Regional Roundup

BioCycle April 2004, Vol. 45, No. 4, p. 18

Santa Cruz, California
CITY RECYCLES ORGANICS AT ANNUAL HOLIDAY LUNCHEON
Each year, the Santa Cruz City Council honors its 700 employees by hosting a Holiday Luncheon. To keep costs down and ensure a high quality event, employees volunteer to assist with preparation, service and cleanup. Last year, the all-important cleanup crew was especially pleased — there was less waste to pick up!
Chris Moran, Waste Reduction Coordinator for the city’s Public Works Department, provided compostable knives, forks and spoons as well as compostable cups and plates for the luncheon. To make the transition from throwing everything away to separating materials, Moran placed a recycling/composting/
garbage station at one end of the auditorium so diners could drop off materials.
The station was made up of three clearly labeled 68-gallon containers: the first was for bottles, cans and aluminum foil (from the kitchen); the second for compostables which included all cutlery, cups, napkins, and plates, as well as leftover beans, bread, salad, lasagna and food scraps from the kitchen; the last container was for garbage and left-over meat (of which there was very little). Reactions were positive when diners learned that leftovers would be composted.
At the end of the event, the numbers were especially telling: Six 68 gallon containers of compostables; three 68-gallon containers of bottles, soda cans and metal cans from the kitchen. Amazingly there was less than one-half of a 68-gallon container of garbage! "Imagine walking away with the equivalent of a grocery bag full of garbage after feeding around 700 people. Even the fresh garlands were added to the composting carts," says Moran.
Parks and Recreation employees collected the compostables and took them to one of city’s compost areas. Compostables were mixed with leaves and trimmings. The feedstocks take six or seven months to break down, giving new meaning to the phrase "Christmas In July." The compost is used by the Santa Cruz Parks Department to enrich soil and help retain moisture.
"The city of Santa Cruz is on the cutting edge when it comes to reducing, reusing and recycling, and what better way to stress this motto than by embracing a wonderful new tradition at a time usually known for its excess!," Moran proudly observes.

St. Paul, Minnesota
CAMPUS DINING IS GREAT BOTH WAYS…COMING IN AND GOING OUT
In his Minnesota Sustainable Communities Network, Phillip Muessig of the Minnesota Office of Environmental Assistance describes how two large food service companies — Sodexho and Bon Appetite — used by St. Olaf College as well as many other colleges, hospitals and corporate campuses all over the nation, are making available locally-grown and organic produce, fair trade coffee and sustainably harvested fish. On some campuses, these companies educate their diners about their food — providing bios of local farmers as well as offering reusable mugs and biodegradable plates, utensils from Earthshell and other suppliers. On the other end of their food service, the companies — as well as many other vendors — are actively involved in programs that compost food residuals, working closely with collection companies and compost facility staff. Adds Muessig: "Even schools without the guidance provided by dining service companies have made great leaps toward sustainability. Bates College Dining Services in Maine, for example, has won the Renew the Earth National Award for Sustainability over three years in a row. See www.newrules.org/agri/collegefood.html for details on Bates and several other colleges. For more details on other schools and their dining services, e-mail Muessig at philipp.muessig@moea.state.mn.us.

Montgomery County, Pennsylvania
ON-FARM COMPOSTING PERMIT LEADS TO
DIVERSIFIED ORGANICS RECYCLING ENTERPRISE
Last year, Two Particular Acres Farm in Upper Providence Township received the first On-Farm Composting General Permit to be issued by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. The general permit allows for composting manures, yard trimmings, source-separated newspaper and cardboard as well as source-separated food residuals from markets, grocery stores, food banks, school cafeterias, etc. In announcing the permit, DEP explained it "was developed to provide farmers a method to receive income through accepting locally-generated materials for composting." The facility is now operational.
Explains owner Ed Foley in a recent letter to BioCycle: "We now have two significant revenue streams: a tipping fee for incoming feedstocks and revenue for finished product sales — serving the community by creating beneficial products originally headed to the landfill. This interdependence between farm and community has disappeared from today’s economic model of large-scale farming competing in the international commodity market. In contrast, composting is a highly regionalized business that dovetails extremely well with small family farms competing in local markets. This is particularly true for our farm located in the heart of the Philadelphia suburbs."
Ed Foley will be speaking about his composting enterprise and its community significance at the 34th Annual BioCycle National Conference in Philadelphia June 21-23, and a detailed report is planned for a future issue.

Williston, Vermont
CHITTENDEN SOLID WASTE DISTRICT CITES COMPOSTING AT INTERVALE
In its latest annual report, Vermont’s Chittenden Solid Waste District (CSWD) describes developments at its MRF, dropoff centers, regional landfill and arrangement with the Intervale Compost Program (ICP). The ICP arrangement is called a unique partnership between the nonprofit Intervale Foundation and CSWD, which takes its leaf and yard trimmings to the large-scale composting site in Burlington. In 1993, ICP received the first commercial-scale food residuals composting permit issued by Vermont. Current food residuals providers include restaurants, grocery stores, hospitals, hotels, college cafeterias, food manufacturers and residents. Last year, 18,388 tons of materials were composted, including: 7,698 tons of food and dairy residuals; 2,262 tons of yard trimmings; and 8,428 tons of horse and cow manure. A report on the Intervale plans to develop an anaerobic digestion system at its composting site will appear in a coming issue of BioCycle.

