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That banana peel, the cracked egg shell, and those leafy greens that didn’t make it into your salad may soon be on their way to beautifying green spaces around your neighborhood, and helping local farmers bring you their crops.
Meet composting, a sibling of recycling with a bit more of a pungent scent.
Compost is a nutrient-rich dark and crumbly material that helps to improve soil health and provides essential nutrients to plants. These soil health benefits are attained through the composting process, which is easier than it sounds. Managing the natural decomposition process that turns nutrients from once living materials, like your banana peel, into a rich, organic component of soil creates healthier living materials, greener grass, and prettier flowers.
Ready to start composting? Beginning March 5, GrowNYC will run a pilot program to expand current food scrap collections from NYC households at some Greenmarkets. For those visiting the Inwood Greenmarket on Isham Street, they will soon be able to drop off fruit and vegetable scraps, which will then be transported to a compost facility where they will become a fertile soil addition for local farmers among other uses.
So far, other Greenmarkets on the Lower East Side, in Queens, and in Brooklyn have already started composting efforts.
According to GrowNYC, a non-for profit organization that seeks to improve the city’s quality of life through environmental programs, food comprises about 17 percent of the city’s waste stream. When the material is sent to a landfill it adds to disposal costs and can create powerful greenhouse gas emissions.
By composting, food scraps and other organic materials become a useful product that most of us would never think twice about, helping to improve soil quality for street trees, gardens, and local farms.
The food scraps can be collected in large plastic containers or other covered containers or plastic bags. If you’re worried about the odor while you store old organic material at home, lay down shredded newspaper at the bottom of your storage container to reduce the smell.
Compostable materials include fruit and vegetable scraps, non-greasy food scraps such as rice, pasta, bread, coffee grinds and filters, tea bags, egg and nut shells, dried flowers, houseplants, and potting soil. Do not include any sort of meat, dairy, or insect-infested plants.
The Parks Department will also be helping the composting effort this upcoming spring at the Inwood Nature Center composting site in Inwood Hill Park. The site is currently under reconstruction and will be ready for use in March.
The Inwood Greenmarket compost collection pilot program will begin Sat., March 5 and run through June 25. The Inwood Greenmarket is open every Saturday from 8 a.m. to noon on Isham Street between Seaman Avenue and Cooper Street.
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