This morning, we started at about four a.m. gathering buckets of compostable materials. We are developing quite a routine and more than a few followers. It takes about 3 hours to hit all of our hot spots and as the sun rose and we could only barely see our breath. We stopped for a moment to have some coffee and think about our next move.
We are holding steady across all of our piles at an estimated 8 tons. That is nearly 16,000 pounds of stuff that could have gone into a landfill. We are not fooling ourselves and though we are a pretty competitive bunch, we do not dare dream that our small band of is going to get it all. We are out to get a fair chunk. The curse of this job and this competitiveness is that our eyes are always open. As the sun rose, and people began to stir, as the city began to come to life we saw a man with a pond skimmer. My partner and I looked at each other and thought the same thing at the same time. A few simple questions to the young man and we found out that the park cleans the pond every Friday and that when he is done he dumps it in the dumpster about 50 ft away.
We tipped the garbage can back and felt that it was about 100 pounds. There are fish in the pond and they do not use chemicals to maintain it. Just aeration and circulation. The circulation pump rises out of the water at one corner and throws the water in the air about a foot and shoots it causing a mild whirlpool. The algae that grows during the week, because of the current, collects in one corner where it is very easy to skim off the top. About a 100 pounds a week.
So this is what comes from keeping our eyes open. 100 pounds a week of nitrogen rich mass that would have gone into a landfill is now going into the compost pile and will soon be going to gardens all across SC. We keep our eyes open.
Sadly, there was not a lot that we could do about the pumpkins from Halloween. You win some, you lose some!
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