Garbologist Report

Composting is going well! Back in December we put all food we believed would spoil into large containers we kept outside in the snow. When we returned in January some of that was salvageable, but some didn't fare as well. This did create an influx of food waste in the system. 

More importantly, I have been working on overdue bin maintenance. The bins have been known to leak during the decomposition process. A makeshift shower pan was intended to catch this, but it never worked properly. I am in the process of ripping out the Gorilla tape we used to seal the interior corners of the bins and replacing it with a much better sealing caulk. 

I checked the biofilter the other day. We were told the wood chips would need to be replaced potentially every two years (it has indeed been exactly two years since their installation!) The top layer of wood chips is still intact, but I need to dig further to check decomposition closer to the bottom. 

Thanks to an industrial woodchipper purchased through donations in 2025 we are now able to use the proper amount of bulking agent. Before we had the woodchipper, finding the right size carbon bulking agent was impossible in the quantity we needed. Now we have it in abundance and the timeline for full decomposition has been significantly reduced. 

Everything is still working exactly as intended, and with the smaller community we are averaging roughly 70 to 90 lbs. of food waste per week. Compare this to the normal 100-ish lbs. per day that we process this time of year when the Village is full.