Crains New York - July 15, 2013 - (Page 22)

Composting catches on Continued from Page 21 Ecology Center—the nonprofit that has been collecting the scraps at the Union Square Greenmarket since 1994—says its client numbers have doubled in the past five years. It has 1,500 households participating,and that’s one of many community projects offered around the city. GrowNYC, a nonprofit that runs environmental programs, oversees compost drop-off bins at 35 greenmarkets, such as the ones in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, and Jackson Heights, Queens. The ecology center handles four tons of food scraps a week, processing them at its compost facility in East River Park to create natural fertilizer, which it then sells. “Composting as a concept has taken off,” said Christine DatzRomero, a co-founder of the center. “It has to do with more consciousness about planet change and people understanding that the little things they can do in their own life can be part of the solution.” Messy masses If Mayor Michael Bloomberg gets his way, the practice may soon become mainstream. Overall, city officials say, more than 30% of the city’s total waste could be composted. Last year, more than 1.2 million tons of organic waste went to landfills in other states at a cost of more than $85 million. Last month, the mayor—who has already started a number of composting pilot programs across the city—announced an ambitious plan that would require all New Yorkers to separate their food scraps from other garbage by 2016. Composting pioneers feel vindicated by the city’s plan,but many are skeptical that the masses will comply. They also worry that city officials don’t fully understand what a messy business they are getting into. “Imagine a building with hundreds of tenants and everyone dumping their scraps in a bin,” said Regina Cornwell,a writer who specializes in climate change. “Even if the containers are fairly closed up, there is always going to be someone who is a slob.Traditional composting is messy, and it will attract bugs and animals.” Ms. Cornwell composts in her The mayor ‘needs to take the “ick” factor out of it’ apartment using a Japanese method called bokashi.She pays $40 a month to a small company called Vokashi, which provides a five-gallon container and a mixture of bran and microbes. The mixture breaks down the food by fermenting it, so there is little smell. The company replaces the container each month. “I wouldn’t be able to compost if I had to do it the traditional way,” Ms. Cornwell said. “It would smell a lot, and it’s heavy to carry to the greenmarket each week.” All the composters interviewed for this story use a different method to get rid of their food scraps. But all of them agree that the practice requires major dedication. Alysia Reiner, an actor in the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black, said she has wanted to compost for 10 years but only recently was able to persuade her “incredibly neat and fastidious” husband. Now she keeps a small pail in the kitchen and dumps it every couple of days in a bin in the backyard of their Harlem brownstone. Ms. Reiner uses the fertilizer she makes for her small garden. Heather Topcik,the chief librarian at the Bard Graduate Center in Manhattan, has been composting READY TO COMPOST? WHERE AND WHEN TO SCHLEP YOUR SCRAPS: BRONX Bronx Borough Hall Greenmarket Grand Concourse and West 161st Street Tuesdays: 8 a.m.-2 p.m. BROOKLYN Union Square Greenmarket Bay Ridge Greenmarket Third Avenue and 95th Street Saturdays: 8 a.m.-1 p.m. Northeast section of Union Square Park Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays: 8 a.m.-5 p.m. MANHATTAN Tucker Square Greenmarket West 66th Street and Columbus Avenue Saturdays: 8 a.m.-1 p.m. QUEENS Forest Hills Greenmarket South side of Queens Boulevard at 70th Avenue Sundays: 10 a.m.-noon TriBeCa Greenmarket Greenwich Street between Chambers and Duane streets Wednesdays and Saturdays: 8 a.m.-1 p.m. 22 | Crain’s New York Business | July 15, 2013 STATEN ISLAND St. George Greenmarket St. Marks and Hyatt streets Saturdays: 8 a.m.-1 p.m. since 1999. For several years, Ms. Topcik and her family kept a 15inch bin outside their tiny kitchen that was filled with earthworms to eat the food scraps. Her kids loved it, but many dinner guests did not. Worm food “We had a dinner party once and were telling people we had a worm bin three feet from our dining table,” Ms. Topcik said. “I had one couple who were so weirded out, they said they wouldn’t have come over had they known.” The other problem was that the worms couldn’t handle all the food scraps. Ms. Topcik fought with the co-op board of her West 50s apartment building for two years before it allowed her to set up a community composter in the building’s garden as a trial project.Despite some problems with bugs and leaks, Ms. Topcik has kept it going for a year and a half. About five neighbors bring their scraps to the bin, and Ms.Topcik collects dry leaves and garden clippings in Central Park to put in it. “I think what Bloomberg said was great, but he needs to do a lot of PR and education to take the ‘ick’ factor out of it,” Ms. Topcik said. The Bloomberg administration acknowledges that it is in the early stages of organic collection. Along with education, major infrastructure needs to be built to make the practice viable. Currently, the city uses a composting facility on Staten Island for its pilot in that borough, and one on the grounds of Rikers Island prison; it also has an anaerobic digester at the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Facility in Brooklyn that converts food into natural gas. In the next couple of weeks, the city plans to award a contract to build a couple more composting facilities. Down the road, it will issue an RFP for a large-scale