It’s true – growing your own food is like printing your own money. It’s even better than that, because when you are picking tomatoes out of the back yard instead of flying them up from the south (or trucking them down form the north) you are saving fossil fuels and carbon emissions. Best of all, home grown produce is incomparably delicious. To put the final punctuation point on our green campaigns, Culver City is closing the loop and replenishing the earth with nutrient rich compost!
Public Works and American Organics will offer compost free of charge, April 26 from 9am to 4 pm at Bill Botts Park (in the area just before the Bone Yard.) Thru our Food Waste program, we are proud to be a positive part of the recycling loop by receiving local organic material from American Organics and creating beneficial soil amendments to help grow healthy soil in our community.
This compost material is OMRI Listed® (Organic Materials Review Institute) and licensed by the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA); it is approved to be used in agricultural operations that are certified organic under the USDA National Organic Program. If you are a gardener, or are about to become one, that’s black gold.
What is Compost? Composting is the natural process of decomposition and recycling of organic material into a humus rich soil amendment known as compost. For any business or institution producing food waste, diverting this organic material is essential.
- Currently food waste accounts for approximately 15% to 20% of all landfill waste in California.
- A typical restaurant generates more than 50 tons of food waste per year.
- Food waste that is not composted generally goes directly to a landfill.
- To date, landfills are in closure or will be closed within 5 to 10 years and landfill tipping fees are increasing.
- As landfills fill up and close at an alarming rate, waste disposal and tipping fees to the businesses and institutions generating the waste will continue to climb.
- in 2007, more than 30 million tons of food scraps were generated, accounting for 20 percent of the Municipal Solid Waste stream in the United States. This percentage can be much higher for tourist intensive areas.
- More than 72 percent of all materials entering landfills are bio-degradable and can be diverted through composting.
- Composting provides a way in which solid wastes, water quality, and agricultural concerns can be joined.
- An increasing number of communities, businesses, institutions, and individuals are expected to turn to composting to divert materials from landfills to lower waste management costs and slow down landfill capacity issues.
- Although waste stream managers view composting primarily as a means to divert materials from disposal facilities, the environmental benefits, including reduction in water pollution, and the economic benefits to farmers, gardeners, and landscapers can be substantial.
In Culver City, to have your business added to the Food Waste route, please contact a Business Recycling Specialist at (310) 253-6414. A representative will contact you to discuss logistics and help you develop a successful Food Waste program.
The event is on Saturday, April 26, 2014 from 9:00 a.m.- 4:00 p.m. (or until gone) in the lower Bill Botts parking lot on the left just before the Bone Yard Dog Park. Access to the area is at the Jefferson Blvd and Duquesne Street cross light. 9710 Jefferson Blvd, Culver City, CA.
This is a self-haul event so participants should bring a shovel and containers to hold compost for transport. Residents are responsible for shoveling and bagging their own compost. Up to the equivalent of 7 garbage bags of compost per household will be allowed, and that’s probably enough for one or two raised – bed boxes to start your garden. For more information, call (310) 253 6411.
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