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Date Launched: June 1, 2018
Address: SW Corner of Broadway and Spring Street
Hours of Operation: 24/7
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On June 1st, a New York Compost Box landed on Broadway at Spring as part of pilot composting program for the SoHo Broadway community. The pilot program is a collaboration between Common Ground Compost and Reclaimed Organics, to gauge interest and assess the feasibility of this urban composting concept. The City of New York sends four million tons of trash to landfills every year; almost a third of it being food waste. The NY Compost Box Project repurposes decommissioned newspaper vending racks into receptacles for compostable materials, offering New Yorkers a convenient way to divert food waste from landfills.
We spoke with Debbie Ullman, the waste-obsessed artist who behind these former newspaper boxes into the NY Compost Box for the SoHo Broadway composting pilot program.
“I love seeing so many people walking by and no one even noticing the box as it blends seamlessly into the urban fabric,” says Ullman. “It’s one of the things that has kept them on the street this long (the project was started in 2015). They look so much like the real thing that people don’t even notice that they are different.”
Debbie is interested in what can be done to prevent waste and the stories of those producing it. “As I watched newspaper readership decline, newspapers fold and journalists lose their jobs, I wondered what could be done with the existing street furniture which are those news vending racks. I wanted to create a dialogue about food waste in a way that would be memorable to New Yorkers and take the ‘ick factor’ out of it a little.”
Participation in the SoHo Broadway composting pilot program is currently by invitation only, but may expand in the future. If you are interested in composting on Broadway, please register here so that you can be contacted if the program expands. For more information about the NY Compost Box, please visit http://www.nycompostbox.com/
