Municipal Compost Public Health, Waste Management, and Urban Agriculture: A Decadal Study of Fugitive Pb in City of Boston, Massachusetts, USA.

Compostable materials constitute roughly half of waste generated globally, but only 5% of waste is actually processed through composting, suggesting that expanding compost programs may be an effective way to process waste. Compostable waste, if properly collected and processed, has value-added end use options including: residential and park landscaping, remediation of brownfield sites, and as growing media in urban agriculture (UA). Since 2001, our lab has partnered with The Food Project, a non-profit focused on youth leadership development through urban farming.