Workers spread the composting mantra

Green Tip

By Steve Law

Pamplin Media Group, Jul 8, 2010

Brad Daniels and other volunteer state workers helped organize composting at the 12-story state office building in the Lloyd District.

L.E. BASKOW / PAMPLIN MEDIA GROUP

Greenies working in the state office building near Lloyd Center used to pack their lunchtime food scraps and bring them home to bury in backyard compost piles.

Not any more.

Thanks to volunteer employee efforts, some 1,200 workers in the 12-story office building can now stow compostable waste in a bucket on each floor.

The new composting system, launched June 7, is reducing trash sent to the landfill and enabled its reuse as garden mulch. It’s also cutting the building’s monthly garbage bill.

“It’s actually been pretty easy,” says Brad Daniels, rules and enforcement coordinator for the state drinking water program, and a lead member of the Portland State Office Building Sustainability Committee.

Using money from a past fundraiser, committee volunteers bought 6-gallon yellow buckets for each floor of the building. They placed the buckets, which open via foot pedals, near each floor’s employee break room, along with signs and other how-to material.

“My guess is that every third day our bins are completely full,” Daniels says. “We have received nothing but positive feedback.”

Fears of a fruit-fly invasion proved groundless because of the lids. And volunteers avoided smelly buckets from rotting food by lining the containers with biodegradable BioBags, Daniels says.

Custodians haul the bags out to a loading dock with the rest of the garbage. Waste Management, the building’s solid waste contractor, picks it up and takes it to a Metro transfer center. From there it gets trucked to Cedar Grove Composting near Seattle.

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