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This past spring, students in my Urban Ecosystem Ecology course partnered with the City of Saint Paul, through CityLabs, to investigate the feasibility of using community gardens on city-owned land as neighborhood composting sites. As Saint Paul residents probably know, the city is undertaking a comprehensive review of its recycling policies this year, and our project was a small piece of this effort. For a class full of biologists and environmental scientists, it was an eye-opening experience to work on a project with direct policy implications. Our project featured four components: (1) a series of interviews with composting experts from local and state government and nonprofit organizations, (2) a survey distributed to community garden managers in the Twin Cities measuring their perception of the benefits and costs of this proposal, (3) a series of calculations for the composting capacity of these community gardens under various scenarios, and (4) a spatial analysis at the neighborhood level of composting capacity compared to food waste production. Student videographer Austin Riordan has produced a short video describing our project.
The take-home message from our research was that the growth in urban agriculture in the Twin Cities has created a demand for compost that could be met by neighborhood participation, but such a program would require a dedicated composting manager at each garden as well as educating participants. We presented our results at the Saint Paul Mayor’s Office in May, and the final report will soon be presented to our city partners.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