San Diego, California
WATER DISTRICT’S "FRIENDLY LANDSCAPE" PROGRAM GETS COMPOST INFO
The California Friendly Landscape Rebate Program for New Homes is an innovative approach to water conservation, which provides financial incentives to builders for installation of water-efficient landscaping and irrigation technology. According to Carlos Michelon of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, "program implementation during 2004-05 is expected to reach as many as 400 homes yielding significant long-term water savings. The ultimate goal of this pilot program is to establish in collaboration with the building industry, a water-efficient landscape design ethic attuned to the climate of southern California." To encourage participation in the program by composters, Dan Noble of the Association of Compost Producers based in southern California alerted members to the program, inviting them to send compost technical specifications, recommended soil amendment procedures, etc. to the "Friendly Landscape" program. For further information, e-mail Michelon at: cmichelon@mwdh2o.com or Noble at: dan@resourcetrends.com.

Kake, Alaska
COMPOST UTILIZED IN CREEK RESTORATION PROJECT
Alaska’s capital city, Juneau, is located about 90 miles north of the village of Kake via the Inside Passage. Juneau is flanked by the famous Mendenhall Glacier and about a third of the city’s 31,000 population lives within the glacier’s drainage. Once a major salmon spawning region, the streams that run through the now heavily populated Mendenhall Valley are severely degraded by urban encroachment.
One of the Mendenhall Valley’s streams is Duck Creek, which at one time was a major source of salmon for the native Tlingit people and early settlers. During the 1950s, deep ponds were dredged in the streambed to extract sand and gravel to build roads. A decade later another part of the stream was bulldozed into a wide, straight swath. As a result of these and other abuses, the stream’s chum salmon run, which once numbered 10,000, is now extinct, and other species, such as cutthroat trout and coho salmon, are nearly gone.
The National Oceanographic and Atmosphere Administration (NOAA) recently awarded a grant to the Southeast Alaska Guidance Association (SAGA), to restore Duck Creek. Writes Mark Musick, SAGA’s AmeriCorps volunteers undertook restoration of an 800 foot length of the creek, using shovels and wheelbarrows to move thousands of pounds of donated sand and rock. The next step was to plant the new riparian zone with native vegetation, and that’s where Totem Soil compost came in. (See Musick’s article on page 27 of this issue, "Alaskan Tribal Community Creates Quality Compost.") A fisheries biologist (K Koski) arranged with the Kake Tribal Corporation to donate 10,000 pounds of finished compost to assist with the restoration.
As an informal test of different treatments, nine plots totaling 4,250 square feet were laid out along the reestablished riparian zone. Two plots were left with no compost as controls, two were treated with Totem Soil mixed with sand, and five plots were spread with two-inch to three-inches Totem Soil that was spread evenly over the sand and gravel fill.
The riparian zone was then planted with native trees and shrubs, including willows and red osier dogwood. After planting, all of the plots were mulched with mixed landscape wood chips donated by a local arborist to protect the fragile soils from winter rains and snow.
Biologist Koski of NOAA was enthusiastic about the opportunity to use Totem Soil. "It was our first experience with compost," he said, "and it really looks great." Given that Alaska’s alluvial soils were built over millennia by millions of spawned-out salmon mixed with forest detritus, "it’s a natural," Koski observed, "to restore salmon streams with composted wood and fish."

Cuyahoga Valley, Ohio
FROM BURNING RIVER IMAGE TO SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Years ago, the images that were projected from this region showed a burning river from tremendous amounts of oil contaminants. Today, a vastly different image is projected, reports the Cleveland Plain Dealer, as the Cuyahoga Valley Initiative envisions a region that benefits as its industries "reuse and profit from waste, communities link with the river, and the valley itself stands as a national destination."
Cuyahoga County planners have divided their region into eight segments, from its northern link with Lake Erie to its southern link with the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. The planners are offering green building codes, architectural guidance and software "that links land use with planning tools and potential collaborators." The county commissioners invested $375,000 in the initiative in 2001 and another $200,000 this year. The Joyce Foundation in Chicago, which supports projects helping the Great Lakes Region, has put $90,000 into the initiative. In the concluding part of the Plain Dealer report, a long-time name familiar to composters is mentioned:
"Farther south, property owners are also intrigued by the initiative. John Kurtz’s family (BioCycle readers will remember articles in these pages about Kurtz Brothers) owns about 100 acres and operates a variety of businesses in Independence and Valley View, including a demolition-debris landfill, soil deliveries and composting. ‘I’ve called the cities and the national park,’ Kurtz said. ‘We’re exploring trying to make sure we do something that will coincide with the long-term plans down here.’ (Web site for the Cuyahoga Valley Initiative is: www.cuyahogavalley.net.)

Eugene, Oregon
DEVELOPING A FOOD RESCUE PROGRAM WHILE PREVENTING WASTE
In 2003, 5.9 million pounds of food were distributed in Lane County to more than 20 percent of its population, report the staff of FOOD for Lane County (FFLC) and the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. Besides arranging food donations, food box programs, etc., FFLC coordinates a gleaning program to collect food from area farms and runs three community education gardens that last year produced 35 tons of food. FFLC also has a partnership with the Eugene Solid Waste Department to build its capacity to divert more food from the local landfill by working with regional businesses. Explains Jessica Chanay, FFLC assistant director about how the program works:
"Food banks are constantly on the lookout for sources of high-protein food along with fresh fruits and vegetables to subsidize the canned and dry food that is the mainstay. The state’s priority for managing organics is to reduce food waste and reuse edible food. If that can’t be accomplished, the next priority is to compost that food. Local governments were just beginning to look at composting food waste and the state wanted to encourage recovery of edible food. It’s a perfect match. Why would Oregon want to send edible food to the landfill when the state has such a high rate of hunger? ... We are dedicated to alleviating hunger by creating access to food, and we now have community businesses sharing our goal." (For more information on how food rescue programs work and achieve organics recycling goals, contact FFLC at (541) 343-2822; or Martine Roberts-Pillon via e-mail at: roberts-pillon martine.@deq.state.or.us.

Copyright 2004, The JG Press, Inc.