has one. Persuading your neighbor to compost is as valuable ecologically as doing it yourself. Two persuasions will give you two good deed (or mitzva, if you wish) points.
A simple compost heap can be built by tying four wooden pallets together with wire, or cutting holes in a big green garbage can and removing its bottom. Filling it with proper care - avoiding meat and greasy scraps, and mixing in equal proportion green (vegetable, grass clippings, high in nitrogen) and brown (autumn leaves, brush, wood chips and garden dirt, high in carbon) compostables, odor is cut down. Keep the heap moist but not soggy, and compressed, and heat will form. Compost will be ready in as little as three months, if you keep aereating by turning the material once a month, but it may take a year. Two piles are best - one to add on while the other is composting, but if you do not have that luxury, build your pile with interspersed twigs and brush, so that air can enter and speed the oxidization process. No air, no compost. Then, you can remove the ready compost from the bottom, while building new compost and letting it oxidize above. You can use your new compost crop as the brown content for the continued process (who has the luxury of much mixable garden dirt?) until you are ready to replenish your garden plot with your own homebrewed compost, full of nutrients. A nice feeling when you do that, sort of like being Mother Nature's surrogate.
The Lower East Side Ecology Center operates with volunteers and has limited funds from the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust and some discretionary funds from Councilmember Antonio Pagan and Borrough President Ruth Messenger. If you want to think about volunteering at the Center, call 420-0621. For those of us who once upon a time liked the idea of an ant farm, the Ecology Center has a worm farm, for your own apartment. Shudders, shudders again! But it can be odorless, if you dont overfeed the earthworms, and it is interesting to watch the broccoli stems disappear. If you film the process, maybe National Geographic will buy your product, or Channel 13. You can harvest the worm castings every two months. And think of the conversation piece you will have for cocktail parties, and for your children's friends!
If you think I'm trying to get you all out of the city and into the country, to live off the farm - wrong, we need all our readers right here, to participate and help make this city a better and safer place for the future, for both us and our children.
Wally Dobelis thanks Christina Datz, Director of the Lower East Side Ecology Center (420-0621), for info. Visit her and the worms at the Union Square Greenmarket, Weds & Sats.
To close, a couple of hints for the Good Guys. If your'e clearing the snow or ice in front of your building (or restaurant or store) and you have a corner property, think of clearing the crosswalk too. It is a neighborly thing to do, and think of the good will for your thoughtfulness that you will generate with your neighbors (or clients). And how about clearing the access to the bus stop and shelter along the Ave for the polloi? Not to put too heavy a point on any one thoughtless neighbor, I did have in mind the Onion, er, Union Club.
This may seem too early to talk composting, but Spring is just around the corner, when birds do sing, hey ding a ding ding!
To leave Shakespeare and return to earth: composting our vegetable, fruit and garden refuse will reduce the need to find space to dump garbage, for this nation, by 20 percent. This fact has been known for years, and many suburban and rural communities, the people with lawns and trees that drop leaves, are acting on it, providing within their regular recycling programs (newsprint, glass, plastic and metal - just like us scorned NYers) a separate pickup of compostables. Unfortunately, that still involves plastic-bagging, and unbagging. Home composting is much better, but many suburban householders resist it, particularly those with small properties, because of the perceived odor. This ignores the fact that composting goes on, on their own properties, continually. It is nature's own way of recycling leaves and dead plant life into fertile soil. By sending the autumn leaves out to the town compost heap, the householder is robbing his own soil of potental natural nutriments for the plants. We have a potted palm in the office, and have had to replenish the soil twice over the years, that is how plants rob the soil of nutriments.
You may now well ask - what has this got to do with me? I'm an apartment dweller, and have no garden and no soil to replenish.
True, but let's think for the city, for the country, for Planet Earth. An average NYC household throws away two pounds of organic waste daily - fruit and vegetable scraps..bread..coffee grounds.. tea bags.. egg shells..old potting soil. 27,000 tons of garbage go to the Fresh Kills in Staten Island daily, creating mountains larger than the Cheops Pyramids. These dumps are reaching their capacity and will have to be closed within the next 10 years. If we New Yorkers don't generate a recycling plan for the compostables, that day will come so much sooner.
