Compost Round Up: “Bokashi Composting”
For this week, we'd like to report on a topic that our operations manager Faith recently brought to our attention, Bokashi Composting. It's quite a bit different than the 'backyard' composting…
Compost Round Up: “It’s Getting Hot in Here”
Did you know the heat from inside a compost pile can heat your water? There’s a relatively new system introduced by innovator Jean Pain called Compost Power. This involves setting up…
Compost Round Up: “Use a Mug to Chug”
So what's the deal with composting those plastic-lined paper cups? This question was proposed recently at a staff meeting, and certainly, as an army of composting nuts, was worth investigating. As…
Compost Round Up: “Bioplastics in our Biosphere”
For those of us emptying buckets, picking up bags from commercial accounts, checking inside buckets, 'compostable' cutlery or 'bioplastics' is a familiar sight. What are bioplastics exactly? How are they…
Wake Up to Compost: an Introduction
By Lucy Dilworth
Hi everyone! I wanted to formally introduce myself as the newest addition to the Bootstrap community. My name is Lucy and I’m a fresh faced blogger from Maine who recently planted roots in the big city. I graduated last spring from Miami University in Ohio where I studied creative writing. Post-graduation, I indulged in my wanderlust and traveled to the opposite side of the world where I lived with an array of fascinating individuals, including a citrus farmer and a taxidermist. At one point, I found myself composting New Zealand soil with the locals! Despite my ever-changing scenery, I’m grateful to now be in a city where I have the opportunity to be educated on urban composting and pass my knowledge onto others.
Although it’s been awesome to see residential and commercial food scrap collections in an urban setting, I was even more astounded when I saw a composting bin at my 86-year-old grandmother’s house a few weeks ago in Manchester-By-The-Sea. In terms of my own awareness of composting, it’s been very limited until recently. During college, I lived with seven other girls. We certainly produced enough organic waste to compost. Sadly, our priorities lay within what we were going to wear out on the weekends rather than learning to recycle and reuse. When I saw my grandmother’s composting bin, I knew that I was way late to the game. Most people don’t compost because they don’t know how to or why it’s beneficial, which is a category I am guilty of falling into. However, with my new gig at Bootstrap and all the resources I have access to here and online, I can now start to learn about more sustainable practices at home and beyond. And composting? I guess it’s so easy my grandma can do it.
Speaking of revelations, last month I worked my first Bootstrap event at the Wake Up the Earth Festival while also entering Jamaica Plain territory for the first time (or JP as the cool kids say). The festival was a perfect exposure to one of the communities I’ll be working with and an alternative and educational way to spend my Saturday afternoon. It was also the perfect place for anyone trying to get over their agoraphobia. It was a humbling, yet successful experience considering I ran out of flyers within the first hour and one of my managers mistook me for an eager client with inappropriate personal space as I stood with him behind the Bootstrap table. On a positive note, (more…)
Compost Round Up: “Composting Ourselves”
Well this puts a new twist on composting. Katrina Spade, former UMass Architecture student and now Seattle resident has a developed a project for those of us wanting an alternative…
Compost Round Up: “Stick This in Your Tailpipe”
Today we thought we would take a moment and highlight our star food scrap, the banana peel. From our experience, at least half the buckets we collect have these suckers in 'em at…
Compost Round Up: “My Cup of Tea”
For this week's edition of Compost Round Up, we thought we'd delve into the wonders of Compost Tea. It came up briefly at a recent Bootstrap team meeting and we thought…
Compost Round Up: The Mighty 3-Tiered Compost System
Each week, Bootstrap Compost will be publishing the Compost Round Up. The Round Up will be a weekly serving of compost news from Boston and beyond. It is our hope that these…
A Green Gospel: Tiny Kitchen Scraps Have Big Civic Impact
Greetings compost nuts!
Since May, we’ve welcomed over 200 new Bootstrappers into our growing community of urban composters. With so many of you new to the Bootstrap game, we figured it prudent to take a moment to outline the tremendous benefits of having you on board. Your commitment to composting (a completely voluntary commitment at that) is laudable. So please, take a bow.
Now, let’s look at the impacts!
As a Bootstrap customer, you’re reducing your own carbon footprint (to date, you’ve helped to eliminate the emission of more than half a million pounds of harmful GHGs into the atmosphere), while helping to produce a over 250,000 pounds of natural soil amendment for local growers. Talk about a twofer! Additionally, as a BSC client you’ve helped create and fund over a dozen green jobs; support educational programming for students from kindergarten to college; and reduce the detrimental effects of landfills. So whether you know it or not, every Bootstrap subscriber is part of a community of activists that is spreading a profoundly more sustainable way of life. As a result, your membership allows The Boot to fulfill our biggest mission: empowering residents of Boston and its environs to (more…)