Sunday, November 8, 2009

Recycling the Harvest Dinner Biodegradables

Members of the Park Presbyterian Chruch "Green Team" (Newark, NY)were interested in composting all biodegradable materials from the Harvest Dinnner fund raising event held on October 30th. I agreed to compost these biodegradable materials in one of my multiple compost piles. Below is a photo/video clip journal of what I did.

Three bags of food prep materials, paper products (napkins, table cloths, etc) and the actual food materials not consumed by patrons. I estimated this to be about 50 lbs of biodegradable waste.

A composting bin was constructed using four wooden pallets strapped together and a bed of yard leaves were placed at the bottom of the bin.

Non-biodegradable materials were separated from the biodegrables for comercial landfilling.
The leaves were soaked with water.

A layer of the biodegrable materials were scattered ontop of the leaves.


Here you see the first layer of biodegrables on a bed of leaves in the bin.

A video clip to illustrate the layering technique .

The finished pile, to which I have added more alternating layers of leaves & horsemanure as the pile has settled over the past week.
The pit core temperature reading (F) on November 8th. Composting started on November 1st.

The compost pile 7 on November 8th.

Here is a brief video clip of active composting piles in my back yard.