Peak Oil Task Force Report - City of Bloomington - State of Indiana

and paper. Sources include households, restaurants, and institutional food servers. Hair
trimmings from salons and barbershops, stable waste, and cardboard cartons are also
available. Because it already collects a large fraction of the community's organic waste
materials, the City is in the best position to organize the large‐scale chipping and
composting of this material to supply soil nutrients to urban farmers and gardeners.
MITIGATION GOALS & STRATEGIES
In the long‐term, the only way
to mitigate the costs and
vulnerabilities presented to our
current waste system is to
capture and divert the organic
fraction of Bloomington's
present waste stream to supply
fertilizer for the local food
system.
SHORT TERM (1­5 Years)
Yard waste and food scraps are rich sources of soil nutrients when composted.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
1. Establish a centralized composting system for large­volume processing. This
can be the initiative of the City, the Solid Waste Management District, Indiana
University, or a private entity.
2. Create a "compost corner" in each of the 55 Natural Neighborhoods where
smaller­scale composting could go on to supply the community gardens and
home. (See Map D, p. 101).
3. Encourage home composting to divert residential organic waste.
4. Encourage organic source separation by city residents; re­equip the Sanitation
Department's fleet and/or restructure collections to handle this stream.
5. Work with commercial kitchens, groceries, and institutional food servers to
harvest food wastes to supply the compost operation, balancing this nitrogenrich
source with "brown" material in the form of dead plant matter and
shredded paper and cardboard.
Report of the Bloomington Peak Oil Task Force 204