Sabbatical Radicals: The Dirt Factory

Ok so check this out...The Lake House used to operate a fledgling composting co-op. We would go around the neighborhood once a week and pick up bins of compost from other houses in our community and dump it in the fairly large pile of decomposing organic material we had in our yard. It was a beautiful mess. We ran the co-op for about a year and collected a little more than a half ton of compostable materials so that we could reinvest those nutrients into our communities soil. During that time we really struggled to have someone available each sunday afternoon to pick up from people and we had varying success with people using their bins. Eventually we stopped because of a lack of consistent pick up volunteers.

Today I saw how doable our vision was with just a few adaptations. We heard about and visited this place called The Dirt Factory in west Philly. As we drove to it I kept imagining a huge dump area with trucks and all the bells and whistles of a large operation. As we pulled up I was shocked to see a small city lot in the middle of an urban neighborhood will a few small compost demonstration 'backyard' set ups and then two huge composting containers. They found an overgrown and neglected lot in the city, contacted the owner and convinced him to allow them to do something for the community on it. Then the college had these two EARTH TUBS from a pilot project and gave them to The Dirt Factory at 'A very generous rate.'

Each unit can handle an input of about 100 lbs per day and can have as much as 3200 lbs of compost in it before full. Because of the size of these containers the internal temp of the actual compost reaches high enough temperatures to kill off seeds and other potentially unwanted life.(about 135+) They have a volunteer who simply turns the lid each day as the mixing auger spins and voila...Super fast compost production. They have teams that collect bags of 'brown' leaves and mulch to add to all the 'green' that their people bring in. They stockpile a large stack of bagged leaves to add as needed and then simply open their doors once a week for an hour and they have about a hundred households that are occasionally dropping off there compostables. We were there as they were open and just about everyone who showed up was either walking or biking so it seemed clear that they all lived within a very short distance from this neighborhood location. The drop off is free to anyone who wishes to use it and they are making small amounts of compost available for free to anyone starting a garden on there city stoops (there a not many yards in this city). Its beautiful!

Obviously there are people who would love this service and live too far to get their compost to the drop off location. Well another man with a truck has started a small business to augment this free service. For 15 dollars per month this man will drive to your place at an agreed upon time to pick up a nice 'composting bin' that your subscription gets you and deliver it for you to the drop off. Then each spring he also delivers about 30 gallons of compost to each household subscriber that wants it. Not bad huh?

Its very doable and I think I have some idea how to replicate that giant composter. It might be time to resurrect the composting co-op with a new model. As I reflected on the experience I think it would not have had as much of an impression on me if it was a huge operation that clearly had money backing it. That wasn't the case though. It was a small thing that seemed not to have much money involved at all and only a few people doing a small amount of work were keeping this thing going. I felt taunted and provoked by it!