The Good News: Scraps Pedicab Composting

(Image from 303 magazine, link below)

Up to 50% of what Denverites throw in the landfill is organic matter that could be composted (statistic from https://scrapsmilehigh.com). Putting organic matter into a landfill rather than composting it makes climate change worse, as it creates methane; solid waste landfills are the largest man-made source of methane in the US. You hear a lot about cow farts, but what about trash?

"Landfills are designed to be anaerobic, meaning that once waste has been dumped, very little air remains below the surface. Landfill gas is generated as a byproduct of the digestion of organic materials by organisms that thrive in these anaerobic conditions. Food waste, paper, grass, and other organic matter is readily digested and turned into landfill gas, which is 50 percent methane. While most modern landfills are required to capture some of their methane emissions, significant quantities continue to escape into the atmosphere.

While new waste incineration technologies are being promoted as ‘clean and green,’ they are not the best option for generating energy and have significant GHG emissions. In addition to air and water emissions (incineration produces carbon dioxide as a by-product), incinerators create toxic ash or slag that must then be landfilled. This ash contains heavy metals, dioxins, and other pollutants, making it too toxic to reuse, although industry often tries to do so." Source

This is one of the reasons why composting is so important. Composting captures carbon; and even if you are a climate change denier, healthy soils are important, using up what we produce instead of wasting is important, pollution is important, the toxic nature of landfills and the land taken up with them is important, feeding plants with healthy compost instead of algae-bloom-causing synthetic plant fertilizers is important ...you get the idea.

And yet, municipal composting programs in Denver DO NOT serve multi-family units above 7 residences. Um, have you seen Denver lately?

Construction (image from denverinfill)

Construction (image from Wikimedia)

Construction (image from denverurbanreview)

...yeah. That leaves a lot of us urban-dwellers out. I have never understood why the city would provide composting services to people with yards in houses who could put a bin outside and not to apartment dwellers, who maybe don't have the space or the tolerance for indoor fruit flies or ants or mice or roaches, depending on what neighborhood you're in...

Enter Scraps!

From https://303magazine.com/2018/03/pedicab-composters-partner-restaurants-apartments-make-denver-greener/?platform=hootsuite:

"The secret ingredients here are the no emission, all season, cart pulling tricycles that easily and efficiently fill the gaps in Denver’s composting infrastructure. Turner and the Scraps team of pedalers run routes during all seasons that range anywhere from eight to 20 miles. Each route revolves around a host restaurant compost drop-off point where the compostable material can them [sic] be dropped and left for pickup by Alpine. Each bike, trailer, and rider can haul hundreds of pounds of compostable waste at a time thanks to the addition of a battery pack and an electric assist."

Scraps tailors to multi-family buildings and small businesses (but they'll pick up from others, too), and have hauled over 61,000 lbs. so far (per their site, Scraps Mile High, link above). See their "report card" about their impact here: https://scrapsmilehigh.com/scraps-report-card

I'm going to ask my super if our building can get on board. Wish me luck!

That Red Fish your momma always warned you about

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