WHAT WE DO
We work with neighborhoods in New Haven and adjacent towns to promote and facilitate solutions for the composting needs of residents, small businesses and schools - we seek to enrich our soils in the city for growing healthy food in house gardens, community gardens and urban farms.
Also we seek to enrich our place by mitigating environmental pollution from the incineration of our trash and by creating jobs and building community.
We do this in many capacities by providing a pedal powered compost service, consulting innovative solution, supporting zero waste events, doing soil analysis for amendments and providing training and education.
Compost Pickup
Peels & Wheels Composting is a neighborhood-scale operation that composts household food waste for residents, schools and small businesses who want to compost but can’t or don’t have the means to do so. Using bikes, bins, and trailers, we pick up your kitchen scraps and other biodegradable materials and take them to our Phoenix Press Farm and other farms and gardens for composting.
Other Services
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Waste Audits
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Soil Analysis (https://loganlabs.com/testing-services.html) and Interpretation
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Zero waste events
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Training and education
WHAT'S OUR STORY?
In Connecticut there are no landfills any more, so all our trash gets incinerated in Bridgeport and Hartford. It is estimated that 41.7% of our trash is food waste, yard waste and compostable paper. In New Haven, households alone produce about 200 tons of food scraps per week and the City of New Haven pays $85 per ton of trash to be hauled and incinerated. This all means money leaking from our local economy and environmental pollution.
On the other hand, urban and rural farmers are challenged to produce significant yields over production costs while practicing soil conservation (cover crops, limited tillage, crop rotation, composting, etc.), which is costly and/or time consuming by itself. In this regard, to avoid soil degradation and the use of inorganic fertilizers every organic farmer must build long term soil fertility and tilth by feeding the soil with a variety of natural amendments.
Peels & Wheels Composting was created in partnership with New Haven Farms, a non-profit organization that promotes health and community development through urban agriculture, with the shared understanding that transforming organic waste into compost for urban and rural farms and gardens is an opportunity to improve the quality of our air and soil and grow more food for our community.
This is an opportunity for you to actively participate in improving the quality of New Haven’s air and soil. By becoming a composter you:
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Reduce your carbon footprint by reducing the amount of food waste that goes into incinerators and sewage systems;
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Support a greener neighborhood and a cleaner environment;
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Help create needed compost to enhance the soil of local urban and rural farms and gardens; and
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Generate local, green jobs right here in New Haven.