Compost Project
Location
To get all the food waste in our neighborhood out of the waste stream and into the compost stream so the compost can be used to grow more local food. Working on home composting, municipal composting, and commercial/institutional. Need to develop composting facilities and facilitate collection. We need the compost to boost communitiy gardens
About You
Section 1: About You
Section 2: About Your Organization
Is your initiative connected to an established organization?
Yes
Organization Name
Environment Council of Rhode Island Education Fund
Organization Website
Organization Phone
401-621-8048
Organization Address
PO Box 40568 Providence RI 02940
Organization Country
United States, RI
Is your organization a
Non‐profit/NGO/citizen sector organization
How long has this organization been operating?
More than 5 years
Your idea
Name Your Project
Compost Project
Describe your Social Enterprise
To get all the food waste in our neighborhood out of the waste stream and into the compost stream so the compost can be used to grow more local food. Working on home composting, municipal composting, and commercial/institutional. Need to develop composting facilities and facilitate collection. We need the compost to boost communitiy gardens
Country your work focuses on
United States
Innovation
What makes your innovation unique?
It would be the first time in New England a state developed an integrated compost system that removed all the food waste and got it composted specifically to replenish local agriculture. right now we are pulling together the entire spectrum of stakeholders, farmers, eaters, municipal officials, composters, restaurants, colleges, supermarkets, waste haulers, and bringing them together to jointly look for solutions. This week the EPA and RIDEM talked to us about the idea of using a brownfield, redeveloping a brownfield in this ancient industrial city as a compost facility. Then an environmental engineer I was talking to yesterday suggested he knew a brownfield that might be available and sent me the maps. Simultaneously we are trying to get a pilot going in southern RI with a dining hall from URI and a local composter. The today i hear abotu a new source of brown material for composting that works really werll and a new experiment in compost remedies seeking to figure out how to compost food waste with no odor. Then Waste Management Incorporated says to me that in 3 years there is going to be hardly anything buried in landfills, everything we now throw out will be a resource.
We need some resources to write all these business plans and crunch the numbers. We need some resources to pull all these diverse strands together.
Is it innovation? maybe, maybe not. But it is putting old ideas together in new ways and bringing the right stakeholders to the table.
Do you have a patent for this idea?
Impact
This Entry is about (Issues)
Tell us about the social impact of your innovation. Please include both numbers and stories as evidence of this impact
Rhode Island has among the highest unemployment rates in the country, about 13%. The state is broke, and the officials charged with getting the state back on track are stymied. The keep recycling the same old tired ideas that have not worked for 50 years. And they continue to base their hopes on the idea that we can continue to grow the economy despite ecological collapse.
This approach is different. It is based on the idea that we may not see economic growth in the foreseeable future, and that we need to make sure that everyone eats despite climate change, peak oil, and other forms of ecological and economic collapse that can happen on a planet with 7 billion people, such as forest losses of 50% in the last 10,000 years, with half in the last 30 years, and the loss of irrigation water in key areas such as California. It is going to make no sense to ship food from California ecologically or economically. So we have to grow our own. And farming is the only part of the RI economy adding jobs, with farmers increasing 42% in RI in the last 10 years.
But we can not do that without a lot more compost. Our soil fertility has been depleted for 300 years. And we have this huge trash problem, that in the smallest state becomes a bigger problem as we have no potential dump sites left in the state.
Then we have the rapidly growing community garden movement. In 5 years in Providence we have nearly tripled the number of community garden plots, going from 200 to 550. The city is now putting community gardens in Parks. At least one new one a year. But what good are community gardens without compost? And they are having trouble obtaining enough.
We are putting together the various pieces of the giant jigsaw puzzle. Hunger, food security, economic revitalization in low income neighborhoods, reducing our carbon footprint (methane in landfills is greatly diminished if you compost the food waste), and building community resilience for the coming hard times.
Problem: Describe the primary problem(s) that your innovation is addressing
Not enough compost to revitalize Rhode island
Actions: Describe the steps that you are taking to make your innovation a success. Include a description of the business model. What might prevent that success?
This project began with the scratch the earth method of organizing. Keep talking. Keep working the crowds, keep making phone calls, set the stage, fertilize the ground with some home made compost, pray for sun and rain. In the last 15 months we have brought all the stakeholders together, EPA, DEM, restaurants, businesses, tourism, municipal officials, RI Resource Recovery Corporation, non profits. We have linked restaurants and schools to composters, done research, built committees. We had a great convening in January with 50 stakeholders. Scratch the earth continues. And we continue to link food sources and composters even while we develop plans and do research. They continue together and we seek pilots to test al the different aspects of the issue while we put together plans for bigger actions
The next step might be to find a brownfield and find money to develop a composting facility. Right in the city, right in an old industrial district close to the poorest people in the community so we can create jobs where they are needed most, and where the compost will be closest to the community gardens. Tomorrow i begin meeting with experts in social entrepreneurship to see if we can put together a more detailed business plan. I have been convening committees to help.
Results: Describe the expected results of these actions over the next three years. Please address each year separately, if possible
2010 research and pilots such as one school or restaurant and one composter. Watch development of a bicycle based collection system that will compost in a community garden. Build committees and business plans. Look for brownfields. test various methods of big time composting, find ways to haul compost from restaurants/institutions. Research municipal collection systems.
2011 Clean a brownfield and link more restaurants and institutions and composters.
2012 Build a compost facility and start making compost.
How many people will your project serve annually?
More than 10,000
What is the average monthly household income in your target community, in US Dollars?
$1000 - 4000
Does your innovation seek to have an impact on public policy?
Yes
If your innovation seeks to impact public policy, how?
Participate in the transformation of policy around waste, so that there is no more waste, only resources to reuse and place resilience at the center of economic development policy
Sustainability
What stage is your Social Enterprise in?
Idea phase
Does your organization have a board of directors or an advisory board?
Yes
Does your organization have a non monetary partnerships with NGOs?
Yes
Does your organization have a non monetary partnerships with businesses?
No
Does your organization have a non monetary partnerships with government?
Yes
Please tell us more about how partnerships could be critical to the success of your Social Enterprise
We are not yet a business, we are still an organizing project. we are developing all the right partnerships and moving towards making it into a business with social and ecological goals as well as monetary.
We would like to learn more about how your initiative is financially supported. Please explain your business plan/revenue model
The organizing is supported right now by a $9000 per year USDFA grant. The rest has not been worked out, but the revenue stream now used to haul and landfill trash can be diverted to compost food waste.
The Story
What was the defining moment that led you to this innovation?
When i was in school I had a roommate with the album Life is Round by the band Compost. I then ran a barn cleaning service and have been composting for 30 years. When the Land Trust began having trouble filling demand for compost for the growing community gardens, it was time to do something. What that something is continues to evolve.
Tell us about the person—the social innovator—behind this idea.
Greg Gerritt organized his High School for the first Earth day. Besides homesteading and building solar houses he has run a carpentry business specializing in meeting the needs of lower income elderly folks, founded a watershed group, run for mayor, studied management, fought nuclear waste dumps, and worked for environmental non profits while maintaining an active practice focused on "Community Prosperity on Planet Earth"
How did you first hear about Changemakers?
Email from Changemakers
If through another source, please provide the information
