Over the last two years of leading service projects in Washington DC, I have volunteered with several soup kitchens and homeless shelters. I respect and admire the work these organizations do. They help some of our most forgotten citizens.
One thing I love about some of these organizations is that they do great work rescuing unwanted food. For example, last year Bread for the City started its Glean for the City program, which gathers vegetables from local farms — all for free. And one of the better known examples of food-reclamation in the country was founded here in DC in 1989 — the DC Central Kitchen started off making meals for the homeless from the leftovers from the Presidential Inauguration festivals. These days, they rescue more than 600,000 pounds of food a year.
But in some cases at several social service organizations, I see a large amount of food waste ends up in the trash. I often wonder: Can these organizations compost? Is there a way to ‘close the loop’ on this process, to give back to the fields that produce the food? In response to these questions I raised to the DCFoodforAll Google Group, representatives from the Common Good City Farm, located near Howard University, say that the farm will start accepting compost from community members.
This may be just the start of a series of such community composting opportunities. In another response to these questions, the Director of Kitchen Operations at Miriam’s Kitchen, Steven Badt, noted that — even if there were local sites to compost — even a well-run service organization like Miriam’s would be daunted by the volunteer resources that regular composting would require. Also, there’s the question of volume: Badt estimates that the Kitchen ends up with fifty or a hundred or more gallons of food waste every day — “There is no way a community garden could handle/manage the amount.” He did note, however, that Miriam’s Kitchen will switch trash hauling companies in January 2011 to a company that does industrial composting. (This is just one of the green initiatives that they are undertaking there. Also they are looking at hiring a night green cleaning crew for their building. )
There are other opportunities on the horizon. Included in the DC Government’s proposed Healthy Schools Act, introduced by DC Council member Mary Cheh and Chairman Vincent Gray, there will be money set aside for a DC Schools compost pilot project. This could be a way to start a large scale composting program.
DC wouldn’t have the first large scale composting program in the nation. San Francisco implemented a mandatory composting law with fines for residents or businesses that throw anything compostable in the trash. 
(When the law went into effect, most of the city was already in compliance, because many companies and landlords already changed their practices.) Currently the city of Denver has a pilot residential composting program happening. And in Milwaukee, Will Allen of Growing Power says that his organization compost more than twelve million pounds of food waste yearly that came from a variety of different sources, from breweries to private homes.
Can Washington DC become another city to require composting? We are already the first city to install a bag tax. What would intermediary steps look like? A composting law could be years away. Could we start picking up small qualities of compost from social services agencies to take to community gardens? What are other ideas?
One of the first steps we can take is to support the Healthy Schools Act: On March 26 DC Council is holding a hearing on the Healthy Schools Act at 11 am in Room 500 of the John A. Wilson Building, 1350 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
What if the DC government created something like Baltimore Public Schools’ Great Kids Farm, a 33 acre educational farm in Catonsville, Maryland in response to this act? 
Let’s show support for the DC Schools Compost Pilot Program. This could be the first step towards closing the loop in getting food waste back to the land instead of the landfill.
Here are more details about the March 26 hearing:
Anyone wishing to testify at the hearing should contact Ms. Aukima Benjamin, staff assistant to the Committee on Government Operations and the Environment, at 724-8062, or via e-mail at abenjamin@dccouncil.us. Witnesses should bring 15 copies of their written testimony to the hearing. If possible, witnesses should submit a copy of their testimony in advance of the hearing to abenjamin@dccouncil.us. Witnesses will be allowed a maximum of three (3) minutes for oral presentation.
If you are unable to testify at the hearing, written statements are encouraged and will be made a part of the official record. Copies of written statements should be submitted either to the Committee on Government Operations and the Environment, or to Ms. Cynthia Brock-Smith, Secretary to the Council, Room 5 of the John A. Wilson Building, 1350 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C., 20004. The record will close at the end of the business day on April 2, 2010.
Thanks to Steven Badt, Greg Boom, Rebecca Kantar, Greg Plotkin, Jenn Roccanti, and Carl Rollins for their assistance on researching this topic on the DCFoodforAll Google Group.
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PERFECT PIZZA
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