Pitney Meadows Farm in Saratoga Springs is looking to expand its community composting initiative.
Given the foot of snow covering most of the Pitney Meadows Community Farm in Saratoga Springs, you might not assume composting is top of mind right now.
“I would say, for most people, their mindsets not there yet, because we're still sort of in that winter hibernation mode. But yeah, for us, we're in full preparation for spring events,” said Kelsey Trudell.
Kelsey Trudell has been Sustainable Saratoga’s Executive since 2023. Last year, her organization and the 40-plus acre farm teamed up to start the city’s first community composting program.
“I mean it was my first time running something like this. It was the folks at the farm’s first time doing something like this. We serve 107 households. It was resident restrictive last year because of the funding from the city, so only Saratoga Springs city residents. And over the course of end of May through early November when we closed the program, we diverted over 10,000 pounds of food scraps from the landfill,” said Trudell.
The program’s pilot season was funded in part through $30,000 from the city via participatory budgeting run by then Finance Commissioner Minita Sanghvi.
Current Finance Commissioner JoAnne Kiernan has not committed to continuing the program into a fifth year, citing budget shortfalls. Participatory budgeting allows residents to pick which projects proposed by fellow citizens should receive funding from an allotment that amounts to less than 1% of the city’s budget.
Trudell says after a successful first year, the compost program’s leaders set their sights on expanding to accommodate 150 households. By the beginning of March, 71 have already registered.
“So last year we ran the program as just plant-based food scraps, but we were consulting with Compost for Good, and they said we've created great quality compost. Our systems working well. And so, they've sort of given us the OK to add meat and dairy products as well, which is, I think, exciting for the participants, because it's just sort of less that they have to divide their food waste into different categories and just sort of like we can take all of it now,” said Trudell.
Participating households are given composting bins to take home, once filled families bring the bins to the farm and deposit the soon-to-be-mulch. Farm employees then transfer the food scraps to large culverts in the farm’s northern end.
Trudell says a fleet of volunteers helped keep the program running smoothly.
“Because I think people's hesitation maybe with composting a lot of times, ‘oh, it's smelly, it's messy, right? I don't want to deal with that.’ So, we're trying to avoid any obstacles or barriers to participation that we can to maximize the experience for the participant, and also try not to make this be something that prevents people from composting, because they were sort of up against some of those misconceptions,” said Trudell.
With climate anxiety on the rise, Trudell says local composting programs like this are one way to make an impact.
“So, when we send our food scraps to the landfill, they break down in the landfill in an anaerobic setting, so devoid of oxygen, and actually produce a surprisingly large amount of methane gas, which is actually way more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. That's one we hear about a lot, but sending our food waste to the landfill is contributing to global climate change. So, you know, it might feel like, as an individual, there's not much you can do, but this is one of the things that you can do to have a larger local and global contribution,” said Trudell.
