Innovative Composting Scheme in Shorewood
The We Got Leaves Bucket Exchange is a community composting scheme offered free of charge to interested Shorewood residents. The program allows participants to deliver buckets of kitchen scraps to a single location, from which they are processed into finished compost by a master composter. We Got Leaves currently uses a large backyard compost operation and two community garden properties to compost the material
Compost Tourism
A few weeks ago, during our Saturday turning at River West’s Scooter Foundation Community Garden, we were gratified to receive our first authentic compost tourist, an energetic staffer from Wellspring Farm, who wanted to see how the Kompost Kids did compost in Milwaukee while visiting for the weekend. It was cold and snowy, so we worked quickly and got the job done. In the
A Year in Review
A hearty Happy New Year from the Kompost Kids to all our devoted volunteers, committed sponsors, and community supporters. We couldn’t do our work without you. As we turn the corner on 2014, let us pause to share a few of our exciting benchmarks and accomplishments. Our community compost program diverted over 37,000 pounds (16 metric tons) of kitchen scraps, coffee grounds, and other
Going Residential in 2015
The United Nations declared 2015 International Year of the Soils, and we are getting geared up for some exciting new initiatives in soil regeneration, bringing more black gold to the Milwaukee area. We’ve worked successfully with small businesses, we’ve partnered with schools and community gardens, and now we are taking the compost gospel to the neighborhoods we call home. We want to start by
Winter Composting in Milwaukee
Temperatures are dropping outside, and we’re doing our best to keep things warm in our piles. Consistent temperatures below freezing, as we experienced last winter, are very tough to fight off in your pile unless you are working at a very large scale. But for most people composting in backyards and community gardens, this time of year is all about season extension, or delaying
Growing Power Conference Success
The Kompost Kids recently joined Growing Power staff in representing best practices in urban composting and soil improvement projects in Milwaukee and Chicago and offered advice to a diverse audience of conference attendees from all over the country. Growing Power’s third National-International Urban Agriculture & Small Farm Conference covered a vast amount of territory, ranging from lectures on local power production (literally empowering communities), food justice
November Turnings in River West
As part of our preparation for winter temperatures, we’ll be hosting a series of public turnings and compost education events at our network sites in River West. We’ll be getting things ready for winter, moving compost, helping gardeners winterize their beds, and learning about compost pile maintenance and troubleshooting. We’ve got lots of compost, so bring something to haul it away in and take your
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
The Future of Composting is Residential
MIT has produced an excellent new study of the new frontier in municipal waste management: curbside compost collection. The study looks at every aspect of this growth area in composting and considers best practices from the perspectives of cost, compliance, and quality of results. The Kompost Kids are lobbying for compost adoption at every level: commercial, municipal, and residential. We’ve helped teach many Milwaukee
Growing Local Fertility – New Report
The Highfields Center for Composting and the Institute for Local Self-Reliance recently collaborated on an exhaustive new report on community composting that featured Kompost Kids and similar organizations in other cities that are spreading the gospel of local disposal and soil regeneration (see page 47). The report goes deeply into the whys, hows, and whats of community composting at a variety of scales, from “home hubs”