Share:

On a crisp windy day, high above the Griffith Park Composting Facility off Mineral Wells road, a small group of inquisitive and observant people sat down during a free workshop sponsored by L.A. Sanitation and Pacoima Beautiful and hosted by horticulture consultant Steve List at the composting facility on Feb 11. The topic of discussion, composting.

Mr. List gave a lecture to a small group of people curious about how to do composting properly but also doing typical urban gardening. These topics included tolerating bugs in food, making the right mixture of soils, preventing gophers from eating organics, and even tomato lasagna. He spoke about his passion and desire to teach the public about green waste and urban gardening.

“Here is my philosophy: if everybody did a little, the whole world would be a better place,” List said while also complaining that not a lot of people do anything to help out. 

Organics L.A. is a new program created under SB 1383, a new law requiring California residents to separate green waste from other trash. The fines can be up to $500 if compost is not properly separated. Composting is a form of green waste that the Organics L.A. program is focusing on. 

Composting is about recycling organic matter, such as leaves and food scraps, into a valuable fertilizer that can enrich the soil. The process of composting is essential for environmental protection because when organic food waste is trashed and mixed with items such as paper, plastic, and other materials, it releases methane gas which is 85 times more than carbon dioxide. 

Organics LA created new opportunities for Angelenos and other L.A. County residents to experience free education about the importance of composting. Steve List and Scott Henley give free lectures and workshops about composting and urban gardening every Saturday in Los Angeles. The next workshop is at the Lopez Canyon environmental education center from 9-11 a.m. The Griffith Park Composting Facility will continue with this workshop on the second Saturday of every month. 

Steve List continued to emphasize the importance of people participating in doing even just a little bit goes a long way. He could only imagine if people were committed consistently to more compost and green waste who knows? World Peace? 

“We have to get the word out so everybody does a little, if everybody did a lot, oh my God! What happens? It would be the greatest thing in the world, no more wars,” List said. 

Los Angeles County keeps up-to-date composting events for the residents and where their start times and locations are. They also provide video workshops for those who are unable to attend in-person workshops and classes. 

Another group in Los Angeles that focuses on composting and does on-the-ground educational work to bring awareness is L.A. Compost. Many of their events are at farmer’s markets and community gardens where they meet and greet people about the importance of composting. 

Mark Pranger, the Farmers Market manager for L.A. Compost, was at the Elysian Community Gardens in Los Angeles on Sunday, Feb. 12, and talked about the importance of what the organization does for the city of Los Angeles. 

“Our mission is to reconnect people with the soil,” Pranger said. “We want to get people to think about healthy soil makes healthy people, healthy food, you grow stuff in healthy soil it becomes healthier food, it’s healthier for you, and you become healthier.”

Pranger talked about L.A. Compost and how it is working with Los Angeles city members, including the mayor, to help organize the compost. 

“The mayor’s office is funding us to open up another ten sites because they would like material to stay local, they don’t want the material to have to be shipped away because that’s obviously not environmentally friendly,” Pranger said. 

The city of Glendale has engaged with its residents by showing the new composting strategy on its integrated waste management website. This strategy includes giving away free composting bins, offering free online composting workshops through PowerPoint, and even giving free mulch to residents. 

Etienne Ozorak is the Superintendent for Integrated Waste for Glendale and discussed what his administration is doing to ensure businesses and residents comply with SB1383 rules. This strategy included mailers and tenant outreach by the haulers. 

“Each of the four haulers also do tenant outreach because they are technically customers, so they do the outreach with the property managers,” Ozorak said. 

He talked more about commercial businesses in Glendale and the growth in compliance with the new composting rules. 

“Between last June and December, there’s been a marked increase in hauler’s compliance, commercial generated compliance in some cases as high as 96 percent,” Ozarak said while touting the fact that now businesses have the composting bins which makes the job easier for businesses to comply. 

Businesses and local jurisdictions are trying to integrate this new law into their daily routines and be environmentally conscious about the future, and some people are being creative and optimistic about the new law and what it means for the future of the planet. 

An optimistic Mark Pranger spoke about the future and emphasized the positive environmental outcome for the city of Los Angeles and the new habit of keeping soil and composting locally.

Pranger said, “Improve the soil of L.A, the better LA is, right? It both sequesters carbon, so it helps with greenhouse gases and it is also just a way to get the soil back to farmers and back to school gardens and back to just local Angelenos who are growing gardens in their backyards.”

Follow: