Community compost: FOOD SCRAP DROP OFF program
We are now accepting food scraps to be composted! This is located at the entrance by our farm.
Thank you for composting and helping us keep food scraps and organics out of the landfill! Your food scraps will become compost. Compost is an organic soil amendment full of nutrients and microorganisms that help breathe life into soil and help plants grow. Yay!
Options for Drop-Off
Bucket swap - There are some buckets by the gate, you can take a bucket and fill it with food scraps (at your home) and return it to us full. Then swap it out for an empty bucket. Repeat often!
Drop-off - Place your food scraps in the designated bin. If you feel like being extra helpful, take a hand full of wood chips (from the pile) and add them on top of the food scraps.
Please remove any contaminants and place plastic bags in the Landfill bucket. When you’re done, make sure you put a lid on the bucket.
We will process your food scraps for you, just help us out by only bringing material that we can process (listed below).
What we accept
Leave it! (do not add these!)
Meat and bones
Dairy products
Manure from carnivores/kitty litter
Oily and fatty food
Diseased plants/weeds with seeds
Treated or painted wood
Plastic bags
Plastic, glass or metal
Poison oak, poison ivy
Glossy paper
Diapers!
Green compostable bags (while these are compostable, they do not break down well in our piles)
Bring it!
Bread, vegetable and fruit scraps
Nutshells, eggshells, corncobs
Grass clippings, cut flowers, yard waste - must be chopped into pieces the size of your hand or smaller
Coffee grounds, coffee filters, tea bags (remove the staples, please!)
Shredded white paper, cardboard, paper bags, paper towels
Leaves
A quick note!
Please be kind and remember that an actual human is processing these for you! So do your part to remove unwanted contaminants, it’s much easier if the material comes to us “clean” than having us sort through it. With this in mind, please remove stickers from your fruits and veggies (those do not break down!) and do not leave your plastic bags. ♥
Additionally, your donations keep this work alive. They pay for educators, animals, seeds and much more. Please consider making a donation to support this work.
Helpful Tips and finished compost
We realize that not everyone can take a 5-gallon bucket with them, but you can still save your organics from going to the landfill.
You can store your food scraps in a reusable plastic container and put them in your freezer. When bringing them, just drop them into the designated bin. You could also bring them in a paper bag which can be composted!
The finished compost will be used in our community gardens to help rebuild soil and grow more food, closing the food-cycle!
learn to compost at home
We want to keep as much organic matter out of the landfill as possible and want to encourage folks to make compost at home too! If you have the space, consider starting a system and keep it ultra-local! There are so many options and ways to make this happen. If you’re interested in doing this or need to troubleshoot, just reach out and we’ll offer any advice we can. Just email Kim with your questions: kim@friendsoftivoli.org
The following tip sheets and manuals are from the NYC Compost Project which are full of information for starting to compost at home.
While we could always make our own resources, these are great and there’s no reason to re-invent the wheel!
Outdoor Composting Guide
Indoor Composting with a Worm Bin
Worm Bin Troubleshooting Guide
Decomposers in a Compost Pile
Compost Made Easy
What to Compost
How to Use Compost
Using Mulch
NYC Master Composter Manual
Compost Partnerships
Past and Present
We are grateful for our partnerships with the following:
Food Scraps 360
Hamilton Street Cafe
Rare Form Brewing Company
The Little Rice Ball
Restaurant / Small Business Composting
For a small fee, we can process food scraps from restaurants and small businesses. If you are interested in this, please e-mail Kim to discuss options: kim@friendsoftivoli.org.