One year ago, GReenINChestnutHill (GRINCH) co-founder, Jen Reed, and I organized a composting demo at Laurel Hill Gardens. Attendees from Sustainable Springfield, local businesses and residents braved the 90 degree heat. Philly Compost founder Lee Meinicke and Meenal Raval demonstrated the making of a compost cage and explained items that are compostable as well as the “recipe” for a good compost.
Lee and Meenal also described their commercial services, a weekly pick-up of food scraps from area restaurants, bars and farmers markets. At the time, as a new business, they had a few commercial accounts. A year later, they have weekly accounts with Wine Thief, InFusion, Earth Bread and Brewery, Umbria, Night Kitchen Bakery, Chestnut Hill Farmer’s Market, Jonathan’s Best, Weavers Way Coop in Chestnut Hill, Tavern on the Hill plus two center city accounts. As GRINCH leader, Alix Rabin, likes to say “environmentalism is an idea whose time has come.” Composting is one of the most important elements of that truth.
By recycling and composting, we keep trash out of landfills. Ever notice the hulking landfill just before you reach Philly International Airport? Winged vermin descend upon it while ozone killing methane rises from it. No one wants to live near it. So how can we reduce the size of our collective landfill footprint? According to the Clean Air Council, each day the U.S. throws away enough trash to fill 63,000 garbage trucks! Here are 5 ways that I have reduced the amount of trash in my own business and at home:
1) Buy Local: The tomato grown in New Jersey has traveled a shorter distance than the one from Belgium. The Jersey tomato may be less worldly, but it’s sure to be more delicious. I don’t eat them when they’re not in season. A few local items per week in my grocery basket add up to a big difference.
2) BYOB-Bring Your Own Bag: I keep 6 or 7 canvas bags in the trunk of my car and try to avoid plastic bags all together. Plastic bags are a petroleum by-product that can choke sea life and birds and will not bio degrade.
3) Buy Things with Less Packaging: Spring mix lettuce and spinach are often sold in giant plastic boxes. I look for loose lettuce or lettuce in bags. Does that bunch of asparagus really need a cardboard and plastic encasement? At my bakery, we ask customers if they need bags and napkins instead of automatically giving them out.
4) Recycling: Now that Recycle Rewards with Recycle Bank have returned to Philly, we have even more incentive to recycle plastics, aluminum and paper. Americans throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour! We have a water cooler at the bakery for staff to refill their aluminum bottles so that we never need to grab that plastic bottle.
5) Composting: We compost all food scraps and coffee grounds. Participating staff bring food scraps from their home to add to the collection picked up by Philly Compost. Since we began composting, we have reduced our garbage at the bakery by one 30 gallon garbage bin per week!
As my grandmother who lived during the Great Depression used to say–”It All Adds Up!”
by Amy Edelman, Owner of Night Kitchen Bakery
Tags: Philly Compost; recycling, Recycle Bank; Night Kitchen Bakery; GRINCH; composting; buy local
