LI, NYC residents join composting efforts

When Robert Coleman is done enjoying his apples, eggs and coffee, he returns the cores, shells and grounds back to his refrigerator.

They stay there -- along with other food scraps -- until the Hempstead man can take them on two buses and two trains to compost bins in New York City's Union Square.

"Occasionally, I've noticed stares from people who see me with what they might regard as bags of trash," said Coleman, 53, whose green routine also includes buying organic foods at the farmers market. "But I've probably returned 3,000 pounds back to the earth, literally, in 10 years."

In the city, about 1,000 households use the program that Coleman does, contributing 4 tons of food waste each week that the Lower East Side Ecology Center processes into compost used to grow more food, said the group's executive director Christine Datz-Romero.

Long Island is also in on the act: North Hempstead launched the area's first composting cooperative last April. So far, 600 of the 700 plastic outdoor compost tumblers ordered for the initiative have been sold to residents for $50 a pop. The town is expanding the effort to schools, said town spokesman Collin Nash.

Another composting practice in New York uses grass clippings, dry leaves and other yard waste.

Islip has Long Island's largest municipal-owned compost site, which handles up to 60,000 tons of material annually, according to town environmental control Commissioner Chris Andrade. The 40-acre MacArthur Composting Facility takes yard waste collected curbside or dropped off by landscapers and creates compost and wood mulch, free for residents to pick up.

Neither New York City nor Long Island officials can estimate the total number of residents who compost food because many do so without municipal guidance. They buy kits from hardware stores or vermicompost with earthworms.

Space is a factor. Many interviewed by Newsday recently while dropping off food scraps at Union Square said they were apartment-dwellers who do not have yards that fit compost bins or gardens that need compost.

Instead, people like Adam Gromis, 31, of Brooklyn, are resigned to stashing food scraps in their freezer to control the smell until drop-off day.

"There's not much room for ice," Gromis joked.

What's trash to some is treasure to Port Washington resident Peter Verdirame, who calls compost "black gold."

Verdirame, 56, whose hobby is organic gardening, keeps two compost heaps in his backyard and uses several sophisticated gadgets to turn the mixture and check the temperature.

Whatever is left over from the salads his family eats goes into growing new vegetables for future salads, he said.

"It cuts down on what goes into landfills."