This is an amazing set of videos on home composting that are short, to the point, and totally fascinating. I’d love to see 100% of all my friends composting kitchen and yard scraps. Its easy to do it right, and sure helps our gardens and houseplants stay happy!
Annie Hauck-Lawson, of FoodVoice.net shares a series of composting videos that are a must see.
Greetings,
If it may be useful for home and community garden compost education, I share six compost videos that we’ve created
over the past year (most of them shot due diagonally to Prospect Farm where I was happy to help with pulling the soil samples and bringing them to Brooklyn College for analysis).
Note here- the wooden frame that we made for the straw fort insert is available for give-away to any one/community garden that would like it for a cold frame/starting seeds.
The sixth, and newest, shows our design and construction of a three bin compost system at the Ft. Tilden NRA Community Garden. Using virtually all re-purposed material and our volunteer labor, this bin cost about $2.34;
SuperValu, which owns Albertson’s, announced recently that two grocery stores in Santa Barbara, Calif., have achieved zero waste classification in their daily operations.
How did they do it?
Simple, they went the extra mile with recycling, food donation program and organic composting.
The stores now divert all non-contaminated waste from landfills and incinerators. In total, over 95% of all waste products from both stores are recycled, reused or composted — exceeding the 90% threshold commonly recognized as zero waste.
What’s especially cool is that Albertson’s partnered with the City of Santa Barbara to establish one of the first citywide composting programs in the United States, which is a key piece of their waste diversion efforts. As a result of this program the city will compost 4,000,000 lbs. of foodscraps from 120 program participants this year alone. So kudos to each of the participants.
Another key component of the waste diversion program includes donating staple and perishable products that would otherwise go to waste for area food banks. Called the Albertsons Fresh Rescue Program, these two stores donate on average a total of 149,598 lbs. per year of food to the Foodbank of Santa Barbara County.
As reported, Starbucks set an ambitious goal to ensure 100% of its cups are reusable or recyclable by 2015.
The good news is, they are making progress!
With International Paper and Mississippi River Pulp, LLC, Starbucks has finished a six-week pilot project that for the first timeproved Starbucks used paper cups can be recycled into new paper cups. So this success takes them one step closer.
Starbucks also has another recycling pilot project underway in New York. The company is collecting paper cups at 86 of its Manhattan stores (just how many do they have in Manhattan anyway?) to determine whether they can be recycled into bath tissue and paper towels.
Another recycling project is slated for 2011 in Chicago, which aims to transform the company’s discarded paper cups into napkins for use in its stores.
This past year, Starbucks began front-of-store cup collection in Toronto and Seattle, where its cups can be recycled, and in San Francisco, where its cups can be composted.
Do you know of any other interesting paper recycling initiatives? If you do, let me know!
Packaderm Equipment developed a method for compacting using open top roll offs. Unlike traditional compactors where the “box” must be returned, roll offs are interchangeable, allowing haulers to drop off the new container at the time of pick up. As stated in my Bagster article, getting trucks off the road reduces costs for haulers and their customers and reduces carbon footprints.
Waste that can be “roll-packed” includes cardboard, paper, general waste, pallets/crates, steel drums, furniture, metal appliances, PET, metal cans, metal, and landscaping debris.
Since everyone loves to see things get crushed and shredded and blended, we are happy to share a video of the Roll-pak in action.
Recently Waste Management launched a new way for homeowners and contractors to dispose of their waste. Bagster is a “dumpster in a bag.” It is essentially a repurposed Super Sack, that is a large, sturdy woven bag, the size of a Gaylord.
The Bagster is bought at retail outlets like Home Depot and when full, the user schedules and pays for a pick up with a credit card by phone.
Convenient because there is no dumpster to drop off and left to sit around until you start your project. You just buy the Bagster and open it up when you begin work.
It takes Waste Management’s trucks off the road. Which is a big deal for them in terms of reducing their carbon footprint and reducing fuel costs and extending vehicle lifespans because they are in the transportation business as much as as they are in the waste and recycling business.
Not yet available in every market, we sure hope Bagster catches on and proves itself. Kudos to Waste Management for thinking out of the box!
If you have used a Bagster, I’d love to hear about your experience. Would you please share it with me here?
