Interview Compost For Brooklyn

The publicity manager for a small community garden and composting facility called Compost for Brooklyn was interviewing me. I was a little nervous as this was the first bit of publicity a third party has ever given me, and this was the first time I was to be reported. I had a lot of information to give about compost, why its important, what kinds of organisms are in it, why they are important, why compost can save energy, and so forth. The interview went well. I barely knew where to start but then once I started all I needed to say came out naturally. I sold some of my biodegradable laundry detergent too.
    I will appear in the monthly newsletter that is sent out. My father even suggested I could write something that would go into the email. Who knows about that but... time will tell.

My Worm Bin July 29

     The top of my compost remained moist thanks to the re-used plastic bag I placed on top. However, the compost has been turning anaerobic or, rather, smelly. I turned all the food waste in there as usual. I began to wonder at this point, as usual, why, even though I turn this compost every week, it always ends up compacting back down and smelly again. Meanwhile, the black soldier larvae have been getting even happier with the compost. Not to say they make bad compost either or that I wouldn't want to experiment with them but I do want my worms to make their comeback. My thermometer has been acting funny lately so I'm getting a new battery for it. I also noticed that throughout the winter, my compost contents never made it below freezing. This is good news. As long as the bin never gets below freezing, the worms will be okay throughout the winter. The worms living in the bottom of the bin seem to have congregated in a little blueberry pint full of old worm castings-there are only a few left. The poor guys are really dying out. In an effort to keep them from dying off completely I decided to place a couple re-used strawberry pints full of compost from above down in the harvest chamber for the worms to munch on. The compost water is slightly smelly and it does not seem to be improving the basil's growth seeing the seed I watered with compost water has not even germinated yet. The flowers watered with compost leachate don't seem to be doing any better than the other flowers, and the hydrangeas... still too early to tell. I'm going to keep going with this experiment. In the fall semester I'm going to aerate my compost leachate and even try mixing some of it with the waste syrup made in at Bates Dining Hall at Sarah Lawrence College.

     I put a bunch of holes in the plastic cover for the compost bin. Perhaps this extra air will improve the conditions. I'm also not adding any more food waste. This will help the contents cool down some so the worms will have a chance to repopulate the bin. I did add some paper to it though. The paper may even help with cooling down the bin. There are a bunch of strawberry containers I found the other day. Then I realized I can go to any place that sells smoothies and take their strawberry and blueberry containers to re-use for packaging my compost. Now all I need is a good label. Meanwhile, I also need to arrange a means of shipping worms for people who live far away.

     A customer of mine said she likes the worm castings. There are some strong, healthy squash growing in my old worm castings that I made up in my dorm room from the 2010-2011 school year. They smelled horrible a few weeks ago. It's a miracle to see how just adding water, aerating by hand, allowing to sit for a few weeks, and allowing adequate water drainage can so drastically improve these worm castings. In fact, the squash just volunteered themselves!!

Current Business Card

I just hand this on the back of one of the old business cards,
had the image scanned, and then printed. I think the handwritten
feel is much more local, down-to-Earth, and the way I like it.

Business Cards

This is the same card. It has a back. It had
Too much information, and was not printed
on recycled paper. Also, SLC made me get rid of
the name SLC Composting because of "Legal Issues"

My very first business card ever was just a microsoft word document on which I printed several "cards" and cut them with a scissors. I can remember the days I felt so special for having these types of cards too. I went through a lot of different names for this composting facility. First was SLC Composting, then Worm Compost, Inc. (I think), then some other names I can't remember, and then onto the business cards that said SLC Composting. I resorted back to these after SLC would no longer allow me to use that name SLC Composting. Then I tried SLEA black gold for (Sarah Lawrence Environmental Action). Then it was Black Gold, Inc.. After that we evolved to ECOlasante Compost briefly, and then to the current Eli's Compost.

A close-up of the microsoft word
Document I made

The very first business card to actually get
printed on a real card. I only paid for the
shipping on these guys.

Here are some of the Business cards of the past... The classics!! I'll post up the one that's most current now!! Before these cards existed, I had slips of paper. Those got me to this really awesome contest with a bunch of other contestants with the Economist Magazine in Washington DC. The current one will be up in the next post!

