Roosevelt Island Haki Compost Collective Food Scrap Drop Off Site Moving To Winter Home Under Motorgate Plaza Helix With The Farmers Market Saturday November 25 - More Volunteers Needed To Continue The Haki Compost Food Scrap Drop Off Site Service, How About You?
This Saturday, November 25th the Haki Compost Collective Food Scrap Drop Off site will
move to its winter home
According to the Haki Compost Collective:
VOLUNTEER ORIENTATION, 11:00 am - 12:30 pm: Haki Compost Collective is hosting a volunteer orientation during the Saturday food scrap drop-off-for-compost hours. Please swing by anytime from 11 am through 12:30 pm to find out how you can be a part of it.
Today, I spoke with Roosevelt Island resident and Haki Compost Collective volunteer Melissa Wade. Ms Wade describes how the Roosevelt Island Haki compost food scrap site got started and the need for new volunteers to keep it going for the Roosevelt Island community. According to Ms Wade:
Haki was started as an all volunteer effort three summers ago when the City cut the budget the first time during the pandemic. Danica Lam lived here on the island and worked with Big Reuse as a staff member. She thought that we would have enough people who were interested to pick it back up and get it started again as volunteers and she was right, we did.
Since that time we have trained 77 Roosevelt Island members over the years to participate as the volunteer force who keep Haki going from the setup to the maintenance to the tear down working with our Big Reuse Partners.
But as everyone knows New York is a transient place and Roosevelt Island is a pretty transient place too so over the years we've had many people come and go and right now we're a little light on volunteers 3 years in.
So my hope in speaking with you today is that people who have thought about it, who use Haki, who bring us our scraps and who want to see this keep going would come out and participate as volunteers...
If you wish to help Haki continue the Roosevelt Island compost food scrap drop off site, come to their orientation meeting tomorrow at the Motorgate Plaza and learn more. You can also contact Haki through their Instagram Page.
The Haki Compost Collective adds:
The Haki Compost Collective thanks you for dropping off your food scraps on Saturdays. Since November 2015, we have collectively diverted over 341,017 pounds of food scraps from landfill, or 170 tons, equivalent to 85 SUV's in weight!
Several dump truck loads of nutrient-rich compost have come back to the Island trees, flowers and gardens and been given back to neighbors for their house plants.
Compost boosts storm water absorption in soil to reduce flooding. Compost-amended soils also aid tree growth which increases their CO2 capture and oxygen release amounts.
Even the Great Pumpkin Event is part of the Big Reuse, Haki supported, compost outreach for islanders!
BAD NEWS:
Last week on Thursday, Mayor Adams !!! ELIMINATED !!! Community Composting in NYC as of January 2024.
What does this mean for Roosevelt Island?
Big Reuse, one of the several community composting organizations in NYC and the one that serves Roosevelt Island, will have to CLOSE DOWN its composting plant underneath the Queensboro Bridge and will stop picking up our food scraps on Saturdays.
Please sign this petition to keep City Community Composting going.
So far, over 24,000 people have signed the petition.
We need your signatures, too!
More Bad News:
We heard that the orange sidewalk "Smart" bins which accept plastic and food scraps for methane gas capture at the Newtown Creek wastewater plant will NOT be connected to the grid to heat 1200 homes as was the case during their pilot program. The facility will continue to get energy to operate from the burning of food scraps and other waste.
Haki volunteers hope to see you Saturday as we continue to serve neighbors with this human-led waste reduction program that mirrors nature’s no waste system.
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