Welcome to the Internet home for the Fort Bragg Food Waste-to-Compost Feasibility Study and Pilot Project.
Noyo Food Forest is honored to be the coordinator for the Compost Facility Feasibility Study for the City of Fort Bragg California. We look forward to being joined by interested community members and organizations in and around this beautiful coastal city. Together, these stakeholders will catalog and analyze the present food "waste" stream of the area, and design and implement a comprehensive plan for diverting post-consumer food "waste" from landfill and other out-of-area destinations and turning it into reclaimed resources for economic development and soil-fertility.
"Waste is an unused resource."
The general frame of this project can be thought of in terms of answering the following:
Is Fort Bragg presently:
- exporting "food waste" at a cost/loss to the city (directly) or via its businesses and resdents while
- adding CO2 and other emissions to the atmosphere (generated as a result of the transportation) when
- there are higher and better uses for these resources (in the form of nutrients and carbon) such as a compost or other products...
and if so, what are the alternatives?
Blog
Table to Farm
Many pro-farm and local food advocates are familiar with the "Farm-to-Table" movement. Essentially, it is a movement to reconnect eaters with the people that grow their food. Additionally, it supports a resilient local economy, as food comes from closer to home, grown and processed by people in your community. Noyo Food Forest is a proud supporter of Farm-to-Table programs in and around the Mendocino Coast.
Noyo Food Forest is also excited to be involved in the Compost Facility Feasibility Study. We see it as a fundamental component of a healthy local food ecology, as it "closes the loop" on a resource that is presently being transported at significant cost to landfill or burned. Here, we are looking at the most viable options for converting food "waste" into it's highest value--fertility--, thereby creating jobs and local products (worm-castings, compost teas and extracts, etc.) in the process.
I was excited to see coverage of this reclaimed resource movement on Mother Nature Network http://mnn.com/food/healthy-eating/blogs/the-table-to-farm-movement, now cleverly titled "Table-to-Farm" via the original coverage on MSMBC. http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/42703184/ns/business-small_business
Of course, there are obstacles to overcome before we can see this at full scale on the Mendocino Coast, and this is what the Noyo Food Forest team is looking at in this phase of the project. There are logistical issues such as how to do the collection within the individual Point of Resource locations, pick-up and transportation infrastructure, and other considerations. There are economic issues, such as how to make this a win-win-win business model design so that the money being spent is the justification for the program, thereby lowering costs and bringing on new revenue streams, not by placing an additional financial burden to participants. And lastly, there are regulatory issues ranging from Water Quality to Title 14 to Public health considerations.
These challenges are precisely what this feasibility study seeks to address. And, while the challenges seem significant, we are confident that a path to closing the table-to-farm loop can be found at significant savings and economic development to local businesses and increased fertility available to regional growers. It's a win-win-win, and we encourage you to get involved!
MNN coverage: http://www.mnn.com/food/healthy-eating/blogs/the-table-to-farm-movement
MSMBC: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/42703184/ns/business-small_business/
Posted by
Tags:
Project and Blog Kickoff and Update
Greetings and welcome to the project blog for the Fort Bragg Compost Facility Feasibility Study and Pilot Project! (This project sure needs an acronym or a nickname... that’s a mouthful!)
The intention of this blog is to keep interested parties informed of progress related to this project and be a platform for communication regarding opportunities and potential challenges so that the power of community diversity and expertise can be harnessed in making this a successful project for the residents and businesses of Fort Bragg and the area. (For an overview of the project, please see this page: Compost Facility Feasibility Study.)
This blog will serve as the primary channel for project updates. You can subscribe via RSS or be emailed updates by clicking: this link. If you would like to be directly involved as a volunteer, please add your contact information to this form and we will contact you soon!
What follows below is an update on the project to date, and the post following this one will look at what is ahead in the near future.
The Kickoff:
On Wednesday January 26th, 2011 on behalf of Noyo Food Forest, George Reinheardt and I (Chris Byrne) attended a meeting with Jennifer Owen, the City of Fort Bragg’s (CFB) Housing & Economic Development Coordinator, to discuss the
Fort Bragg Compost Facility Feasibility Study and Pilot Project.
The intention of this “kickoff meeting” was to discuss the scope of work, logistics, process, expectations, and other various details that both parties thought should be considered and addressed in anticipation of a successful project. This meeting was a great success and all came away clear about the path ahead. Since that meeting just over a month ago, there has been some considerable progress and I would like to take this opportunity to update all interested parties.
Technology and Regulatory Research:
On behalf of the project, I have visited two operations in Northern California (Cold Creek Compost and Sonoma Valley Worm Farm) and been well received at both. I toured these two, very different facilities (the former being large scale and the latter being a smaller operation) and interviewed the principals to understand their challenges and successes with regard to feedstock availability, process design and operations, regulatory considerations, and end-product marketing. Both were very informative experiences and, combined with follow up interviews and past site visits to places such as http://growingpower.org, will directly influence the Feasibility Study (outlined in Major Task 1) and the Pilot Project (Major Task 2) of the contract. UPDATE: Here's a link to some photos of Sonoma Valley Worm Farm: http://www.flickr.com/photos/byrnegreen/sets/72157626021563242)
Website/Blog and Database Configuration:
This software that powers this website is known as “Wagn”. This is both the Blog for the project and the database that will receive survey data as the Fort Bragg community collaborates to catalog the food “waste” in the region. Wagn was selected for a number of reasons that make it highly suitable for this project, namely: it’s Open Source and affordable; is a powerful collaborative database that will allow direct community input (it’s effectively a wiki with some very nice database features); and, it is in active development by a small and responsive team helping to customize the platform for the reclaimed resource community survey we will be undertaking for this project.
There are still some bells and whistles to be worked out, but if you are the pioneering type, please feel free to sign up for an account and help us test this site, either as a user or as a “Point of Resource”. (Users are any interested individual or organization wishing to participate, while a Point of Resource is a commercial facility that is presently producing food “waste”. )
Conclusion:
Part two of this update will look forward at what’s on the horizon for this promising project. Stay tuned! And please, feel free to comment below and sign up for a user account in the sidebar to the right.
Posted by
Tags:
Great work Chris! Make sure a link to this page ends up on Noyo Food Forest's website! Blessings from Kenya, the land of very little waste. Its very refreshing =)
--Susan Lightfoot (Not signed in).....Thu Mar 31 08:06:53 -0700 2011
Excellent. Although the name is more than a mouthful...An acronym might come out to mean something obscene in Slovenian so I would be careful! Don't forget about a possibility of a gassification component that would render the waste benign before being fed to the worms. Food wasted is considered 'bio-hazard' and has a dubious reputation for containing pathogens and possibly attracting unwanted nighttime visitors. Othwise...Rock on Chris, George, Noyo Food Forest and the rest of you NHUDGers!
--Scott Zeramby, Dirt Cheap Landscape Supply (Not signed in).....Fri Apr 08 11:52:44 -0700 2011
Good work my composting-loving, Green MBA brother! I look forward to our next field trip to Butte County to talk successful large scale vermi-composting projects.
--Ellen Hopkins, EcoHeart Solutions (Not signed in).....Thu Apr 14 22:15:11 -0700 2011
Project Blog is Coming soon!
We are excited to use this medium to communicate much of the progress of the Compost Facility Feasibility Study. We are in the process of final configurations of this website (and its underlying platform) and will publish the mailing list information and RSS feed soon.
Posted by
Tags:
