"I'm always excited to see the enthusiastic faces of people who want to get involved with dirt." That comment by Kirk Tomlinson, deputy director of the New York City Sanitation Department's Compost Unit, concisely described the twenty-some folks at the orientation for the Master Composter certificate. Yes, we've gathered here today to get our hands dirty and transform things like autumn leaves, corn cobs, eggshells, and even potato-starch based plastics into stuff that does the soil (and vegetation) good.

The Compost Unit is part of DSNY's Bureau of Waste Prevention, Reuse and Recycling, and Tomlinson's presence at the Master Composter introduction reflects one of the main reasons why the MC program exists: To prevent food or yard waste from going to landfill, and to metamorphose this raw material into a botanical elixir. The waste-diversion goal is so essential to DSNY that it funds the five MC courses, one in each of New York's boroughs. Once properly trained by their Zen garden masters-in our case Joshua Cohen and Karla Osorio-Pérez-the Master Composters are supposed to filter out into their communities to teach the alchemy of creating fertile soil from organic waste.

In my borough, the MC program is overseen by the BBG's Brooklyn GreenBridge. Ellen Kirby, the organization's program director, described in her remarks how the project has blossomed: During the first year of the so-called "compost giveback" program, in 1993, 20 people arrived by car, taxi, bike, and on foot to take relatively small quantities of the stuff. In contrast, thousands of people come to today's givebacks, some of them filling pickup trucks full of NYC homegrown (and homemade) ‘post. Compost enthusiasts are a passionate lot: When compost has run out at past giveaways, some people have resorted to scraping the remains off the ground with spoons.

After Ellen, DSNY's Tomlinson came center stage to explain the city's various composting programs. DSNY does outreach on the subject, and it collects yard waste that is composted at two large-scale composting sites at Fresh Kills, in Staten Island, and at Soundview, in the Bronx. There are two other facilities the city oversees: Spring Creek, a 17-acre site in Brooklyn that is awaiting approval; and another at the Rikers Island correctional facility, which composts food waste-between 30 and 40 tons of it daily.

One of the questions posed to Tomlinson, of course, was whether composting saves the city any money. Since there are no longer any landfills in the five boroughs, the city has to ship its waste to other states by rail, road, and water. The more weight, the more the city pays. Tomlinson averred in his answer, saying that the projected costs will shift depending on what you include in the financial analysis. Nevertheless, he acknowledged, "We can't keep doing what we're doing now-the cost of what we're doing is going up." My guess is that if global warming leads to a submerged lower Manhattan, composting would have a clear advantage.

Next week: Looking Closely at Compost