By Susannah Black
After witnessing an unstaffed waste collection station at a farmers market while on vacation in New Mexico, Michael Clem was inspired to bring composting back home to Alexandria. For the last year, four farmers markets in Alexandria (Old Town, Del Ray, Four Mile Run and West End) collected compost from residents.
As an environmental planner for Alexandria City, Clem started the Resource Recovery Division this past November, adding composting to the Alexandria City government-funded recycling service. Clem and his team have dedicated themselves to compiling compost—leftover food and other natural scraps—to reintroduce it to the earth, thereby creating healthy soil.
Joshua Etim, the Division’s resource recovery station manager, describes their mission as “encouraging a habit of composting in Alexandria … and diverting the organic waste out of the trash and into a better resource.” Other cities across the country have started aggressive campaigns to enforce composting, like San Francisco’s goal of zero waste by 2020. There’s also a group of eco-minded women from the Fertile Earth Foundation who put together a racy composting calendar (see above for the Kickstarter campaign) to garner attention for a less wasteful society.
“During the week you eat all of this good food, instead of throwing it away… at the end of the week, you give us the food scraps,” says Etim. Donating the compose is completely free at the Alexandria farmers markets. Eligible materials include: fruits, vegetables, nuts, coffee grounds, egg shells, breads, pasta, cereal, rice and flowers. Do not bring: meat products, oil, dairy or pet waste. Donators may bring their composting materials in bags or bins from home, or they can purchase a $5 composting pail at the market.
Once collected, Clem’s team sends the composting materials to the Peninsula Compost Group, where the waste is sold to companies on the East Coast that make soil and gardening products, like Home Depot.
Etim stations himself at the Old Town Farmers’ Market where he attends to 150 regular compost donators. The other three drop-off locations have a similar number of participants, with the Del Ray station having upwards of 220 regular donators. “We collect about 1,500 pounds each weekend from all the markets, about three tons a month,” Etim says.
A year since its inception, the Resource Recovery Division is “still in the awareness phase,” says Etim. In the future, the hope is to “make sure that the Del Ray and Old Town market stay strong,” as the Division intends to continue its efforts to provide a composting program for the community. Similarly, Clem’s next step is to “test the food waste recovery concept in apartment buildings in Alexandria.” Clem’s team hopes to partner with other organizations in order to further, what Clem sites as “our mission of developing an environmentally sustainable alternative to traditional waste disposal” and to “encourage this composting habit to be accepted and adopted by the community.”/ Resource Recovery Division, Alexandria Farmers Markets.
