May 15, 2009 1:23 pm US/Eastern
Green Scene: Philly Compost Map
PHILADELPHIA (CBS 3) ―
Mayor Michael Nutter said last month he wants Philadelphia to divert seventy percent of its trash away from landfills by 2015. As CBS 3's Liz Keptner shows us, some neighbors are helping other neighbors start composting.
Meenal Raval loves composting in her Mt. Airy backyard.
"Kind of like recycling -- you can't throw that aluminum can away. Well, once you start composting, you can't throw that banana peel away either," said Raval.
Many of us throw food waste in the regular trash, but in a landfill, food often generates methane, a greenhouse gas 72 times worse than CO2.
In contrast, composting lets the air, worms and bugs turn food into soil.
Lee Meinicke, Raval's business partner and a fellow composter, said they "started thinking about requests we've gotten from people to share compost, like, 'I have an apartment, so I don't have a yard.'"
Lee and Meenal's solution was the Philly Compost map, so people can easily find a shared compost site such as Lutheran Theological Seminary in Germantown.
"We've been in conversation with some of the restaurants in the area," said Kate Proctor of Lutheran Theological Seminary. "We'd like to form more partnerships so we can have more of a community aspect to our composting."
If you're new to composting, the sites have instruction signs: Drop in food waste like onions, melon, coffee grounds -- no meat or plastics, please! Then cover with dry leaves.
Whether you can share your compost pile or not, Philly Compost invites all Philadelphia-area composters to join the map.
"Because if you're just one person? It doesn't really feel like you're making that much difference. But if you know that you're part of a larger thing, you can really look at it and go, 'Yeah, isn't that great?'" said Meinicke.
Meenal Raval and Lee Meinicke hope to make Philly Compost a business creating new soil for local farmers.
Related Link
http://www.PhillyCompost.com
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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