As today marked our first day as an official compost drop off site through Compost NOW,we’re commemorating it with a new weekly update. May I present, “THE Com POST”.
Today we are happy to report that despite the Mardi Gras parades going on throughout the city, we filled one compost bin with food scraps for our garden.
To give you some background, the NOW in Compost NOW stands for New Orleans Waste. As of January 2022 this phenomenal program has diverted over 500,000 pounds of food waste. That’s a pretty amazing figure, any way you slice it.
In order for us to gauge our impact, we’ll be measuring in our bins, by volume. Considering it’s the middle of carnival season and our garden is a new location, we’re encouraged with what we were able to divert from landfills on our first go and jazzed about what this means for our garden.
Here are some of the pictures we took of the compost drop off procedure. We put out two plastic bins for drop offs, as is customary with all the other sites located throughout the city.
In preparation for the event, we tried to make it as obvious as we could and put signs up to let people know they were at the right spot.
We put out free starter plants on the sidewalk to welcome and thank our new friends of the garden.
Perhaps the most meaningful part of the event was when I dropped in this, our first contribution from our handicapped neighbor who wanted to compost despite accessibility to his backyard and logistical challenges of turning a compost pile with physical limitations. He froze his scraps and we held on to them for us to drop off and turn into compost. We will continue to help facilitate his desire to compost by picking up his food waste weekly.
It’s such a small thing, saving your scraps, but it makes a big difference. It’s not that hard to save and freeze food waste, but I understand it could be a burden to know what to do next with them to divert resources from our landfills. We are blessed to have the space, time, and energy to be a part of the solution. We look forward to documenting our journey down this messy and rewarding part of gardening and welcome y’all to stay tuned, keep up with us, and enjoy the ride!
With love,
Lissie and the I Dig It Team
I dig it. 
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