I even tried to model this year’s Berklee BeanTown Jazz Festival on it, which was only somewhat successful. We recycled for the first time—so much that we overflowed our capacity for it. But the composting didn’t go over so well, and the whole thing was unnecessarily hectic.

The Boston Local Food Festival's waste stations.

So what did I learn from the comparison?

• Require compostable dishes. The Boston Local Food Festival’s composting worked because people didn’t have to dispose of their food and dishes separately or worry that food contaminated their recyclable dishes. Everything could just be thrown in together. Compostable dishes were a requirement that was included in the food vendors’ contracts.
• Use a single waste disposal company. Save That Stuff handled the collection and disposal of the recycling, composting, and trash. Berklee used Jet-A-Way for trash, Capital Paper Recycling for recycling, Planet Police for compost, and Acme Building Services to collect it all. This made sense in our last-minute scramble to pull this all together, since they’re all companies that Berklee already contracts with, but it made for a disjointed and inefficient system. With one company, the collectors are knowledgable about the process—I saw one Save That Stuff woman reaching into the trash (with gloves) to pull out plates that people had mistakenly thrown away, decreasing the trash by at least half. This is actually in Save That Stuff’s best interest, since it costs more to throw stuff away than to recycle or compost it.
• Enlist passionate volunteers. The Boston Local Food Festival had two friendly volunteers at each station to educate people about what goes where. BeanTown had one student at each, who had been randomly assigned the job. Some of them were great at engaging festivalgoers; others, not so much. Enlisting volunteers who are actually enthusiastic and knowledgable about reducing waste would help.

The Berklee BeanTown Jazz Festival's waste stations.

I got a new composter for my birthday! The one I got for a good price from Medford is decent, but it’s hard to stir up. Also, it’s almost full, and I don’t know what to do with my new compost as I wait for the old stuff to brew.

So, for my birthday, I got an Achla CMP-05 spinning composter. We couldn’t find it locally, so we bought it from Amazon. Adam helped us put it together, which was actually kind of fun, and very easy. He had a lot of fun spinning it before we loaded it up, though after we filled it I had to put my back into it to turn it.

Adam helps spin it.

It’s more of a batch composter, meaning it’s better to put a bunch of stuff in at the beginning and let it stew than to add more all the time. So we’ve been shoveling in the half-dirt, half-scrap mess from the old composter. We’ll let the new bin finish the compost off while we start a fresh batch in the old one. The advantage to this is that, since it’s already half-done, the moisture ratio is right and there’s no dripping, which I’ve heard can be a problem with one of these spinning ones if you put in too many greens.

It’s so satisfying to stop putting my kitchen scraps into the garbage. That few weeks between the old one filling up and the new one arriving were trauma. I have no use for compost, but my friend Liala is a super-gardener, and I’ll just had it off to her—she covets the stuff like cool water on a hot day. So it’s win-win, and I’m back on the Earth’s good side!

How did you start this company?

It branched off of a major recycling company, Environmental Operation Management Services (EOMS), about three years ago. We decided to put a separate arm of the company together to handle food waste. It was almost experimental at the beginning. The containers are pretty much the same as you would use for gathering bottles and cans on the campus. Where all of that investment was already made, it was now a matter of seeing if it would work. And it has. There’s a long long way to go, don’t get me wrong, but as of right now, it’s working. And as the desire comes up, everybody will be in position to do more of it.

Leon Tarentino of Planet Police

How many customers do you have?

70-75.

What sorts of places?

We’re doing some hospitals. Public schools, we’re just branching into. We do a lot of hotels, restaurants, other colleges. And food manufacturers, bakeries.

What’s your service area?

We cover from the Lynn area north of Boston to Framingham, Natick, and Westborough, and then the Rhode Island line and up the Cape Cod canal and up the south shore, all of Boston.

That’s a huge service area for just four employees!

That’s part of the issue; that’s why we continue to try to grow within it. It’s a route density issue. There’s a lot of driving.

Is it cost effective if gas prices rise?

If the fuel prices keep increasing, it is going to become more of an issue. That’s why we need to get that route density, so they’re stopping more times but less distance. Right now we are doing okay with it.

What is your background?

My background was 32 years in the food service industry, where I worked for a distributor that brought the food to the location rather than away from it. I’ve spent a lot of time in kitchens.

How many other services like this exist right now?

The only other company that does this is Save that Stuff in Charlestown. They have a lot tighter footprint; they don’t branch out to the suburbs much at all. I think Casella has a like service in Vermont, but they don’t do food waste in Massachusetts.

Many times I’ll go in to see a prospect who will say, “I really thought of doing this, I just didn’t know how to go about it,” because there aren’t that many players in the game. At some point in time, when the demand comes up, like everything else, there will be other companies involved, as well.

Are there a lot of different sites that you’re able to take the compost?

There are probably 12 state-approved facilities. But the DEP (Department of Environmental Protection) is trying their best to develop, say, 5 more sites with anaerobic digesters in the state. Right now they’re mostly open-air facilities, either farms or just dedicated compost yards, but it’s an outside process, not internal.