The Lower East Side Ecology Center will take your compostables on Wednesdays (8AM to 5:30 PM) and Saturdays (9AM to 5PM) at the Union Square Greenmarket. Or bring them to the Center (East 7th St between Aves B and C), Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, 8AM to 5PM, Wednesdays 4PM to 7PM. Please do not bring meat, chicken, fish, greasy scraps, dairy items, kitty liter and feces, diseased plants and potting soil. To avoid smells and fruit fly invasion, it is best to accumulate the scraps in a closed plastic bin (available at the Greenmarket with a 50c deposit), or in your refrigerator in a single plastic bag or used waxed milk or juice carton (one bag only, please!). I know many of us are shuddering, just thinking of this mess - but think a bit further. The Center's compost piles can nohow accept all our compostables, but if we show that New Yorkers are amenable to the composting inconvenience, we may get the city to add composting to its recycling stream.
The Department of Sanitation is already sponsoring composting demonstration projects in the four Botanical Gardens in the outer boroughs. These are aimed at homeowners who can compost in their back yards. I will give you the 25c tour, in case you have a back yard ar know someone who has one. Persuading your neighbor to compost is as valuable ecologically as doing it yourself. Two persuasions will give you two good deed (or mitzva, if you wish) points.
A simple compost heap can be built by tying four wooden pallets together with wire, or cutting holes in a big green garbage can and removing its bottom. Filling it with proper care - avoiding meat and greasy scraps, and mixing in equal proportion green (vegetable, grass clippings, high in nitrogen) and brown (autumn leaves, brush, wood chips and garden dirt, high in carbon) compostables, odor is cut down. Keep the heap moist but not soggy, and compressed, and heat will form. Compost will be ready in as little as three months, if you keep aereating by turning the material once a month, but it may take a year. Two piles are best - one to add on while the other is composting, but if you do not have that luxury, build your pile with interspersed twigs and brush, so that air can enter and speed the oxidization process. No air, no compost. Then, you can remove the ready compost from the bottom, while building new compost and letting it oxidize above. You can use your new compost crop as the brown content for the continued process (who has the luxury of much mixable garden dirt?) until you are ready to replenish your garden plot with your own homebrewed compost, full of nutrients. A nice feeling when you do that, sort of like being Mother Nature's surrogate.
The Lower East Side Ecology Center operates with volunteers and has limited funds from the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust and some discretionary funds from Councilmember Antonio Pagan and Borrough President Ruth Messenger. If you want to think about volunteering at the Center, call 420-0621. For those of us who once upon a time liked the idea of an ant farm, the Ecology Center has a worm farm, for your own apartment. Shudders, shudders again! But it can be odorless, if you dont overfeed the earthworms, and it is interesting to watch the broccoli stems disappear. If you film the process, maybe National Geographic will buy your product, or Channel 13. You can harvest the worm castings every two months. And think of the conversation piece you will have for cocktail parties, and for your children's friends!
If you think I'm trying to get you all out of the city and into the country, to live off the farm - wrong, we need all our readers right here, to participate and help make this city a better and safer place for the future, for both us and our children.
Wally Dobelis thanks Christina Datz, Director of the Lower East Side Ecology Center (420-0621), for info. Visit her and the worms at the Union Square Greenmarket, Weds & Sats.
To close, a couple of hints for the Good Guys. If your'e clearing the snow or ice in front of your building (or restaurant or store) and you have a corner property, think of clearing the crosswalk too. It is a neighborly thing to do, and think of the good will for your thoughtfulness that you will generate with your neighbors (or clients). And how about clearing the access to the bus stop and shelter along the Ave for the polloi? Not to put too heavy a point on any one thoughtless neighbor, I did have in mind the Onion, er, Union Club.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 1:23 PM 
