A Year of Accomplishments

In May of 2014, we stopped picking up preconsumer restaurant waste for free, but we continue to collect kitchen scraps from five loyally supportive and paying Milwaukee restaurants. Even as we phased down our postconsumer pilot program by late spring, in the early part of the year, we picked up from more than 15 restaurants.  Individual restaurant volumes vary widely from week to week and our pool of customers has shrunk considerably since then, but we still achieved an impressive total collection volume on the order of 10,943 pounds (or about 5.5 tons) of diverted organics logged to date by our volunteer couriers. This value does not include a separately tracked volume from our postconsumer trial program, which even in its abbreviated life diverted just over 29,000 pounds or 14.6 tons in 2014. If we were able to estimate the total undocumented resident and commercial contributions to our network of community compost sites, we’d likely add another ton or two to these already formidable figures.

Soil donations continued apace in 2014: we furnished 10 cubic yards of high-grade soil to Bradley Tech High School, where we also helped to install a raised-bed garden cluster and built a three-section compost bin; an additional 5 cubic yards went to the We Grow Greens youth mentoring program, for which we built three-section bin this past Sunday; and Core El Centro also received soil for its garden projects.  Last year, we gave soil to the Scooter Foundation and the Next Door Foundation and built compost bins.

We continue to fulfill the dual mandate of our mission to close the organic waste loop in Milwaukee: from diversion to conversion, the resulting product channeled back into the community in the form of soil used to grow more vegetables and fruits, all the while beautifying the city landscape with productive enterprise at the local levels we serve.