Are these facilities able to compost biodegradable plastic?

Usually in a case where there’s plastic it goes to the digester, because they don’t have an issue with it. But any of the open-air facilities prefer not to have the plastics in there, because it doesn’t decompose at the same rate, and then the finished product doesn’t have the pH levels that, say, all food would have or all yard waste. If we have customers that use the biodegradable or compostable products, then we’ll bring that to a digester facility.

There’s a certain percentage that the farmers don’t have a problem with. They separate it out, anyway. There’s a certain fudge factor, certain things that do get in there that they don’t have a problem handling. At this point, no one has called and said with Berklee we have to treat it differently, so right now it’s going to more outside facilities than the digester.

I heard there weren’t very many anaerobic digesters in the state.

There aren’t. There’s actually one right now, and there’s going to be one in Rockland, and then they’re looking in the southeast area, they want to get down near the border, near the Cape, but they have a tough time. It’s expensive—multimillion-dollar investments. That’s why it’s kind of a dog chasing its tail. Do we have enough material, and do we have the place to bring it? If the DEP had their way they would have mandated last May that you’d have to separate food waste out of solid waste, but they quickly realized if they did that, there wouldn’t be enough haulers or facilities to handle it. So what’s going to happen? It’s going to end up right back in the landfill again. Over time I’m sure they’ll rectify those issues. A lot of out-of-state investors have come forward and they want to spend the money on digesters. It’s honestly a matter of the town or the city not having a problem. The old NIMBY [not in my backyard] thing. I’m on the DEP organic task force to help them to try to establish these facilities.

You wouldn’t think that would be that much of an issue,  because it’s indoors.

It’s an education issue. A lot of people think they’re going to get the downwind effect; they don’t want the smell. These are all internal facilities with scrubbers and the air is cleaned. The one we have in Southborough right now, they have not had a complaint on any odors, because it is well kept internally.

The farmers, unfortunately, they’re closing down year after year. They’re taking the big development money and selling their farms, and of course that’s less facilities. That’s why we need those digesters; we desperately need them.

Are there any plans for collecting compost in the future?

The limiting factor on that right now is that there is no facility within reasonable driving distance of the city that can handle the kind of volume of food scraps that we’d get if we had a curbside collection program for residents. There are a few private companies that are moving forward with plans to build new facilities for the Boston area, so that needs to come first. We need a facility that can process yard waste and food waste together, similar to the way that the San Francisco and the Seattle programs work. The programs in place for businesses and for the drop-off program, that food waste is being taken to farms that are basically at capacity. They can’t handle the kind of volume that we’d get with the curbside program.

What farms are they being taken to right now?

There’s Rocky Hill Farm in Saugus and Brick-Ends Farm in Hamilton. They’re large-scale facilities, but they’re small when we’re talking about providing collection to everybody in Cambridge. I’ve estimated that we’d see at least 3,000 tons a year; it could be three times that. The food waste drop-off program is basically 50 tons a year—we’d be doing about 50 tons a week.

The farms are doing outdoor composting in windrows, long piles they turn every day. It would be impossible, I think, to site an outdoor composting facility in the Boston area. You’ve got neighbors and odor concerns. So the companies are looking at this technology called anaerobic digestion, where you can do composting indoors in an environment where there’s no oxygen, and they can capture the methane that is emitted during that composting for electricity or fuel. The city of Toronto has a few of these, and it’s very popular in Europe in urban areas.

The city is watching what the private sector is exploring. Casella Recycling, is looking at anaerobic digestion, as well as Save That Stuff, a local hauler. There are a few other projects that are being considered.

I think within the next two to three years we’ll be in a better position to consider curbside organics collection. We’ve had the drop-off program for residents for two years, and businesses have had the curbside organics for four years. We get a lot of questions about this, and I hope we will be in a position to offer it.

The best option, of course, is to try to compost at home. If you have backyard space, DPW sells compost bins for $50. Apartment dwellers can compost indoors with a worm bin.

If you’re not sure whether something is recyclable in your town, is it better to toss it in the bin for them to sort at the center or should you just not include it?

Well, the top items that are not accepted are food, plastic bags, Styrofoam, VCR tapes, liquids, and light bulbs. We don’t take glass dishes or cups, and no plate glass, like picture frames or windows, which can be leaded glass. Currently no pizza boxes, but the new program is going to accept empty pizza boxes. Other than those items, we do accept a lot of materials: all paper, all plastics, glass bottles, metal can, and cardboard. With the new program, any stiff plastic will be accepted, even if it doesn’t have a number on it.

Ultimately, if you’re not sure, I’d say, “When in doubt, throw it out.” But call or visit the website and check. The big no-nos are plastic bags and food waste.

Anything else about the program that you want to share?

I’d love to get the word out about the recycling tours. We’ve got one a month: September 29, October 28, and November 18. They’re open to the public, and it’s a really great way for people to see the recycling process in action and feel confident that what they’re putting in their bin is really getting sorted and sent to companies to be made into new products. Recycling is real, and it’s an important industry in our economy. We have a six-minute video on our website of the recycling processes in Charlestown, so if you can’t make the tour, you can also watch that. To sign up, e-mail recycle@cambridgema.gov or call 617-349-4815.

