I don't think food should go in the trash. Instead of rotting in a landfill it could be fertilizing other plants and growing more food. But my landlord won't let us use the backyard for gardening or composting, thus the bottom shelf of our freezer is filled with food waste-- all dressed up and no place to go.
Every time I cook, I save the left-overs (garlic paper, potato eyes, grape vines, mushy tomatoes, limp celery, etc.) and place them in bags in the freezer. As you can see, they remain there for months until a little elf comes along and takes the bag to a vacant lot and sprinkles it around. This is what I call fertilizing, but it's probably also known as "illegal dumping," which is why I'm nervous about doing it and solicit the elf to do my dirty work for me.
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Hi, Nicole --
ReplyDeleteYou might try arranging with someone involved in a community garden to give your old vegetables to them. Surely, there are some in West Philadelphia. Try calling the Horticultural Society's Philadelphia Green program. Someone in West Philadelphia must have a compost bin!
Trina
Trina! What a great suggestion. I also am unable to have compost bin where I live in New Haven CT. But there is a strong network of urban gardens in the city. I'm going to contact them to see if there is a compost bin that will accept my food scrapes!
ReplyDeleteNicole: GREAT blog. Thanks for putting this info and forum out there. Well done!
This is hysterical! Luckily for us (and no neighbors have complained yet), we just chuck our food waste into the field behind our townhouse. I always am afraid though that someone will think we are "littering" but if they ask, I'll just yell out, "We're COMPOSTING!"
ReplyDeleteMy friend Lauren who lives in your neck of the woods has a compost bin. I'll ask her where she got it!
ReplyDeleteThat is such a good idea! For a while I had been pureeing scraps and adding them to my potted plants on my patio (I live in an apartment, too), but I was quickly overfeeding them. I like your thinking.
ReplyDeleteCould you use that stuff to boil down into vegetable broth?
ReplyDeleteI lived in this house with old school hippies in Portland, and they had a gigantic pot to put organic waste in. It was the hippiest way to go about it, having ten pounds of rotting vegetable matter on our kitchen counter, but it did no harm.
ReplyDeleteYou could always, of course, do what my friend Noelle does and have little organic waste eating worms living in a box under a coffee table: http://lavermesworms.com/
Her little pets...
In our house when I was growing up, we regularly had "garbage soup." Different every time. The Penn State University Agricultural Extension has composting lessons open to all, at which they give away free bins (I have two -- probably cheating). Keep an eye out for them. I think they have the sessions in the city as well as the surrounding counties.
ReplyDeleteTrina, thanks for the suggestion of donating my food scraps to a gardener. What a great idea! I actually joined my neighborhood co-op with the hope that they'd use my scraps in their compost, but to no avail. There are hundreds of members, so to take everyone's spent vegetables would probably overwhelm their compost. I will also look into the composting lessons from Penn State University Agricultural Extension. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteDustin, yes, that would be the ultimate way to recylce food: use scraps to make a vegetable broth and THEN compost them. I just have to learn how to do it. I hear it involves a cheesecloth...
Rob, I've heard of worm composting but have yet to sort out my feelings on it. I'm adverse to purchasing animals, or taking them from the wild, but I wonder if they would even know the difference-- living outside in a compost bin versus living inside in a compost bin. Thank you for bringing this up as it got my gears turning... I wonder if anyone else has any thoughts?
Dryxi, pureeing food scraps, what an interesting idea! It must make the composting process go a lot quicker.
Thanks, Krista, Jen, and Amber!
Great post!
ReplyDeletemy grams used to have this wee green composter that sat in the corner of our sink. it was about the size of a shoebox sitting upright, and it even had a filter on top so you couldn't smell the food as it worked it rotty little magic. I can't seem to find it online but maybe another commenter will know what I'm talking about!
ReplyDeleteAwesome blog too!!
Alicia, that sounds like a great idea. I'm going to try searching for one. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteJust want you all to know that I have found a community garden close by that will accept my food scraps into their compost pile!! Thanks for getting me to think about it.
ReplyDeleteGreat job, Mom! Maybe I can bring mine up on the Chinatown bus, ha ha :)
ReplyDelete