who we are: our plans

Our plans:
In the near future, we are faced with two necessities: move to our new site, and build new worm bins. We have taken these challenges to be opportunities for improving and expanding our services. We also hope to move into new composting roles with UC Berkeley and the cooperative houses (the USCA), become more effective as an education resource, and ensure our castings can all be sold.

The new site
Next spring, we will be moving a short distance to a new site on the other side of the Richmond Field Station (RFS). To make the new site usable, we will need to lay down some gravel, run utilities, and construct some sort of work shed. The new site will be more than just a work place, but also an attractive demonstration site where we can give tours to community groups and schools. We will teach the process of large-scale composting. The work area will be interspersed with beds of locally native plants and low-maintenance food plants. We envision a new site that integrates into the San Francisco Bay ecosystem.

Our current worm bins will not be moved to the new site. They have become deteriorated. We are in the process of demolishing them and building ten new ones. Our current stock of worm bins cannot adequately process the food waste we collect. In the next year we plan to build an additional 640 square feet of worm bins (the equivalent of 20 bins) on a modified bin design, which uses a metal frame. The new design will prolong the bin lifetime and allow for easier repair.

In conjunction with the worm composting bins, we will build a worm breeding area. We hope to use entirely scavenged materials to make a happy home for the worms. Occasionally mass die-offs occur in our worm composting bins. The breeding area will allow us to recover from these occurrences faster and at a lower cost.

New bins in combination with a thermophilic windrow system will allow us to take on more food collection.

Expansion
Our first goal with increased capacity is to accommodate post-consumer food waste from the University dining halls. A study by a Worm in 1998 determined that plate scrapings generate an additional 160 tons per year, which would about double our current workload. In August we will begin a post-consumer collection program at the largest dining hall. If it proves successful, we will expand the program to all dining halls. Subsequently, we will take on the remaining campus restaurants that don't compost. This won't require much more capacity.

We also want to explore the possibility of composting some of the University's green waste -- there are large quantities produced at the Botanical Gardens and other places that are not composted, and could be useful for our Earthtub and thermophilic windrows. Shredded paper collection from University departments will begin soon. There are few consistent sources of shredded paper on campus. We hope to establish connections with administrators so that we are notified when shredding takes place.

Onsite composting
One way to provide this capacity, in addition to building some new bins, would be to modify our relationship with the USCA. Many of the USCA houses already compost a portion of their food waste, but many do not, and often the compost piles fall into disrepair when the an experienced composter moves out. We could provide assistance, training, and advice through workshops, phone support, and occasional visits. This would increase the involvement that the 1000 students in the USCA have with composting, and train many more experienced composters. Our goal would be to help the USCA compost most of its own food waste, with more difficult-to-compost materials (beans, bread, meat, and dairy) being composted by us or through Alameda County's new food waste program.

We are also hoping to experiment with on-site composting at the University. Plans have begun to build a new dormitory/dining facility, the Channing Bowditch Housing Unit, and we have begun to work with the management to put on-site composting in place. We could provide varying levels of support, from advice and training to feeding and maintaining the bins. There have been successful projects to implement onsite composting at large institutions: grocery stores, prisons, and others. This would again increase awareness of our society's problems with waste and the solutions, and increase the profile of composting and more sustainable living.