One year ago: My Biggest Environmental Sin.

• Mix compost directly in with potting soil or sand. The ideal ratio is 1:5. Don’t use much more compost than this or the soil will retain too much water and the plants’ roots will rot. This is exactly what happened the first time I tried this a couple years ago.
• Steep the compost in water and use the resulting “tea” as liquid fertilizer. Mix two tablespoons of compost per liter of water and let it stand for a day.
• Put a layer of compost on top of the soil. Same idea as the previous one, but it’s less work. It also retains moisture like mulch, but might actually encourage weeds.

Basil, dill, and chives

For the herbs that we planted, we mixed compost directly in with the potting soil. I don’t know if it’s the compost or all the rain we’ve been getting lately, but they’re going nuts. It’s hard to use them as fast as they grow. Unfortunately, some sort of sprouts that were seeds in the compost are popping up, too. I actually have to weed my potted plants!

It obviously wasn’t the ideal environment for the poor worms; the few dried-up bodies on the floor around the bin were a testament to that. The compost is too compacted because we haven’t been turning it, and too moist because we haven’t been adding paper to absorb the water. But the worms are still doing fine. In fact, they’re huge, and there are tons of them!

Worms love curling up in eggshells and laying cocoons.

There are even worms left in the old bin, the one we stopped feeding in September because it was “finished.” Now it’s really finished, maybe overly so. We’re going to pick the worms out and add them to the current bin. Once we get rid of the compost, we can start fresh and have two bins going at the same time.

There probably aren't even any nutrients left in there....

But from now on, to prevent another fly infestation, I’ll freeze all my scraps before putting them in the bin. Another method of killing fly eggs is microwaving, but I think I like freezing better.

I’m so glad that we can use our worm bins again—all the scraps building up in our fridge were gross and all the trips to Whole Foods to get rid of them were inconvenient. And I love playing with my wormies.

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Not feeding that bin for a couple months has completely eradicated the fly population living in the compost. Unfortunately, it looks like they’ve all moved to the new bin.

This is so embarrassing! I swear I’ve never had a fly problem before. We’ve been keeping the flies out of the rest of the house by storing the fruit in the fridge and the dirty dishes in the dishwasher, and putting out cups of apple cider vinegar.

To get rid of them completely, we’re going to stop feeding the new bin for a few weeks. It takes fruit flies 10 days at the most to mature from larvae, and as we’ve seen with the old bin, the worms can survive (even thrive) far longer than that without new food.

We’re also going to add a fly trap to the bin. We’ll make one by putting an apple core in a jar, snipping off a corner of a Ziploc bag, and attaching it to the mouth of the jar with an elastic. If we kill as many adult flies as we can and withhold food so they don’t multiply, we could solve this problem.

To prevent it in the future, from now on we’re going to freeze all of our scraps before adding them to the compost. That’ll kill any eggs that might stow away on fruit peels. Wish us luck!

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To harvest the compost, we first emptied the bin into piles. Worms automatically move away from light, so they congregate at the center of each pile. Then you can easily sift through the compost until you get to the ball of worms in the center. Okay, maybe not easily—it took three hours for Jason and I to get through it all. It could have been a lot faster, but we were stopping to pick out every one, rather than tossing them into the new bin en masse.

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After weighing the worms, we added them to the new bin, already filled with newspaper and food scraps. (Thanks for your contribution, Sharon!) We tore the newspaper into strips this time, rather than putting it through a shredder, in the hopes that the larger pieces will discourage the worms from munching on their bedding. Then we wet down the newspaper so the worms could breathe. (Very important.)

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The old compost wasn’t completely broken down yet (and, in fact, had a few pepper sprouts growing in it), so we left a few little worms and some cocoons behind, to finish it up. I feel bad sacrificing them, but I think we’ve rescued more by starting the new bin now.

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There was one casualty. Oliver snapped up a particularly adventurous worm before we could stop him. You should have seen him jump when it moved in his mouth!

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The enemy

The culprit was probably a melon from my fruit salad last week. (The seeds from the cantaloupe are the only things still recognizable in the compost, except for those darn cabbage leaves.) Not only did they attract fruit flies, but they made the compost too moist. Note to self: a balanced diet includes fruit and vegetables—for worms as well as humans.

So after we buried our food scraps this week, we piled on tons of shredded newspaper. It’ll absorb the water and (hopefully) prevent the flies from getting down to the food. We also put a small bowl of vinegar on top of the lid. We’ll see if that does them in. Flies are notoriously hard to get out of worm bins.

In any case, I think we’ll be harvesting the compost next weekend. The worms are eating everything so quickly that we’re having a hard time keeping up with them, and their waste to bedding ratio is out of whack. I think we’ll transfer most of them to a fresh bin, piled high with newspaper and food.

We’ll leave a few worms behind to put the finishing touches on the compost, but we won’t feed them anymore. As long as we keep the whole thing far away from the new bin, that should starve out the flies. I hope. I’ll keep you posted.