I was going to incorporate this, and I did, but

now I've changed that and am going for a club

at SLC. I think it will be a not-for-profit once it grows, 

but for now, I like the collaborative, club atmosphere

and the idea of just integrating it with class curricula

at SLC. It will still run like a business in the sense of

keeping costs below revenues, but I don't plan on paying

myself or anyone else. Not until it can actually make the money

Check out this really interesting article!

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/27/dining/thats-not-trash-thats-dinner.html?_r=1&ref=health

Types of Methane Digesters

Broadly speaking there are basically there different types of digesters- batch-feed digesters, continuous-feed, and hybrids. Continuous-feed digesters can take a constant flow of waste every day, while batch-feed digesters take all of the waste at once. During the time of a batch-feed digester, no more waste can get accepted (House 140-142). At Sarah Lawrence, because there is a large amount of food waste being generated every day, it is pretty obvious that a continuous-feed digester will be the best type. There are however many different types of methane digesters. Some, such as the Upflow Anaerobic Sludge Blanket reactor (UASB), Expanded Granular Sludge Bed (EGSB) reactor, the Anaerobic Continuous Stirred Tank Reactor (CSTR), the Anaerobic Baffled Reactor (ABR), Plug-Flow Digesters, Covered Lagoons, Complete Mix, Fixed Film, a Temperature Phased Anaerobic Digester (TPAD), among others I have yet to learn about have been installed with success in numerous locations. Other types are in more of the planning stage and may either produce hydrogen, a gas with more energy than hydrocarbons and that burns much cleaner, or Methane; however, there are hurdles that still need to be overcome in order for these to meet commercial success.
     Most of the reactors I have read about so far are meant to digest waste water or waste in a very dilute form. Plug-flow digesters, so far, seem to be the only type that can function without the need for a large amount of water-handling cow manure at a consistency about as thick as ground-up food waste.

Works Cited

House, David The Complete Biogas Handbook. Alternative House Information, 2010.

Fang, Herbert H.P. Environmental Anaerobic Technology: Applications and New Developments. London: Imperial College Press, 2010. 113-136.

Demonstration Against a Human-Disaster (Rather than a "Natural" Disaster)

I'm going! Read the really long letter here. It basically is trying to prevent the drilling of oil and tar sands along nearly 2,000 miles of beautiful forests and coastlines in Canada, and prevent the construction of this monstrous pipeline that can and will leak oil into several aquifers, and trespass onto indigenous tribal lands in Canada and the US. See ya there!

BTW I read a lot of interesting info on Methane Digestion so there's a lot to share with you. Getting to that!

Methane Digestion (AKA Anaerobic Digestion)

     I will tell you in brief about the types of methane digestion systems as relating to Sarah Lawrence College before too long, but right now, I still have a lot to learn there before publicizing anything that would make much coherent sense.
     For right now, it is just worth saying that this methane digestion facility at SLC is looking like a more and more unusual one. First the vast majority of anaerobic digestion (AKA Methane Digestion) research available is about digesting animal manure, sewage, and industrial water treatment, meaning toxic water. Second almost all operating methane digestion facilities that do deal with food waste are in the food processing industries such as sugar and starch manufacturing, the milk processing industry, and in the brewing industry, such as wine, beer, liquor etc. (J.-H. Tay et al. 124) (Nelson and Lamb 8) While this can still count as food waste, this kind of food waste is radically different from the type of food waste seen in a dining hall. While there are a few facilities that use anaerobic digestion of food waste, commercial facilities are still very few.
     The hard thing about this is that because there are few precedents (There are some in Japan as noted in these sources Kawamura et al. AND Tanikawa et al.), there is a very high chance that this facility which will cost a lot of money to build will fail UNLESS NECESSARY PRECAUTIONS ARE TAKEN, NECESSARY HOMEWORK IS DONE, AND THERE IS PROPER MANAGEMENT OF THIS FACILITY. Given this facility succeeds, which it will, this will radically change the entire composting industry. Currently, I have yet to hear of a large-scale commercial composting facility located in an area as densely populated as Bronxville, New York. This will give SLC a lot of publicity, and put it on the map of sustainable colleges not only in the nation, but even in the world. It can also make United States an important leader in creating a more sustainable and just world by radically redesign the way cities are currently built. After all, if managing food waste can be just as simple as digging a hole in the ground, filling it with food waste, and selling it as a valuable compost while making a valuable source of energy, this will be the beginning of a revolution. This is not an opportunity worth missing!!!

