philadelphia | Crazy About Compost

Introducing…the Dirt Factory!

Something really inspiring occurred in west Philadelphia recently - the opening of the Dirt Factory, a community composting facility located at 4308 Market St. I truly believe that this concept/design will become a template for others to implement throughout the city, and hopefully throughout the country. What does it do? The site is run by University City District and it provides a place to dispose of fallen leaves in the area, to then turn into compost for its gardens. Even better, it's open once a week for anyone in the neighborhood to drop off up to 5 gallons of material. Two Earth Tubs (pictured above) were installed on the site and can process an enormous amount of material, creating high quality finished compost in short time. As you probably know,…

Is Composting Endorsed Where You Live?

Today I stumbled upon the Wormcycler Municipal Program, which ties your municipality into a worm composting program by subsidizing part of the costs to get started while promoting the benefits of vermicomposting. I wonder how effective their program has been, and if anyone in my home city of Philadelphia has actually done this. If you haven't noticed, I happen to like composting and want everyone to do it. While I keep asking and pushing for curbside compost pickup in Philadelphia (which I'm told won't happen), people can do it themselves at home, which is probably the better option anyway. Or start a community collection point for compost...Philadelphia just opened one in my neighborhood (video/article to come shortly!). It frustrates me to no end that composting isn't expanding more rapidly, especially…