(com)Post Office
Next Proposal →An urban composting network that leverages public and private “green spaces” and human-powered logistics to create a unified and pervasive network of mobile and stationary collection points.
An informal survey conducted by PwO revealed that in a Master Composting certification program in Manhattan, only 10 percent of students composted at home because of time or space constraints. These constraints are shared by most people living in New York City; we hope to reach those who want to participate in keeping organic waste out of fossil-fuel powered trucks that dump it in far-away landfills, and who are willing and able to collect their food scraps on a regular basis, but lack the supportive networks and systems to do so. (com)Post Office services will encourage and assist potential composters in two distinct ways, each with its own incentives and benefits for participation.
[photos: Jeremy Hughes + Rick M]
The first (com)Post Office service is a human-powered compost logistics service. For a small fee per pickup, participants can arrange to have their organic waste picked up (at a frequency of their choosing) via a special composting bike, similar in operation to a cement mixer. The composting bike will be both a means to transport green waste and a spectacle/educational opportunity, inviting questions from “what is that crazy contraption?” to “why are you doing this?” to “how can I join you?” In this way, the driver is a sort of ambassador, or (com)Post Officer, educating and entertaining while moving through the city on official business.
The second (com)Post Office service is a network of dropoff boxes/outdoor composters, conveniently placed at existing community gardens. Each dropoff box will augment the existing compost operation at the community garden, but unlike the garden itself (which often has limited hours and requires a key to enter), the special boxes will be accessible at times, allowing easy, anytime drop-off of green waste by local residents. Each composter will have an electronically controlled lock on its chute, which will track participation and also keep the general public from using the composter as a garbage can.
[photos: Mike Evans + Andreas Brændhaugen]
Both services will use technology to encourage participation and build community around the action of composting. Updates from the community garden composters will be fed to twitter (e.g. “5 lbs of compost just dropped off by a resident from 10009?); users can sign up to have personal composting performance posted to Facebook. Groups of neighborhood composters can form teams to compete against other neighborhoods, in a race to see who can divert the most organic waste to their local compost heap. Other benefits and partnerships will include discounts for active composters at local merchants (The City Bakery has expressed interest so far), giving cured compost back to participants who request it, or partnering with local merchants who can retail “special compost blends,” making the whole process transparent and closing the loop on the lifecycle of green waste. This would also provide another educational opportunity/touchpoint.
(com)Post office is unique in its logistical coordination and moderate ideological approach. (com)Post office doesn’t aim to immediately reach fringe audiences; instead, it aims to catalyze action in audiences that are already contemplating action, and creating a system that acknowledges the unique constraints and lifestyles of New York residents. Informal research by PwO indicates that community interest in composting is high–our friends are interested, but do not compost. The Lower East Side Ecology Center, while promoting home composting, receives hundreds of pounds of compost every weekend at their dropoff location in Union Square. The LES Ecology Center receives daily calls from local restaurants asking how and where they can compost; clearly there is need and interest in our community for composting on “my terms”, and when provided with a satisfactory solution, people are ready to act.
PwO believes that this moderate ideological approach will be the most successful and sustainable in the long-run, and by creating a group of active participants, PwO believes momentum can be gained to eventually reach audiences on the fringe who are currently skeptical or uninterested in composting.