Welcome back!
After my last post detailing my resolve for starting a composting system in my culinary conservatory, I promptly contacted Republic Services (the waste management service for our school) to see if I could set something up with them. I was disappointed to hear that they did not have any services related to composting, but I did not give up!
I remembered that many community gardens in Santa Ana had compost piles from one of my culinary classes where we had to research potential job sites. I searched up the location of each community garden and found out that Roosevelt Walker Community Garden was only a 5 minute drive from school (the other ones are also pretty close)! I called them up and found out that they would be able to turn our food waste into compost, but they didn't have enough staff to be able to transport our food waste for us. They did provide buckets to put the food waste in though (pictured below)!
Buckets before wash:
After wash :D
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Where our compost will be made!
These crates for composting do look pretty small, but if they fill up, we can transport our food waste to the other nearby Santa Ana community gardens that also have compost piles.
Now I was on the hunt for transportation from my school to the garden. I thought that a pickup truck would be mighty useful, but my family does not have one, so I looked elsewhere. I texted other members of culinary student council to see if any of them were willing to help me transport it. Unfortunately, none of us can legally drive other people yet... I reached out to the culinary parent association, but I did not get a reply to my request for a volunteer to drive my food waste buckets. I should reach out to them again, maybe they didn't receive my email. Anyhow, because all of those options didn't work out, my mom offered to drive the compost buckets herself, so that is our plan as of now until we find another volunteer!
We are now ready to do our first week of collecting food waste at school and transporting it to Roosevelt Walker Garden! This week we'll produce some fruit scraps, which will be great for the compost! I will keep you guys updated!
Love the determination bro