Community Composting is Thriving in BQLT Gardens
| Community Composting is Thriving in BQLT Gardens |
In May of this year, public food scrap drop offs at GrowNYC greenmarkets closed across the city. Community composting programs in community gardens faced an avalanche of food scraps from New Yorkers not yet hooked up to curbside and desperately seeking a way to continue their composting habits. BQLT gardens stepped up wholeheartedly, using their spaces and resources to keep composting alive. Learn how two BQLT gardens—Q Gardens (QG) and Rogers Tilden Veronica (RTV) Place Community Garden in Flatbush, Brooklyn do this community, planet-loving work!
Q Gardens (QG) and Rogers Tilden Veronica (RTV) Place Community Garden are a 20-minute walk from each other and have often collaborated over the years. Each has been composting in different ways for the last nine years or so. In May 2024, they joined forces to revitalize and sustain their composting work.
Photo: Stefanie, fabulous (and very strong) co-coordinator for the QG Compost team along with Esha, Natalia, and Sharlene.
Since 2015, QG composters have diverted 212,107 pounds of food scraps/waste from landfill—that’s 106 tons! This year the total diverted so far is: 20, 021 pounds. The operation has always been a community affair and volunteer-labor intensive, but this May drop offs went up 60%! Suddenly, 80-100 folks were bringing their food scraps to drop-off hours. Thankfully, compost volunteering sky-rocketed too. Where shifts used to be 2 or 3 volunteers once a week, now it was often 4 or 5 volunteers—twice a week! The secret: a lot of folks found out that composting together makes for great conversations 😉
There was one ongoing problem: finding room to make new compost piles, while letting the old mature properly. QG gives overflow scraps to the curbside program and, wonderfully, as of October, to Big Reuse, but making space for on-site compost processing is always an issue. This is where RTV stepped in, hauling off half-processed green compost to mature at RTV garden. The arrangement was perfect: QG kept diverting, and RTV ensured full processing. Together, they make excellent locally-sourced, nutrient-rich compost for local use on gardens and street trees!
Photos (above, left): QG composters Juliette, Chloe, Zoe, and D, July 2024 and (right): QG composter Genaro on pile turning duty, June 2024.
Meanwhile at RTV, new member LJ has been stirring up some compost engagement this year. In LJ’s own words: “This year it’s mostly been members dropping off scraps and material from the garden, and we’ve been able to produce a lot of good quality compost that we’ll be able to use next year.”
As LJ puts it, the work at RTV has been about defining goals: “Personally I see us as having three overlapping goals of reducing food waste, creating healthy compost to grow more food, and strengthening food literacy and security by sharing skills and info people can use to garden and compost on their own.”
Planning for Spring 2025, LJ explains: “Part of expanding to community drop-off includes working out systems for processing high volumes of scraps and keeping material moving through the piles pretty quickly. It will be very interesting to figure out what works best for us.”
These stories are about community resilience through community composting. None of it could happen without the core support BQLT provides – liability insurance to name a big one. Please help us keep projects like these going by supporting our 37 community gardens during our 2024 BrooklynGives Fundraising Campaign!
Posted on 12/30/24
