Crains New York - July 15, 2013 - (Page 22)
Composting catches on
Continued from Page 21
Ecology Center—the nonprofit
that has been collecting the scraps
at the Union Square Greenmarket
since 1994—says its client numbers
have doubled in the past five years.
It has 1,500 households participating,and that’s one of many community projects offered around the city.
GrowNYC, a nonprofit that runs
environmental programs, oversees
compost drop-off bins at 35 greenmarkets, such as the ones in Carroll
Gardens, Brooklyn, and Jackson
Heights, Queens.
The ecology center handles four
tons of food scraps a week, processing them at its compost facility in
East River Park to create natural
fertilizer, which it then sells.
“Composting as a concept has
taken off,” said Christine DatzRomero, a co-founder of the center. “It has to do with more consciousness about planet change and
people understanding that the little things they can do in their own
life can be part of the solution.”
Messy masses
If Mayor Michael Bloomberg
gets his way, the practice may soon
become mainstream. Overall, city
officials say, more than 30% of the
city’s total waste could be composted. Last year, more than 1.2 million
tons of organic waste went to landfills in other states at a cost of more
than $85 million.
Last month, the mayor—who
has already started a number of
composting pilot programs across
the city—announced an ambitious
plan that would require all New
Yorkers to separate their food
scraps from other garbage by 2016.
Composting pioneers feel vindicated by the city’s plan,but many are
skeptical that the masses will comply. They also worry that city officials don’t fully understand what a
messy business they are getting into.
“Imagine a building with hundreds of tenants and everyone
dumping their scraps in a bin,” said
Regina Cornwell,a writer who specializes in climate change. “Even if
the containers are fairly closed up,
there is always going to be someone
who is a slob.Traditional composting is messy, and it will attract bugs
and animals.”
Ms. Cornwell composts in her
The mayor
‘needs to take
the “ick” factor
out of it’
apartment using a Japanese method
called bokashi.She pays $40 a month
to a small company called Vokashi,
which provides a five-gallon container and a mixture of bran and microbes. The mixture breaks down
the food by fermenting it, so there is
little smell. The company replaces
the container each month.
“I wouldn’t be able to compost if
I had to do it the traditional way,”
Ms. Cornwell said. “It would smell
a lot, and it’s heavy to carry to the
greenmarket each week.”
All the composters interviewed
for this story use a different method
to get rid of their food scraps. But
all of them agree that the practice
requires major dedication.
Alysia Reiner, an actor in the
Netflix series Orange Is the New
Black, said she has wanted to compost for 10 years but only recently
was able to persuade her “incredibly neat and fastidious” husband.
Now she keeps a small pail in the
kitchen and dumps it every couple
of days in a bin in the backyard of
their Harlem brownstone. Ms.
Reiner uses the fertilizer she makes
for her small garden.
Heather Topcik,the chief librarian at the Bard Graduate Center in
Manhattan, has been composting
READY TO COMPOST?
WHERE AND WHEN TO SCHLEP YOUR SCRAPS:
BRONX
Bronx Borough Hall Greenmarket
Grand Concourse and West 161st Street
Tuesdays: 8 a.m.-2 p.m.
BROOKLYN
Union Square Greenmarket
Bay Ridge Greenmarket
Third Avenue and 95th Street
Saturdays: 8 a.m.-1 p.m.
Northeast section of Union
Square Park
Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays
and Saturdays: 8 a.m.-5 p.m.
MANHATTAN
Tucker Square Greenmarket
West 66th Street and
Columbus Avenue
Saturdays: 8 a.m.-1 p.m.
QUEENS
Forest Hills Greenmarket
South side of Queens Boulevard
at 70th Avenue
Sundays: 10 a.m.-noon
TriBeCa Greenmarket
Greenwich Street between Chambers
and Duane streets
Wednesdays and Saturdays:
8 a.m.-1 p.m.
22 | Crain’s New York Business | July 15, 2013
STATEN ISLAND
St. George Greenmarket
St. Marks and Hyatt streets
Saturdays: 8 a.m.-1 p.m.
since 1999. For several years, Ms.
Topcik and her family kept a 15inch bin outside their tiny kitchen
that was filled with earthworms to
eat the food scraps. Her kids loved
it, but many dinner guests did not.
Worm food
“We had a dinner party once
and were telling people we had a
worm bin three feet from our dining table,” Ms. Topcik said. “I had
one couple who were so weirded
out, they said they wouldn’t have
come over had they known.”
The other problem was that the
worms couldn’t handle all the food
scraps. Ms. Topcik fought with the
co-op board of her West 50s apartment building for two years before it
allowed her to set up a community
composter in the building’s garden
as a trial project.Despite some problems with bugs and leaks, Ms. Topcik has kept it going for a year and a
half. About five neighbors bring
their scraps to the bin, and Ms.Topcik collects dry leaves and garden
clippings in Central Park to put in it.
“I think what Bloomberg said
was great, but he needs to do a lot of
PR and education to take the ‘ick’
factor out of it,” Ms. Topcik said.
The Bloomberg administration
acknowledges that it is in the early
stages of organic collection. Along
with education, major infrastructure needs to be built to make the
practice viable. Currently, the city
uses a composting facility on Staten Island for its pilot in that borough, and one on the grounds of
Rikers Island prison; it also has an
anaerobic digester at the Newtown
Creek Wastewater Treatment Facility in Brooklyn that converts
food into natural gas.
