Green Guerillas. Treehugger has recently posted a great piece about Gorilla Composting—an effort of some McGill students to improve McGill's Green ranking with the help of some nifty branding. A $5 annual membership gets you a plastic bucket to bring your (approved) waste to a communal heap. Eventually, Gorilla Composting would like to be able to sell the compost back to the university for use on the grounds. If an urban campus in Montreal can begin to implement the un-urban process of composting, we wonder how similar ideas could be implemented in New York City? By building? Neighborhood? Are they already there and we're clueless? What about rats? We imagine there are some community gardens that compost, right?
Information on composting in Manhattan:
http://greenapplemap.org/page/cstudies
I recently read up on rats after finding out they have such a huge problem with them in England. It seems the colder the place the fewer the rats. That would make Montreal's rodent issue much less than New York, however I am not an expert.
The only thing I ever compost is yard waste, dead cut flowers, coffee grinds and the occasional fussy house plant. I know egg shells do attract rodents and I am not comfortable with throwing kitchen scraps on the compost pile because I figure rats eat just about anything humans eat.
Fortunately, I live in St. Louis and we have a very extensive yard waste program. We have special dumpsters in the alleys. Everything is hauled off to a few parks and ground up for mulch or compost. It is then free to city residents.
The Lower East Side Ecology Center (www.lesecologycenter.org) is a great resource for learning about composting. I practice vermicomposting with red wiggler worms in my apartment and just throw my food scraps in the bin every night. One pound of worms can eat up to three pounds of food scraps per week.
Also, the botanical gardens around the city offer a master composter certificate program if you want training.
It's kind of annoying, but I throw my veggie scraps, tea bags and coffee filters in the freezer and every Saturday (or MWF) lug it to the Union Square Greenmarket where the Lower East Side Ecology Center takes it to their compost piles. I'll check out the website to see if there's a place to compost in Harlem. Until then, I'm the girl with the stinky plastic bags on the A train.
One small note about the 'urban' campus. For those who don't know, or have never been there, it has two campuses. One in the city, and one outside for their agricultural studies (yes, a working farm) where I'm sure the compost can find a home.
not much diversity in that crowd.
I live in downtown Montreal- a poor working neighbourhood called Pointe St. Charles (it is like Williamsburg but irish/ french in character) There are Rats here as well, and poor composting habits can attract the rats. However, a good, secure composter keeps them out and they give up and go away. The key is keeping the composter shut well and not throwing meat and dairy into the composter. I find garbage is more of an issue than the compost. Garbage day in the point results in a few rat sightings. If you are very paranoid Vermiculture works well- you compost in the house, and put the compost in your garden when it is ready to use. My composting has cut down my garbage output to one black garbage bag every two to three weeks!
I compost in urban Philadelphia. The city runs a program that helps residents learn how to compost without attracting rats, mice, raccoons, and other animals. Compost should only be about 10% kitchen scraps -- the rest should come from dead leaves, shredded newspapers, and the like. The kitchen scraps should be well chopped and always rinse out your eggshells before adding them to the composter.
And then, there's indoor worm composting!
Rats a huge problem in England? They're not you know