farmers markets. Big Reuse accepts
most food scraps except dairy, meat
and bones and also takes food soiled
products and compostable plastic, ac-cording
to operations coordinator Erik
Hoversten.
For those in the organics collection
program, the city accepts dairy, meat,
bones and yard waste.
Louise Bruce, the former senior
program manager for NYC Organics,
compared the act of composting to
creating a balanced meal.
“It’s thinking about how can I blend
materials together like food waste and
yard waste to achieve a perfect carbon
and nitrogen blend?” she said.
In Long Island City, the recipe in-cludes
food scraps with wood chips
delivered from Greenwood Cemetery,
leaves delivered seasonally from city
parks and wood shavings from local
woodworkers, according to Hoversten.
Charles Lynch, the operations man-ager
on site, mixes about 3,000 pounds
of material in a food mixer and uses a
plow to transport it. The perfect mixture
contains two yards of food scraps, one
yard of wood chips and one yard of
leaves, he said.
This mixture is compiled into an “aer-ated
static pile” where air is pumped
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Composts
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