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Chicago Announces Compost Pilot Program That Draws on Expertise of City’s Community Gardens

Food scraps can be composted into nutrients for soil. (herb007 / Pixabay)

“Just as the gardens host a community of gardeners working together to garden, the community compost operations will host a community of composters,” Helphand said.

By Patty Wetli
WTTW
November 14, 2022

Excerpt:

Following through on a recommendation made in a 2021 assessment of its waste management strategies, the city of Chicago announced Monday the launch of a small-scale pilot compost program.

Six community gardens have been chosen for the pilot and will accept materials from a limited number of participants, including garden members and select neighbors.

In this phase of the pilot, the gardens will not serve as drop-off points for the general public, emphasized Ben Helphand, executive director of NeighborSpace, which is partnering on the project with the Department of Streets and Sanitation.

“These are small, volunteer-run community gardens. Capacity is limited and there is a need to ensure only the right things are going into the bins and that they’re being tended properly,” Helphand told WTTW News.

Accepted items will be confined to garden trimmings, fruit and vegetable scraps, eggshells, coffee grounds and tea bags, all of which can be composted on-site using a fairly standard three-bin compost system. Items typically picked up from residences or businesses by commercial compost haulers — such as bones, pizza boxes and cheese — are excluded.

The pilot’s approach leverages community gardens’ existing networks and infrastructure and mirrors their underlying mission.

Read the complete article here.