The Ballston Spa Compost Initiative (BSCI) Fall 2020 Update

The Ballston Spa Compost Initiative (BSCI) is an umbrella volunteer organization providing a free community service which pairs restaurants, businesses, and not for profits that generate food scraps with local home composters, offering a management option when food waste can’t be avoided. Individual composters make their own pickup arrangements with their paired food scrap providers, compost in the comfort of their own yards, and use the compost for their home gardens. Restaurants and food pantries/soup kitchens are given standard 5-gallon buckets (as many as they need, no charge) and they call or text when the buckets are full and ready for pick up and exchange with cleaned, odor-free empty buckets, or regularly scheduled pick up times are arranged.

BSCI founder, Sander Bonvell, and his wife are long-time gardeners with extensive flowers, shrubs, vegetables and fruits; their home in Saratoga County, NY is known for its gardens. In 2018 Mr. Bonvell decided to ‘ramp up’ his composting by teaming with a small popular niche restaurant to do a pilot study for collecting their vegetable, fruit and coffee/tea scraps only – no meat, fish, processed or prepared foods, oils, breads, etc. – to evaluate the volume of food scraps the restaurant could sustainably produce, and the composting capacity.

Shortly thereafter the ‘pilot’ restaurant opened a new market bistro next door and the combined establishments averaged about 3-4 buckets a week during the busy summer and fall growing seasons, more scraps/peels vs. whole vegetables/fruits. This was still not a significant load for Mr. Bonvell’s 4-bin composter. Note:  a separate heap is used for landscape wastes, brush, twigs, weeds, trimmings, etc. which do not impact BSCI food-only compost production.

During April 2019 Mr. Bonvell’s focus turned to keeping food scraps out of landfills in addition to just making compost. He created a small brochure, set up basic written guidelines and went door to door to most of the restaurants in Ballston Spa, NY offering to take their food scraps. Smaller restaurants and coffee houses signed on and BSCI was born, but he was unsuccessful in attracting larger restaurants, their issues being the ‘work’ of separating the vegetables and fruits from other kitchen wastes (i.e., meats, processed food), and storing buckets.

Two fortuitous meetings brought Mr. Bonvell together with fellow villagers, one who was already collecting coffee grounds from a café for his home composting, followed only days later by a conversation with a friend who revealed her passion for years-long composting in Vermont before moving to our village in upstate New York. One thing led to another, and in mid-April 2019 the Ballston Spa Compost Initiative began growing: at their own schedules the three ‘members’ pick up food scraps from restaurants and coffee houses, and two county economic opportunity council food pantries, one of which is a large food/soup kitchen, supplied with food scraps by a major regional food store chain, and a large regional food bank.

During the 2018 pilot program with the first restaurant, buckets were weighed periodically noting that different types of food wastes gave different bucket packings, like wet coffee grounds with a high water content (up to 40 lbs. per bucket) versus a bucket with a dozen or more large eggplants and lots of empty space. The pilot restaurant was consistent per its menu, and full 5-gallon buckets each weighed consistently an average 20 lbs.

Today, with a different, more varied and larger food scrap stream we find bucket weights between 21 – 22 lbs. Using the earlier more conservative 4 lb./gallon (volume determined by visual assessment, not just the number of buckets since all buckets are not always full), since mid-April 2019 and despite the current pandemic the three BSCI composters have kept over 10 tons of good compostable food scraps out of the landfill, and made the equivalent compost for their own use. They use Excel-style Google Sheets and update pick-ups and quantities on-line in real time by determining the volume of each bucket rounded to the nearest gallon or half-gallon and applying the more conservative factor of 4 lbs. per gallon.

Organizations seeking to create their own community composting service have contacted BSCI to learn of our model, and we have consulted numerous individuals on the same topic. The hurdles for community composting appear to be the usual transportation, inconsistent food quantity, scheduling [problems] that is not time and energy ‘cost’ effective, and the idea of using one central location.

Our model also easily ensures that we remain ‘exempt’ under the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and New York State legislation (NYCRR 361-3 Composting and Other Organics Recycling Facilities) since for each composting site on a monthly average no more than 1,000 pounds or 1 cubic yard of food scraps, whichever is greater, are collected per week provided no more than 2,000 pounds are accepted in any one week; no un-composted waste remains on-site for more than 36 months; and bulking agent provides proper aeration and leachate control. BSCI composters do not accept food scraps directly from a ‘designated food scrap generator’ that generates on an annual average more than two tons per week.

Applying our model with volunteers could lead to more effective composting and keeping food scraps out of landfills. BSCI is a member of the New York State Association of Reduction, Reuse & Recycling,  and the United States Compost Council, and follows the guidance of these organizations and adherence to practices general to ‘home’ composting.  Mr. Bonvell is a public speaker about composting basics and has presented to garden clubs, children’s’ groups, grass roots environmental groups, and professional waste organizations.