Works Cited


Kawamura, K.; Nakanishi, F.; and Irie, N.. (2005) A process report on bio-recycle facility of Kampo 
Recycle Plaza. Takuma Technical Reports 13(1), 31-37.

Nelson, Carl. Lamb, John. "Final Report: Haubenschild Farms Anaerobic Digester Updated!" St Paul: The Minnesota Project, 2002. 1-35.

Tanikawa, N.; Furuichi, T.; Ishii, K.; and Nishigami, K.. (2008) Study on Methane Generation, Environmental Burdens, and Cost Effectiveness of Kitchen-Waste Biogasification Facilities. J. Japan Soc. Waste Manage. Experts 19(3), 182-190. (Contact Yu-You Li at yyli@epl1.civil.tohuku.ac.jp who helped write the article "Applications and New Developments of Biogas Technology in Japan" for more information on articles by Kawamura and by Tanikawa)

Tay, Joo-Hwa. Show, Kuan-Yeow. Lee, Duu-Jong. Zhang, Zhen-Peng. "Anaerobic Granulation and Granular Sludge Reactor Systems" Environmental Anaerobic Technology: Applications and New Developments Herbert H.P. Fang. London: Imperial College Press, 2010. 113-136.

Observations July 22

Today was an especially hot day outside. So much so my phone absorbed the humidity and the sweat from my body and my phone got a lot of water damage. I got it fixed at this wonderful place down in Chinatown in Manhattan. Sure, I could have gotten a new phone for cheaper than what I got it fixed for here, but it's not good for the environment which is very important to me. A new phone to me means polluting another hundred gallons of water.

     With that said, how are the worms coping with this heat? Many have migrated down to a place where they're not really supposed to be- the compost harvesting chamber. The lower picture is a close-up of what you see above. Compost is supposed to drop down from above onto this. It did do that. However, it looks like the worms came down with it in an attempt to escape the scorching heat of the compost bin. It hit 111 degrees fahrenheit today. There are some spiders down there, so... hopefully they won't make too much of a dinner off these worms... Black Soldier Larvae appeared under the plastic I put down. They don't seem to mind the heat. I decided to place a plastic layer over the entire top part of the compost. It may keep the air out, but we'll see. Otherwise, I'm continuing to aerate it with my hands every time. It seems to help in the composting process. I added some compost leachate tea on some hydrangeas and flowers, and am continuing to add water to the top layer, this is waste water from washing my gloves and hands from touching the entire mess not new water. This should not only help keep the top part of my compost moist, but it also will draw air into new nooks and crevices of the compost pile similar to what happens in garden soil from watering your plants. Watering plants does not just add water to the soil for plants to drink, it also allows a new supply of air to come into the soil (Lowenfels and Lewis 30)


Works Cited
Lowenfels, Jeff. Lewis, Wayne. Teaming with Microbes: The Organic Garndener's Guide to the Soil Food Web. Portland: Timber Press, 2010.

For those who died for our cause

This video is important for several reasons. One of them is that at Sarah Lawrence College, and elsewhere, I notice that environmentalists, while well-meaning, often get afraid of what people in positions of power will do or say, what regulations have to do or say about doing the right thing for the environment, such as those with composting even when at times those regulations don't make sense. Most times, these setbacks have been enough to prevent environmental action from occurring both on campus, and elsewhere. Why should this be? Here we are, rich, comfortable, and in the best college in the country, and now we act all set back just because of what one person in the college would do or say.

