Compost at Trans-Am Cafe (Ridgewood, NYC)
When I started working at Trans-Am Cafe, I was known for speaking openly about single-use cup pollution. We had plenty of “to stay” cups, and a “bring your own cup” discount and I always let people know about it. It was beautiful to see the same customers bringing reusable travel mugs or just plain mason jars for their morning brew.
In spite of the slow but noticeable trend towards a sustainable ethos in the cafe, we were still throwing away three landfill bags per night, mostly filled with coffee grounds and food scraps. Organic matter, mixed with plastics and chemicals, in landfill bags. My focus diverted from cups to compost “there’s got to be a solution for this” I thought.
My radical idea was born 🤩
What if I could collect all the food scraps and organic waste from the cafe and compost it on-site in the backyard?
I got approval from the owner of the property & the cafe, I got my co-workers on board, and I set out to make it happen. First, I reached out to BK ROT, they were great consultants for the project and they told me about the Microgrant from the New York Department of Sanitation.
Then I came up with a plan. The food scraps would go through two decomposition methods; first a fermentation period with Bokashi in 30-gallon plastic barrels. For this, I reached out to Vondra from “Vokashi” and she donated the barrels!
Bokashi involves inoculating woodchips or chaff with EM-1 microbes. When the microbe chaff is sprinkled on wet food scraps, the microbes activate and begin to decompose the matter anaerobically (meaning, without oxygen). Essentially fermenting it.
This bokashi step allowed for the scraps to soften and go through an initial breaking-down period, and provided extra storage.
When a barrel was done fermenting it would get moved into the aerated bins and mixed with a proper ratio of “carbon-based materials”
Serendipitously there also happened to be a contractor on-site that would discard huge bags of cedar woodchips and sawdust. All of a sudden I was diverting two streams of organic waste from going to the landfill, and they happened to need each other.
We won the grant! 1k upfront and another 1k when we demonstrate that the system is sustainable and will continue to exist.
We started collecting in mid-May and recording our progress. Inside the cafe, I replaced two landfill trash bins with 5-gallon compost buckets. Every night they would be taken outside, and once a week, my co-worker Iko and I would get to work weighing, chopping, and processing the food scraps. Every week we weighed out 250 lb of scraps.
The project was discontinued for numerous reasons among them a lack of funding, but it was a tremendous learning experience for me and the beginning of my journey as a devoted composter, and compost activist. In addition, we were able to cure and deliver over 1000lb of finished compost to a community garden in Gravesend, Brooklyn.
