Everything keeps decomposing very nicely this spring on the ECI compost piles - which is just the way we like it. While the daffodils and tulips are bringing life back to the garden, we are working on our own colorful display of orange and banana peels, intermixed with wilted greens of every variety.
As usual for this time of year, our stockpile of Black Gold (or finished compost) has been almost fully depleted, last year’s harvest having been spread onto the garden beds to freshen them up for spring planting. But a new compost season has just begun and the volume of food scraps we collect each week continues growing. We are on track to divert more than 15,000 pounds of food waste from the Southampton solid waste stream in 2023!
This year we are very pleased to welcome our first restaurant to the community compost program - the New Moon in East Quogue has started sending their kitchen scraps our way, rounding out the cycle of garden to kitchen back to the garden, which is so vital to maintaining the health of our environment. Our volunteers are also still working closely with the East End Food Institute picking up some of the very tastiest food scraps from their test kitchen for delivery to our lucky local chickens. It’s not too late to sign up yourself, if you’re looking for an easy way to reduce your carbon footprint and improve local sustainability. Click here to sign up.
We’re also very excited to announce that ECI is in the process of finalizing arrangements with the Town of Southampton for setting up a pilot program this summer for community composting at one of the Town’s transfer stations. This would be a first of its kind effort on Long Island to adopt best practices by adopting a 100% home grown solution.