It is worth realizing that the worries we face are of little importance in comparison to the people who have died for the environment. See

She's Alive... Beautiful... Finite... Hurting... Worth Dying for

Progress on the Methane Digestion Facility

     First of all, it might be important to figure out why I am choosing anaerobic digestion of food waste for Sarah Lawrence College. I have travelled around a bit to learn about composting. You will see posts about my talks there before long I recorded my observations. Basically, I learned that all large-scale composting facilities require large, upfront costs. Windrow Composting requires a good deal less upfront costs but requires a lot more space and land that is just not available on Sarah Lawrence College, and additional land adjoining the college is just not available. There is plenty of talk among the faculty at Sarah Lawrence College about shipping food waste to a composting facility off campus to a rural area perhaps a few hour drive away, however, transportation costs are very high for any kind of waste out there (Transportation of garbage is 2/3 of the cost of waste management), and it also uses fossil fuel to transport compost. In addition, keeping our composting facility on campus also allows better transparency of our facility to make sure it is really doing something good for the environment. A facility right on campus that students can see and visit the same way they can see and visit a professor makes it inherently much more transparent and let me add, an excellent education opportunity for chemistry, biology, environmental studies, painting, photography, even a business course, countless conference projects, and much much more. If the facility were located somewhere far away, none of this would be feasible. Colleges are in the educational field are the not? What could be better for a college than having a progressive, liberal arts college educate the public on what will soon be the wave of the future? It would also be nice to use some compost for beautifying the college and even to supply some to places like Warren Green, and Laura's new-found garden.
     However, upfront costs of a composting system that also takes up a lot of land are very high. Therefore, if you were to pay say... 100,000 dollars for a facility wouldn't it make sense to pay for a facility that made two sources of revenue to pay itself off rather than say... one source? Methane digestion will produce energy to heat and power Sarah Lawrence College, IN ADDITION to producing valuable compost. Not to mention the fact that aerobic composting requires tons of energy to turn the food waste as I learned from my travels, while methane digestion PRODUCES energy and can even be buried underground so as not to take up very much space on campus. SLC already has a boiler system so connecting it to a heating system powered by methane would be a simple process. In fact, we may be able to use methane to produce electricity and use excess heat from that to help heat up water to heat all of the buildings.
     I also am working on a large-scale worm composting facility that can compost the final product of the methane digestion facility. The worms will transform this nutrient-rich substance into a high-quality compost that sells at a high price. This would work very well for wealthy homeowners in Bronxville New York.
     With all that said, there is a list of goals and priorities to get to the grand prize-a large-scale methane digestion facility that can compost all of SLC's food waste.

My July 18th Compost Work

I found a neighbor of Vicki Ford's house (One of the members of the Board of Trustees of the College). I asked if he would be interested in testing out his plants with some of my compost leachate. He was so now I'm going to test it on one of his hydrangeas for the remaining part of the summer and into fall. I will compare the growth of this hydrangea against the growth of several other hydrangeas he has.

I got my new book on methane digestion today. It will be a great introduction to the entire field. Meanwhile, I am reading about the types of methane digestion here.

Lately my compost has been getting dry so I decided to take a reused trashbag and lay it on top of my compost inside the compost bin. I'm worried it will create smells and prevent air from circulating in the compost pile- a problem even without some sort of plastic cover. At the same time though, my worms need to populate the bin and they cannot do it if the conditions are too dry. At this point, I'm just trying to get my bin with the few worms I have in there populated and ready to produce worm castings to make a steady revenue stream that can finally support this composting facility.

Tell me what you think of this for my compost label I'm making for my compost package.

"The compelling rich depth of this rich worm compost is the inspiration of our bold endeavor-to compost every last ounce of food waste at Sarah Lawrence College, in our community, and beyond. For countless centuries vineyards have long prized high-quality compost for the deep aroma, rich color, and superior flavor it brings to their wine. Vineyards of such world-renowned wines as _______, ________, ________ continue their timeless compost tradition. Eli's Gourmet Worm Compost, based off such time-tested traditions as these, now presents you the quality all homeowners, gardners, landscapers, and people alike deserve in our state-of-the art re-used plastic packaging"

My July 8th Compost work

Today I made considerable progress in composting. I made my second day in collecting food waste at SLC for the summer months. Today Chris, the manager of Avi Fresh at Sarah Lawrence College forgot to get my food waste and seeing I would be gone for a week, I had to take matters into my own hands. I got the food waste. I ate icecream with some chemistry interns- that is liquid nitrogen ice cream!! Really cool!

