On Saturday morning, March 23, a cheerful group of volunteers gathered by a large wooden station across the parking lot from the Springhill Lake Recreation Center. Some came bearing buckets containing their household food scraps.
As the morning turned from cloudy to bright, these contributors, many of them families, prepared to drop their scraps into the station’s first bin. The volunteers were ready to turn the compost and welcome two new volunteers to Greenbelt’s first municipal project for recycling household food waste.
Lore Rosenthal unlocked the bin, jammed a long-stemmed thermometer into the center of the two-ton pile of layered food scraps and wood chips inside and smiled. Despite the morning chill, the thermometer read 110 degrees F. The compost pile is heated by microbes that raise the temperature as they consume its nutrients. In the layered first bin, this process had already begun.
Volunteers shoveled the contents of the first bin into the second bin, wetting them down in the process. The transfer uses the three-bin station to create compost from food scraps, wood chips and water.
Gathering shovels and pitchforks, Ian Morris, dubbed Iron Man for his prowess with a shovel, showed his cousins Kevin and Karina Morris how a transfer is done. Clouds of steam rose from the hot pile in bin 1 as shovelsful fell into bin 2.
Debbie Bustin, Ian’s mom, added water to the pile as it grew in bin 2, moisturizing the microbes. “My son and I have been serious recyclers forever,” Debbie said.
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