The North Brooklyn Compost Project is a volunteer-run compost pile in McCarren Park, Brooklyn. We were founded in 2004, and today help our 300+ members reduce waste and improve soil. Our compost fuels backyards, container gardens, street trees, park land and food gardens.   The Composting Project takes in kitchen scraps from our members, saw dust from local carpenters, and leaves from the park.  Because of this project, we have gotten to know our neighbors and use a few hours of our time each week to support the heath of our community.


Hours of Operation:
The Compost Project is open to the public May through October from 9am-12pm on Saturdays and 6pm-8pm on Wednesdays.   Winter months are for keeping the site tidy. The area is open outside of these hours but The Compost Project staff encourages people to participate during "open hours". As members become more experienced, they can load their own greens and browns and interact with volunteers. We have found that people are more informed about the project this way and the membership is better educated.

Drop Offs

The North Brooklyn Compost project has partnered with GrowNYC and the Greenmarket drop off pilot project. Drop offs are accepted at the the Mcarren Park Green Market on Saturdays but will continued to be processed at NBCP.

Staff:
Top leadership is approximately 12 people, with three people who are mostly involved with administration.

The Compost Project  took in about 5000 gallons of food organics in the 2009 operating season (thats over 600 cubic feet). Output is not measured as it is taken by members fairly quickly. The Compost Project is operating at capacity and processes food waste using very little space.

Composting is an essential component of creating a Zero Waste Plan. A Zero Waste Plan is a design principle that goes beyond recycling to focus first on reducing wastes and reusing products and then recycling and composting the rest.

Composting is an important alternative to garbage export. Currently, our waste is trucked around the city and exported for landfill or incineration in New Jersey, Virginia, Pennsylvania and so on. The impacts of dealing with garbage this way are felt in communities who live all along these truck routes, transfer stations and disposal sites. Public money is thrown away on polluting the air and wearing down the roads to export thousands of tons of compostable material each day In New York City. We think it's a waste, because we know that by composting you get a very valuable product, and spare these negative impacts! As a soil amendment, compost increases nutrition and moisture available to plants and animals living in the soil. Composting reduces the use of herbicides and chemical fertilizers, helps conserve water, filters pollutants from water, improves soil structure, increases water-holding capacity, and improves disease resistance in plants.

Currently The Compost Project is working with Open Space Alliance and NYCLeaves to create an interconnection with leaf drop off and composting.

If the McCarren Park composting project is at full capacity there are other gardens in the neighborhood, but typically you need to be an active member to compost in a garden. Other composting locations include the LES Ecology Center at Union Square, which accepts drop offs every market day (M,W,F,Sat) from 9am to 5pm.