     Anyway, I decided to move more of the day-to day composting work to Warren Green house. I'm doing this for a few reasons. First, they have a rainwater collection system to clean out my buckets when I am done collecting food waste and for me to soak my paper to make it easier to shred. Secondly, when I form my composting club, I want to recruit volunteers to help compost food waste, and actually, to make this a business, I would like to figure out a means of paying people to take the time to compost. For now though it will suffice to just get people interested in the idea of composting all of the college's food waste, and there  is no better way than to just bring all the fun over to Warren Green. Third, Bates Dining Hall is close to Warren Green. Finally, it will be easy for me to pick up the bucket and just take it to the Board of Trustee's house. Actually I can also arrange compost tours and visits for anyone interested. I will have regular tours for anyone interested in learning more about the composting facility. It will be a weekly tour.
     I next found my food pulverizing tool. I learned about this from Compost for Brooklyn and their small-scale composting facility in Brooklyn. It's a really cool place!! I definitely recommend paying a visit to this small, homey place. This tool basically allows me to cut up my food waste to a fine pulp, which then can be mixed with shreds of paper to allow food waste to break down faster. Tearing paper still takes forever. This is sad. I really wish there would be a way to get the wood shop in the theatre department to stop using wood with lots of harmful chemicals. This would make their waste sawdust usable with my food waste. For now, I'll just have to make do with paper waste and taking the extra time to shred that up. I am looking into the purchase of an easy-to use paper shredder. It would make shredding paper much easier, make the paper smaller, and therefore, allow more composting to occur faster. I just want to be able to dump bag loads of paper into the shredder and have shreds of paper come out the other end in a matter of seconds. We may be looking at a couple thousand dollar investment, however, we would be reducing waste, and we would be making a high-quality worm compost that could sell for a lot of money. Once I know the machine I want, I will put all my will into finding the money to get the machine and to put it to maximum use.
     I'm testing my plants with compost tea and without compost tea to see which ones grow faster. For now, seeing the water coming out is not smelly, I'm not going to pump any air into it. See the link here for a definition of Compost Tea.

My first Day of Summer Food Waste Collection

Today was the first day in the summer break I actually composted the college's food waste. It was a good day for it. The last of my compost in my car has been dumped in the  compost bin maintained at the Board of Trustees, Vicky Ford's house. I got rid of these bins because they were too much work for the amount of compost they were making :(. It was really sad, but I did it because I want to compost more for the amount of time I'm putting into it. The tent I ordered was way too big. :( Now I have to find a way to sell it back or return it. I did get a nice device though that can pulverize the new food waste quite efficiently and thus allow it to break down faster. I had to return the first device I got and exchange it for a tool I liked more. It's really simple, it's basically a spade which I just slam down into a five gallon bucket and it chops up all of the food waste in the five gallon bucket and turns it into a slushy mush. I then tear up nonrecyclable paper (non recyclable because it's wet and covered with food waste) that then gets mixed with this slush and gets added to the compost bin. I am finally finding something that looks like finished compost at the bottom. It's very watery, sticky, and so on, but it smells pretty good. I also am using the compost water at the bottom. It smells very earthy so I'm testing it on some new basil plants I got. I'm going to go next door next week, write the neighbor Ron Major who is curious about my bin anyway, and ask him if he'd be willing to test out my compost tea on his plants as well. The worms are still alive and kicking, they are resilient little guys. I hope the heat wont kill them because they are what keep this composting going!! There is some old worm castings I had that smelled awful because Vicki didn't let the soil get any air. Now that's draining a lot better and smelling much nicer!! I'm excited. It was a little dry on top though. Still it's exciting.

     I read my first article on Methane digestion. There are several more downloaded, and I ordered a book on it. Today is the first day I actually managed to get a post on this blog I've been meaning to start in a while. Pictures are coming. I always take lots of pictures and I never take the time to actually upload them. There was a bunch of mushrooms growing on my compost. It was an entire mushroom forest and the entire bin smelled like mushrooms. If only I had a field guide to recognize these guys because I'm starting to recognize them by looks but I don't know their names. If only there were a way to google images with images rather than just words.