facility that will convert the city’s food waste into natural gas and compost soil. City officials believe people will get used to dumping food scraps in sealed bins in their waste rooms just as they now separate recyclables. They also say that putting the airtight bins on the street for collection will actually attract fewer rodents than garbage does. A city pilot program at the Helena, a residential building on West 57th Street and 11th Avenue, has been successful so far, according to Helena Durst, vice president of the Durst Organization, which owns the building. The Helena installed composting bins in its waste rooms on each floor and has been collecting about 1,000 pounds of food scraps a week.The bins are emptied twice a day, and every morning the material goes out to the curb, where it is picked up by the Department of Sanitation. “Ten years from now, we’ll be converting most of this material to clean, renewable energy, and people will wonder what were we thinking before,” said Ron Gonen, the city’s deputy commissioner of sanitation. Ⅲ SOURCE LUNCH: CAROL STEINBERG by Theresa Agovino She helps families give Alzheimer’s care I n May, Carol Steinberg was appointed president of the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America, a nonprofit that unites more than 1,600 member organizations that provide assistance to individuals with the disease and their caregivers and families. Its services include running an information hotline, producing educational materials and publishing a magazine for caregivers. It also gives grants to member groups and scholarships to students who care for Alzheimer’s patients. Ms. Steinberg, a former journalist, has been with the foundation since it was founded in 2002. She had been acting chief executive until her recent appointment, and prior to that was the organization’s executive vice president. According to data from the National Institute on Aging, as many as 5.1 million Americans have Alzheimer’s,and that number is expected to nearly triple by midcentury. What are your goals now that you are president? To increase awareness of the disease even more than where we are now. People don’t talk about Alzheimer’s the way they talk about other diseases, and it’s the sixth-leading cause of death in the U.S. Why don’t people talk about it as much? Is there a stigma? There are misperceptions, there is fear, and there is denial about the disease. I think some people are embarrassed to let people know. Alzheimer’s is in line with other mental diseases like depression. People don’t talk about them as much as they talk about physical conditions. donated and discounted ad space.] It will start in July in select cities [New York, Chicago, Dallas and Boston]. Has President Obama’s national plan to address the disease made a difference? It has taken multiple steps forward in raising awareness. Other countries were already developing plans, and the U.S. was behind the curve. I think focusing on increasing funding not just for research but for care is critical. There is so much focus on finding a cure; and while the greatest minds in science are working on it, it isn’t coming anytime soon. The cost of providing care is overwhelming. Alzheimer’s is the most costly disease to provide care for. Why has there been so little advancement on the clinical side? We need to see a lot more money pumped into Alzheimer’s. It gets little in National Institutes of Health funding. The National Institute on Aging only gets four cents for every dollar spent by the NIH. [Alzheimer’s reTHE RED CAT search gets] $334 million 227 10th Ave. (212) 242-1122 out of the $1.1 billion NIA www.theredcat budget. It’s out of sync .com with rising incidence of the disease. AMBIENCE: WHERE THEY DINED Ⅲ New England beach chic. Walls are covered with wooden planks painted red or white, and oversize wroughtiron lanterns hang from the ceiling. WHAT THEY ATE: Ⅲ Grilled chicken salad Ⅲ Barbecue corned beef sandwich Ⅲ Iced tea Ⅲ Two coffees TOTAL: Ⅲ $54.73, including tip How are you going to create more awareness? We’ll spend some limited dollars on nontraditional advertising (on phone kiosks and the sides of buses). We want people to know that organizations like ours exist and that we can provide help. People need to know there is a place where they can give donations and where they can get care. How much we’ll spend depends on the generosity of the vendors. [Ms. Steinberg is hoping for Do other disease advocates make their case better? I think part of the problem is that people aren’t diagnosed early. [If they were,] they would be more vocal about the disease and talk to their congresspeople about more government funding. It is hard for caregivers [to lobby] because they are so overwhelmed. Why bother to get diagnosed when there is no cure and most treatments aren’t that effective? We are fighting an uphill battle to get people to understand that early detection is vital. When it is detected in early stages, the person with the disease can contribute to end-of-life care and get their legal and financial affairs into place before the confusion really sets in. That is a great help to caregivers so they don’t have to make decisions. There are treatments that may slow progression so you may get a better quality of life. Ⅲ INSIDE TIP: Ms. Steinberg became interested in working on Alzheimer’s because her father suffered from it. http://www.theredcat.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Crains New York - July 15, 2013

Crains New York - July 15, 2013
IN THE BOROUGHS
IN THE MARKETS
SMALL BUSINESS
THE INSIDER
BUSINESS PEOPLE
OPINION
STEVE HINDY
GREG DAVID
REAL ESTATE DEALS
REPORT: HEALTH CARE
CLASSIFIEDS
FOR THE RECORD
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
SOURCE LUNCH
OUT AND ABOUT
SNAPS

Crains New York - July 15, 2013