Bloomington Community Orchard

I couldn't resist eating an apple
in front of an apple tree

This past Saturday rolled around with relatively very few to-do things on my list, and the day was simply too gorgeous to be stuck inside catching up on my sleep or doing my textbook reading. So I headed over to the Community Orchard for their Saturday workday from 1-5. I was at the orchard last year during their Cider Festival and it was a perfect fall day to be out drinking hot cider, get my face painted, and watch young kids find ways to “beat the system” when bobbing for apples. Saturday was one again those beautiful fall days that you just had to be out and  about, and I chose the orchard to bask in the weather.  

I ran into one of the old IUOS interns, Amy, and she happily gave me the task of mulching patches of soil that had exposed cardboard. Exposed cardboard pulls out water from the soil, and by placing mulch over these areas, the soil can retain more water (especially necessary since the state has been getting so little water). So there I was pulling/ pushing a wheelbarrow of mulch around the circle of the orchard and meticulously looking for any signs of cardboard showing. It doesn’t sound very intriguing, but just being able to do such a simple task that can help the plants grow, felt great.   There’s something about getting away from campus, and being in a small nature environment that just calms the soul.

Side Note:

For those who had been following my personal project on biking around Bloomington with the help of the Blooming Community Bike Project, you would have found out that I’m getting better at riding to SPEA and back a few times a week. I went from learning to drive about 5 years ago, to re-learning how to ride a bike a month ago, to learning how to roll a wheelbarrow without tipping all the mulch to one side (which I will admit happened once out of 3 times). Fun times. 4 wheels to 2 wheels to 1 wheel. At least this time I wasn't actually riding a unicycle.

Future Pear Sanctuary

The orchard is just about 3 years old, and their apple trees are starting to shape up. I also learned that the center of the orchard is a circle of pear trees that is currently enclosed with a fence built by a local blacksmith. When the pear trees bloom, they will completely grow into the fence and create what I would image a pear sanctuary in the middle of the orchard- creative design indeed. So contrary to what I had previously thought, the orchard doesn’t grow just apples- it has pears, a fig bush nook, persimmon trees and choke bushes (choke berries are edible superfoods, despite their name, although you could have fooled me).

An Insect Survey-
Not a giant apple on a 2-yr  old tree

I also noticed a relatively large globe hanging from almost all the young trees. At first glace, I thought 'that can't already be fruit', but under further investigation, I realized that it was a sticky round ball, used to identify insects around the tree. The volunteers use this essentially as an insect survey- creative, isn't it?

I stayed at the orchard until it was time to pack up and leave, but I am positive I will be back. The people at the orchard are extremely friendly – someone even brought homemade sourdough bread and she made an open face treat with almond butter, sliced apples, and ginger spread- and yes it was delicious. Additionally, in between wheelbarrow rollings, I watched another volunteer’s dog sniff around looking for moles and digging up the mulch, determined the catch the critters. I would call that a well spent Saturday.

Finally, a quick heads up: the cider fest is occurring again this year at the end of October so keep your eyes and ears peeled for that!

Wasting Compost

I have attended my fair share of sustainability events throughout my life, and an event is not never complete without food. And as always, I crack a smile when the silverware, plates, and napkins are biodegradable and compostable. However, my smile fades a little when I realize (again) that 99.99% of these biodegradable and compostable materials at this particular event will end up in a landfill, many miles away from where I was currently scoping appetizers into my mouth.

In the meantime, in a land not so far away, San Fransciscians are happily eating off their compostable plates that will actually be composted. 

San Francisco was one of the first cities in the United states with curbside composting in 1996 when a study found that more than one third of the city’s landfill waste could be compostable. Today, the city diverts nearly 78% of it’s landfill waste through recycling and composting services.  Most Americans can recognize the black bin for trash, and the blue bin for recycles, but only the privileged can roll out their green compost bins for curbside pickup. The city provides residents with green wheel-able bins with lids to increase the ease of moving bins from the house to the curb. Information is scattered through neighborhoods with flyers in English, Spanish, and Chinese (know your audience!), that explains what items can and cannot go into the green bins, and perhaps  suggest the recycling bin, waste bin, or electronic recyclable center.  The city even has an educational component introducing the Food to Flowers program in schools that encourages students to compost their school lunches. Ultimately San Francisco is striving for a zero-waste goal by 2020. 

So if San Francisco can do curbside recycling, divert over three quarters of their waste from landfills, save valuable money and space, and still want to be zero-waste in less than ten years, why is it so difficult for all other major cities in the country to do the same thing? Well, it hasn’t been that hard.  Nearly 100 cities in the United States now have curbside composing including Seattle, WA, Portland, OR, and Boulder, CO.  But there are still many cities that do not offer curbside composting.

Why?

Politics (Surprised?). Politics is not the only answer, but a pretty dominant reason why.  The trash hauling industry, mostly led by the Waste Management company, makes a lot of money. The garbage company make $3.46 billion in revenue just in their second quarter of 2012. And how do these people make money? By hauling away as much trash as they can humanly possible haul away. The more the merrier. And with all these billions of dollars in revenue, the least Waste Management can do is give money to state politicians, who happen to lobby to keep yard wastes and recyclables  in landfills. Of course, Waste Management has argued that their business model is NOT about “the more the merrier”, and points to their methane capture systems can be one of the ways to best use organicmaterials in landfills. However, such methane capture systems are not active until several years after recyclables and compostable materials have already began building up- wasted years food scrapes and yard clippings that could have been composted and returned back to the soil from the very beginning. 

But have no fear. Even if your city does not offer curbside composting, composting is relatively simple to do indoors and outdoors. Most residents with limited spaces can buy plastic bins, and fill the bin up with newspaper, food scrapes, and worms. Even New Yorkers can do it in their miniscule apartments! For those who are financially endowed,  Nature Mill’s line of automatic bins look phenomenal. For the price of $250- $400, the compost bin heats, aerates, and turns an upper chamber. The compost is then dumped into a lower chamber where any individual can pull out a tray full of nutritious fertilizer. Now the question is what to do with all that fertilizer!

Composting needs to be viewed as the norm in most cities and states in the country, which is unlikely to happen because curbside recycling isn’t even available in all major cities. But that doesn’t stop people from recycling. The same should go for composting. After all, compostable plates should be composted, not tossed as Frisbees onto towering landfills.