The lunch rush is over at the Able Baker, but the kitchen staff is still mixing, baking, icing, and slow-dripping coffee. This is one of the busiest kitchens in Maplewood – they go through at least a case of bananas for their homemade bread every day – and it creates so much food scraps that owner Julie Pauly decided to begin composting. Today, they have five bins stationed around the back of the house and they fill up with things like coffee grinds and banana peels sometimes twice a day.
“If food falls on the floor, or if it bakes too long in the oven, if it’s stale or just not sellable, it all goes into the compost,” said manager Andrea Block.
The restaurant industry is the second greatest source of food waste – behind households, in fact, which create 300 pounds of it yearly – and more and more establishments are doing their part to keep as much as possible out of landfills. Only, composting isn’t always an easy process for beginners. The problem for most people is not collecting the scraps, but everything that comes after. But an Orange businessman is helping out do-gooders like Pauly by making the process all-but foolproof.
“Compost can go wrong, but you can always get it right again,” said Java Bradley, who founded Java’s Compost three years ago. “Some people get discouraged but we tell them to stick with it – it’s all about tweaking the chemistry.”
Bradley lets his customers be as involved or uninvolved as they wish. They can do the composting themselves if they wish – and be guided along the way – or simply collect the food scraps and let Bradley’s team worry about the rest. The first time the company’s vehicle shows up to a home or business – you can subscribe to Java’s Compost through their website – they drop off a five-gallon food scrap bucket and the process begins. The next time the van comes by to pick up the scraps, they drop off a clean bucket. It can be weekly or more frequently depending on the volume of your waste. This year, his company passed a major milemark – 3 million pounds of food scraps have been processed into compost.
Bradley, who was a school teacher before he opened his namesake company three years ago, became inspired to compost after being tasked with managing a community garden at his old public school in Newark.
“I realized that by putting food in a pile, I can take out a material that can grow more food,” Bradley said. “The magic of that process made me want to learn more.”
Bradley hasn’t abandoned his roots as an educator. In fact, his company works with schools, including Maplewood’s Seth Boyden High School, Millburn High School, and Far Brook School in Short Hill. He can still connect with children the same way he did with traditional subjects, but now it’s even more gratifying to impart to them what has become his “passion,” he said.
This is what he teaches them: A healthy compost has five ingredients – wet ingredients, dry ingredients, air, moisture, and bacteria. The ratio will determine whether the right kind of bacteria thrive and if the compost will have a foul or pleasant odor, Bradley said. There are also creepy, crawly insects that can help the process along. Black soldier fly larvae are ravenous and are used to quickly convert the food scraps into nutrient rich soil. But these larvae are put into the compost intentionally. If other wiggly things show up – like maggots or roaches – it’s a sign that something is off. Usually a compost container has an unwanted opening. But Bradley can help you salvage it and coach you along.
“Nature’s decomposers know where to go,” Bradley said. “Even your dog will want to get into your compost if it’s exposed. If they can’t access it, they’ll move on and go somewhere else.”
When I spoke to Bradley at his office at 460 Maryland Street in Orange, we talked about “closing the loops” – the intoxicating idea that our waste can be processed into soil to grow more food locally. One way he’s keeping food waste within the same local ecosystem is that once a year, his customers get gifted a 4 pound bag of compost. For most homes, that’s more than enough for an entire year, so Bradley also gives them the option of donating the compost to a local farm or community garden. Bradley works with a nonprofit called Urban Agriculture Cooperative to help distribute the donated bags.
“We’re connected to a lot of urban farms, so we’ll find a place for that compost,” said Brittany Forslind, from Urban Agriculture Cooperative.
The organization’s founder, Panasci, who is Bradley’s cousin, appeared back on the Java Compost Instagram page after distributing compost to the Winans Street Community Garden in East Orange, calling the donation the “life blood” of the garden. Today, the garden is an oasis. It feels faraway despite it’s location only a block from the city’s bustling Main Street. In raised beds sprout lettuce, basil, and strawberries that grow with the help of bakery scraps in Maplewood. For Panasci, this effort to close the loop is the beginning of a much larger food revolution.
“We have a dream that the food waste created in the county stays in the county, becomes healthy soil, and regenerates farms,” Panasci said.
