Reclaiming Our Power (Feat. Common Ground Compost)

So, we’re recording now from the sixth national cultivating community composting forum, which this year is happening in New York City. And with us now is Meredith Danberg-Ficarelli, did I say that right? You did. And she is a common ground compost. She is a local, uh, New York City community. Composter she’s also been an invaluable part of the, uh, steering committee for the community composter coalition for a number of years now. So we are very grateful that she’s joining us now. So say hello. Thanks, Linda. Hi everyone. So Meredith, uh, for our listeners who may not be familiar with common ground compost, uh, tell them a little bit about yourself. Uh, what common ground does and how composting fits in.

Uh, imagining of bucket as opposed to a 64 gallon container. A truck does not want to stop for a bucket or a bag. Uh, so micro hauling fits into that space and we’re servicing small food businesses and now also offices. So we launched a service, sort of a concierge white glove service where we are going into corporate offices and, and collecting material from individual tenants and corporate buildings. Um, we have a site, uh, it’s a school garden, um, in the East village of Manhattan, um, where we, we have a two phase composting process that uses Bokashi fermentation and then an above ground area and static pile ’em into four foot by four foot by three foot wooden bins, um, rat proof, heavily bins. Um, but we’ve been displaced from that site since October of 2018 by a fire in an adjacent building. Um, so we are currently working out of a shipping container on the street.

Um, so if you drive on 11th street between First Avenue and avenue a, you will see a blue shipping container. Um, give it a pat. That’s where our care is. Um, and so we have also sort of expanded our operations into working more with commercial buildings, um, in order to sort of maintain our operation. Uh, so instead of processing on site, we’re working with a commercial waste hauler who picks up from us and takes our material to industrial compost sites around the city.

Um, I traveled to Beirut in Lebanon and I was very lucky to meet and learn from. I’m a composter and mechanical engineer and agriculturalist there. Um, and, uh, also working with a farm to table restaurant, they were really interested in trying to go zero waste and didn’t have anyone to shepherd the process. So I read a lot about how to do a waste audit, um, and what zero waste means, um, and helped them start that process.

That was in the summer of 2011. Uh, and that, that’s sort of where it started. I recognized that, um, there’s a lot of food in our waste stream, uh, both edible food and inedible food, um, or food scraps. Um, and I came back to the city after that summer and just had sort of this like awakening of, wow, this is what I want to do. So. Wow.

Um, it all, it created or led to or fostered, um, uh, an informal economy, um, of repair economy. Um, a scat scavenger in air quotes, economy of pulling the value of materials out. So there were always people, which is dangerous, but there were always people either, you know, digging through or pulling out, um, plastic bottles and metal and potentially still functioning, um, appliances and other things, which one could argue happens here in New York City. So there’s a similarity, um, you know, differences. Sure. Um, you know, regulatory differences. Um, soon after I left Lebanon and in 2013, uh, there was a major are people that contract with that company ended and a new contract, uh, didn’t, there’s a lot of, there are a lot of political challenges and other things that led to this. Um, but, uh, the end result was that there was garbage in the streets.

Um, no one was picking up the trash, so it was piling up. Um, and that is an incredibly unfortunate situation and a very, very large structural problems led to it. But, um, ones a silver lining is that it made recognize, um, not only the problems that they face with political corruption and societal challenges and, you know, inequality and all of these things. Um, but, but it also, I think, made people think twice about adding to the pile, um, how much, how, how much their individual consumption activities, um, uh, you know, how that aggregates. Um, so I think there was a lot of awareness around waste reduction and finding infrastructure, developing infrastructure and finding alternatives. Um, and there’s amazing work happening in Lebanon now. Um, the greenglass recycling initiative is focusing entirely on, um, improving, uh, sort of a dying glass blowing industry and doing reclamation of glass, which is a huge challenge even here.

Um, there’s, there’s work being done on the organics front, um, on plastics diversion. Uh, there’s, there’s a lot happening and I think, um, that’s happening all over the world in, in cities everywhere, which is really exciting. Such an interesting case study. Yeah. So interesting to compare it to what we experienced here. Yeah. And it’s, you know, it builds out of, um, an individual or a group of individuals who, who have a mission and won’t stop. So, yeah. And they’re very invested in it. Yeah. Yes, yes. Personally, financially, politically, everything. Yeah.

Um, you know, we work in silos, which is a big challenge. A lot of, a lot of the time I try to recognize that I live in a bit of an echo chamber. Um, when you’re doing consulting work, you are providing a service to someone that wants you to be there. Um, so I have to check myself frequently and remember that, you know, um, uh, not all of my friends want to hear me talk about trash, like, um, so it’s, it’s pretty exciting to be in a place where, um, everyone is doing different work but, but towards a common goal, um, and in very different ways. So we have a lot to learn from each other, but there are so many parallels. Um, and seeing one of the things that I was most excited about for this year, um, was having seen the growth between 2017 and 2018 and 2019 running into some people at USCC when I was there. Um, in, in Phoenix, um, and recognizing that there were going to be even more people cause, um, New York City is great and there’s a lot happening here. Um, so, so seeing and learning, um, from others and, and recognizing the evolution of everyone’s programs.

So the, I see, I see community composting is the same way that I see the potential for quote unquote waste, um, to be a resource, uh, organic especially, but all of our materials, we generate waste in communities. So we should process waste in communities. If we’re talking about, you know, the challenges of carbon emissions that are associated with transport, like why not focus on, you know, the sort of the end of the supply chain, um, first, uh, because it’s something that all of us touch and it’s something that all of us have the potential to be able to engage with. Um, as long as we’re given the tools and resources and as long as the infrastructure is available, you know, which is a structural challenge obviously. But, uh, so I see community composting within that frame of sort of reclaiming our power, if you will.