Great Lakes Green Pages

Since my work at the Film Festival and our efforts to reduce the waste of this event, I was thrilled to volunteer at the Cleveland Composts event held by E4S last week.   It was such a packed room, that they had to bring in extra chairs.  I was running the video camera (which died out in short order) so I was able to listen to all the presenters.  Sponsored by Rosby’s-the company that did the composting for us at the CIFF, and held at Trinity Commons, it was another fantastic E4S event.

Anabel and Victoria from E4S

After introductions by Anabel Kouri and Victoria Avi, we got down to business.  We were treated to some great speakers at this event.  First off was Nancy Hughes,Compost & Recycling Coordinator, Cleveland Metroparks Zoo.  She talked about Zoo Poo, and their efforts to compost zoo waste.  Manure is a big issue at a place like the zoo and they have learned how to turn that high cost into a revenue stream.  High quality manure makes great compost and when the elephants return, there is going to be a need for more composting.  Elephants create a lot of manure and when the new Africa House is complete, they hope to add even more members to their elephant family.

Then we heard from Josh Steffen, of the Cleveland Botanical Gardens.  He discussed how his team has been trying to compost in house and the difficulties they need to address before trying to include visitors in their composting goals.

Dave, the worm guy

The next speaker was Dave Pindel, LEED AP, from Herschman Architects, Inc.  He spoke mainly about their office’s new worm farm.  It was a cool presentation and fun to watch.  This guy is a man after my own heart.  Unafraid to be the “weird worm guy”, he just bought a worm farm and maintains in near his desk.  He keeps a compost scrap bucket under his desk and is not put off in the least at being the butt of jokes.  I look forward to seeing him in the future and finding out some of the struggles and pitfalls of this small worm operation in his office.

Denise

We got to hear about the efforts of The Gund Foundation to create a greener office from Denise Stoudenmire of The George Gund Foundation. She talked about their new in office composting machine that creates compost from the food scraps of the office members automatically, by grinding and bio degrading: no fuss no muss. I made sure to give her my card as I think there small-medium sized office is typical and that everyone would like to hear what they are doing and how they can follow their example

Jessie Jacobson, Director of Premium Services, Aramark – Quicken Loans Arena  and Jill Ziegler, Program Manager of Sustainability Initiatives, Forest City Enterprises, Inc. spoke together to round out the speakers. They worked together to explore the pilot program for a composting efforts downtown. They worked very hard to do a garbage assessment (yes, dumpster diving and separation) to determine just what they were throwing out at these two big locations near each other that are part of the heart of downtown Cleveland. Then they tried a 3 week pilot program to see just what they could compost and other things they could divert from landfill by recycling and such. These are big venues, and their efforts could have a huge impact on downtown. They are very near W 4th, and if they can get a hauler to come to their locations, then smaller venues like a restaurant nearby could reasonable expect to be able to compost as well. Like any such operation, they will start internally and move outward to get the general public involved. Jessie received a text message while at the event that okay’d their plan and the Q can move forward on its composting efforts. Jill was the contact for me at Tower City and it was with her support that we were able to compost 6 cubic yards of waste from the hospitality suite.  These two dynamic women alone could change the way that downtown operations think about composting.

Jesse and Jill

I was most impressed with the way the attendance and the engagement of the audience. Trinity had to actually come and throw us out, as everyone was so engaged in the topic. Once again, showing how Cleveland’s greener future can include us all!

Tags: composting, E4S, Events

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 18th, 2010 at 9:25 am and is filed under Arts & Culture, Cleveland, Green. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.