The system, house in a retrofitted 40-foot shipping container, allows The Wild Center to process up to 200 pounds of organic matter each day which reduces food waste, landfill costs and methane emissions while creating a valuable soil amendment.  The project offsets about nine metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually—the equivalent of removing two vehicles from the road.

All Creatures Great and Small

The mural that adorns our composter is a part of a new exhibit opening Summer 2021.

We think our composter looks and acts like a giant creature–we feed it food scraps and it digests them into compost. The process of composting can be hard to visualize–it happens on a microscopic level, and the transformation from food scraps to compost can take months. Local artist Peter Seward created this mural to tell the composting story in a fun and imaginative way.

And the little creatures? Those are the stars of the composting process–microbes. Even though you can’t see them, these mostly single-celled organisms form a bustling community, breaking down food scraps and releasing nutrients that can be used to grow our plants and replenish our soils.

Funding provided by the Environmental Protection Fund as administered by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

Any opinions, findings, and/or interpretations of data contained herein are the responsibility of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the opinions, interpretations or policy of Rochester Institute of Technology and its NYS Pollution Prevention Institute or the State.