Design Drawings
In 2.00B “Solving Real Problems,” we are working towards helping out the Massachusetts based Food Project to build a new composter for one of their sites located in Dorchester, MA. For more information on the project and other project for 2.00B, visit the course website.
Background and description:
The Food Project is a nationally recognized youth development organization that manages 2 acres of urban and suburban farms in and around the city of Boston. The organization’s mission is to create a thoughtful and productive community of youth and adults from diverse backgrounds who work together to build a sustainable food system. On their four sites in Dorchester and Roxbury, they grow 15,000lbs of vegetables each year that are sold at a local low-income farmer’s market and donated to Rosie’s Place and Community Servings.
The Food Project needs to increase the amount of compost that they produce on their land, to improve the quality of their vegetables and minimize lead-contamination issues common in urban settings. The organization receives donations of compost from the city, but they do not receive enough, and this compost is not as high quality as the compost they make themselves.
The Food Project produces a lot of organic waste in the form of unusable vegetable matter (stalks, roots, cracked and damaged vegetables that cannot be sold or donated. They also pick up 2-4 trash barrels of food waste each week from Haley House Café, a neighborhood bakery, which they incorporate into the compost piles.
The Food Project would like help developing a composting system that would break down materials more quickly. A better composting system would save $1000/year and allow them to produce higher quality vegetables for the neighborhood shelters they serve.
Parameters:
- The site is not fenced. They don’t have a lot of problems with vandalism and leave things like crates and other materials out in the open, but whatever is built should be durable and safe.
- They don’t have an electrical power source on the land.
- Labor is another issue. During the summer months, they have a large number of volunteers working with them throughout the week. In other seasons, we have less help and turning the compost piles takes a lot of time! Any systems that could minimize this activity would be beneficial
- The system should not require a lot of space
- The system should minimize the smell of the composting material, as their neighbors have started to voice concerns about smells from the compost pile since they began picking up food waste from Haley House
An initial design for the composter:
Click an image to see a larger version!