Officials held a ceremonial ribbon cutting for the first facility to compost food waste from recreation centers on city park land. “This facility used to be a Parks & Recreation operations and maintenance team building, and today it’s a composting hub for Philadelphia, where food waste from our rec centers becomes high-quality compost, adding valuable nutrients back into city soils,” said Natalie Walker, sustainability director for Parks and Recreation.
The composting center is a public-private partnership between the city’s Department of Parks & Recreation and Bennett Compost, a company that offers apaid curbside composting service in Philly. The project got support from the U.S. EPA, the state Department of Environmental Protection, and the USDA.
A long-term lease allows Bennett Compost to use a vacant Parks & Rec facility on Rising Sun Avenue in the Crescentville neighborhood for a commercial composting operation. In exchange, the company picks up compost from city rec centers for free, and provides Parks & Rec with 75 cubic yards of finished compost each spring “Parks and Recreation is able to divert more waste from landfills, reduce our carbon emissions, and help build a sustainable model for commercial composting right here in a densely populated urban environment,” Walker said.