Baltimore Compost Collective Expansion

The Baltimore Compost Collective is a youth entrepreneurship program that trains participants in workforce skills, food access programming, and community-scale composting in the Curtis Bay neighborhood of Baltimore. It provides first-time employment and life skills mentorship for area youth, giving them experience working with a green start-up enterprise that they learn to run.

Youth employees collect hundreds of pounds of food scraps each week from local customers. They convert this material into compost for use at the Filbert Street Community Garden. However, Baltimore Compost Collective due to its success in adding additional customers and expanding its operations is outgrowing their space and is in search of a larger plot of land within the City or County to continue its effort to reduce waste being burned at the incinerator. Food and food waste are something tangible everyone touches everyday and BCC's programs help ensure food waste is utilized as a resource and not just a waste. This project is introducing youth to the wonder of compost to enhance soil fertility, grow local food, sequester carbon, and provide an alternative to the city’s polluting and expensive trash incinerator.

• Raise needed funds for expansion to a parcel of land that Baltimore Compost Collective will have control over to support its long-term growth and expansion tot serve more customers across the City 

• Add more customers in the Curtis Bay, Federal Hill, Riverside Park and Locust Point neighborhoods

• Explore expanding service to other neighborhoods in Baltimore

• Serve more customers, employ more youth, collect more food scraps, make more compost!

• Serve as a hub for supporting youth entrepreneurs 

The Baltimore Compost Collective is bringing jobs, income, and skills to a historically disenfranchised neighborhood in Baltimore. Curtis Bay is one of the most polluted zip codes in the country. A long industrial history has left it with a legacy of environmental contamination and associated health impacts. This reality, coupled with high unemployment, high levels of family poverty, and a general lack of basic infrastructure has created a situation where residents lack both economic opportunity and access to fresh food.

According to the USDA, in the U.S., 30-40 percent of the food supply ends up as waste, corresponding to approximately 133 billion pounds and $161 billion worth of food in 2010. It is the single largest component of our everyday trash. In Baltimore, wasted food is incinerated along with other trash, contributing not just to carbon emissions but toxic pollutants such as dioxin and mercury as well. The Baltimore Compost Collective is providing a positive alternative that transforms food waste into something valuable.

Launched in 2017, The Baltimore Compost Collective is run by Program Manager, Marvin Hayes with fiscal sponsorship and support from Ridge to Reefs, with important continued partnership with Filbert Street Community Garden where the Collective is located. Marvin Hayes, the Baltimore Compost Collective program manager, supervises and trains the youth workers. Marvin is a longtime community and youth recreation activist from Sandtown-Winchester with more than 20 years of experience working with Baltimore youth. As he says, "We don’t just save food, we save youth."

A site for growth and expansion of Baltimore Compost Collective is needed to continue to take on additional customers including residential clients, universities and businesses!! Thank you for your consideration!!