In the next couple of weeks, the
city plans to award a contract to
build a couple more composting facilities. Down the road, it will issue
an RFP for a large-scale facility that
will convert the city’s food waste
into natural gas and compost soil.
City officials believe people will
get used to dumping food scraps in
sealed bins in their waste rooms just
as they now separate recyclables.
They also say that putting the airtight bins on the street for collection will actually attract fewer rodents than garbage does.
A city pilot program at the Helena, a residential building on West
57th Street and 11th Avenue, has
been successful so far, according to
Helena Durst, vice president of the
Durst Organization, which owns
the building. The Helena installed
composting bins in its waste rooms
on each floor and has been collecting about 1,000 pounds of food
scraps a week.The bins are emptied
twice a day, and every morning the
material goes out to the curb, where
it is picked up by the Department
of Sanitation.
“Ten years from now, we’ll be
converting most of this material to
clean, renewable energy, and people will wonder what were we
thinking before,” said Ron Gonen,
the city’s deputy commissioner of
sanitation. Ⅲ
SOURCE
LUNCH:
CAROL STEINBERG
by Theresa Agovino
She helps families
give Alzheimer’s care
I
n May, Carol Steinberg was
appointed president of the
Alzheimer’s Foundation of
America, a nonprofit that
unites more than 1,600 member organizations that provide assistance to individuals with the disease
and their caregivers and families. Its
services include running an information hotline, producing educational
materials and publishing a magazine
for caregivers. It also gives grants to
member groups and scholarships to
students who care for Alzheimer’s
patients. Ms. Steinberg, a former
journalist, has been with the foundation since it was founded in 2002.
She had been acting chief executive
until her recent appointment, and
prior to that was the organization’s
executive vice president.
According to data from the National Institute on Aging, as many as
5.1 million Americans have
Alzheimer’s,and that number is expected to nearly
triple by midcentury.
What are your goals now that
you are president?
To increase awareness of
the disease even more than
where we are now. People
don’t talk about Alzheimer’s the way they talk
about other diseases, and
it’s the sixth-leading cause
of death in the U.S.
Why don’t people talk about it
as much? Is there a stigma?
There are misperceptions,
there is fear, and there is
denial about the disease. I
think some people are embarrassed to let people
know. Alzheimer’s is in
line with other mental diseases like depression. People don’t talk about them
as much as they talk about
physical conditions.
donated and discounted ad space.] It
will start in July in select cities [New
York, Chicago, Dallas and Boston].
Has President Obama’s national plan to
address the disease made a difference?
It has taken multiple steps forward in
raising awareness. Other countries
were already developing plans, and
the U.S. was behind the curve. I
think focusing on increasing funding
not just for research but for care is
critical. There is so much focus on
finding a cure; and while the greatest
minds in science are working on it, it
isn’t coming anytime soon. The cost
of providing care is overwhelming.
Alzheimer’s is the most costly disease to provide care for.
Why has there been so little
advancement on the clinical side?
We need to see a lot more money
pumped into Alzheimer’s. It gets little in National Institutes of
Health funding. The National Institute on Aging
only gets four cents for
every dollar spent by the
NIH. [Alzheimer’s reTHE RED CAT
search gets] $334 million
227 10th Ave.
(212) 242-1122
out of the $1.1 billion NIA
www.theredcat
budget. It’s out of sync
.com
with rising incidence of the
disease.
AMBIENCE:
WHERE
THEY
DINED
Ⅲ New England
beach chic. Walls
are covered with
wooden planks
painted red or
white, and
oversize wroughtiron lanterns hang
from the ceiling.
WHAT THEY ATE:
Ⅲ Grilled chicken
salad
Ⅲ Barbecue
corned beef
sandwich
Ⅲ Iced tea
Ⅲ Two coffees
TOTAL:
Ⅲ $54.73,
including tip
How are you going to create
more awareness?
We’ll spend some limited dollars on
nontraditional advertising (on
phone kiosks and the sides of buses).
We want people to know that organizations like ours exist and that we
can provide help. People need to
know there is a place where they can
give donations and where they can
get care. How much we’ll spend depends on the generosity of the vendors. [Ms. Steinberg is hoping for
Do other disease advocates
make their case better?
I think part of the problem
is that people aren’t diagnosed early. [If they were,]
they would be more vocal
about the disease and talk
to their congresspeople
about more government
funding. It is hard for caregivers [to lobby] because
they are so overwhelmed.
Why bother to get diagnosed
when there is no cure and
most treatments aren’t that
effective?
We are fighting an uphill
battle to get people to understand that early detection is vital.
When it is detected in early stages,
the person with the disease can contribute to end-of-life care and get
their legal and financial affairs into
place before the confusion really sets
in. That is a great help to caregivers
so they don’t have to make decisions.
There are treatments that may slow
progression so you may get a better
quality of life. Ⅲ
INSIDE TIP: Ms. Steinberg became
interested in working on Alzheimer’s
because her father suffered from it.
http://www.theredcat.com
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Crains New York - July 15, 2013
Crains New York - July 15, 2013
IN THE BOROUGHS
IN THE MARKETS
SMALL BUSINESS
THE INSIDER
BUSINESS PEOPLE
OPINION
STEVE HINDY
GREG DAVID
REAL ESTATE DEALS
REPORT: HEALTH CARE
CLASSIFIEDS
FOR THE RECORD
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
SOURCE LUNCH
OUT AND ABOUT
SNAPS
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