Conversations with Growing City

I absolutely love watching Dragon's Den, especially when there are amazing new innovations or services that have the potential to make major changes. Back in January of 2013, a company called Growing City made their sales pitch to the dragons. Green Earth Organics member and Growing City employee, Genevieve, agreed to speak with us about this fast growing company and the impact they've had on improving our planet.

Can you tell me a little about what Growing City does?

Of course! Growing City is an Organics and Recycling service provider. In a nutshell, we provide offices, restaurants, hotels, cafés as well as commercial and residential buildings organics and recycling collection services.

How has Growing City evolved since we saw you on Dragon’s Den?

Oh boy! Well, for one, I was hired as the first full-time sales manager in order to manage the influx of requests we got from that first appearance on the show. After that, we were able to hire 2 more staff members for our operations side of things, one driver and one operations manager. And, at the beginning of this year we also added a new vehicle to our fleet. So needless to say, things are going great!

So, break it down for me. What happens to the organic waste after you pick it up?

After we collect your organics, our driving team brings the materials to one of [your city's] approved organics processing facilities. We’ve been working with Enviro-Smart Organics and they’re great! At the facility, our load gets weighed and then dumped into a pile in order to start the composting process. The materials get turned every once in a while and, after a few months, you have nutrient rich soil which is distributed... to farmers who will grow more fruits and vegetables to go into your client’s bins. We literally come back full-circle, so neat!

What is the best way for the average person to get started?

Growing City is currently only just in the Metro Vancouver area, but the company is looking for partners in Alberta and the rest of Canada as well, so that soon everyone can take advantage of composting whether at home or at work.

Absolute best way is to contact us. There are a few ways you can do that:

Send us a request online: http://www.growingcity.com/get-started-free-quote-today

Call us: 1-855-WE-COMPO (932-6676)

Send us an email: info@growingcity.ca

Tweet to us: @GrowingCity

Send us a note on Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/yourGrowingCity 

Following is for Metro Vancouver Members:

Does Growing City have any suggestions to help people living in cities or buildings without a compost service?

Yes of course! The City of Vancouver has extended collection to apartment buildings that already have city provided waste hauling services so, if you’re one of those, send them a note to get your green bin. If your building is not eligible for then, that’s where we come in.

Just contact us through the channels noted above, whether or not you’re on strata council, we can help you get them on board!

Metro Vancouver has a ban on organics at their landfills coming into effect January in 2015. How do you think this will affect residents of Vancouver and their neighbors?

From the last meeting we had with Metro Vancouver, this is what will happen in January 2015:

The accepted threshold for organics in a load of garbage will be 5%

The garbage haulers who go over this 5% threshold will be fined 50% of their regular tipping fee (108$ /metric tonne at the moment)

Metro Vancouver will begin giving out fines as of June 2015

Since it will be difficult for haulers to determine which clients are contaminating their loads, the thought is that the fines will be redistributed among all of their clients, unless it can be shown that an organics program is already in place. 

So although this ban will not impact residents directly, the costs will end up coming back to them indirectly. We say, better safe than sorry, call us today so we can get you to start recycling your food scraps.

Did you know: Farm to Table at Green Earth Organics!

Have you ever wondered how your fruits and veggies get from the farm to your table? “One, Two, Three, Door!” has been a slogan of Green Earth Organics for years and, secretly, is also one of the things we pride ourselves on. Not only is it how easy to place an order sign up, pick your fruits and veggies, submit your order, and have it arrive at your door. It is also exactly how many steps your produce travels before it arrives at your home or office ready to eat.

One! Your fruits and veggies are planted, cared for, and harvested at the farm.
Depending on the farm, they may clean and process everything directly or they may pack everything into produce boxes for pick up. They are then stored in a cool area until they’re picked up for the next leg of their journey. Thanks to the resurgence in family farming versus mono-farming, there are many different sizes of farms.

Photograph by Nikki

The farmers you see at local outdoor Markets, for example, are usually very small and don’t produce enough during the harvest season to use a distributor to sell large quantities. Instead they bring their harvest directly to the markets themselves and, that way, save money to reinvest in their farm. Larger farms often find themselves with extra produce once the harvest gets going, so they sell to distributors who pick it up for them and then move it all over British Columbia. Our company prefers to use distributors because asking a small farm to produce the quantities we need each week, would be very taxing for them and would defeat our purpose of supporting local food.

Two! Produce from hundreds of different farms arrive at a distribution warehouse.
If the produce has not already been cleaned and processed at the farm, then this is where all the extra leaves and bits of dirt get removed or brushed off. Once ready to sell, each piece goes into nicely labeled produce boxes and is split up into the many different orders. Green Earth Organics orders from two main organic produce distributors. Fun Fact! In order to distribute organic food, a distributor must also be certified organic, even if they do not grow any organic food themselves. We place orders with our distributors every day, based on the projected orders of you, our wonderful customers!

In fact, we get updates twice a week on what sort of produce is coming out of the various farms. This week one of our distributors let us know to keep an eye out for large quantities of canning peaches and pickling cucumbers, as well as upcoming first harvests of local pears. They also let us know if there will be any supply problems. Blueberries, for example, will see a slump due to all the rain and local apples will be expensive and harder to find due to a hail storm earlier this season.

Three! Your fruits and veggies arrive early each morning to our small warehouse ready to be packed into your bins. The bins themselves are washed every morning before packing and are then sorted by size, ready to be filled. Our two packers utilize a long counter with rows of produce both in front and behind them. Each person’s order is individually printed out and the items collected to be placed into a bin. Once your bin is ready, it is stacked with the other bins on the same route to wait for your driver.

Door! Your drivers arrive in advance of their delivery time to look over and make changes to their route. The bins are checked over for any missing items and, if an item is unavailable, your driver makes a note to stop by one of our suppliers to see if we can pick up any individual units of that item before delivering. If the supplier does not have an item available, the drivers then check local stores along their route in a last effort to find that item for you. Then the bins are carefully packed into the van and away they go, straight to your door!

Help! My Greens Are Brown!

We have had a lot of questions over the last couple weeks about why the greens have been turning brown more quickly in the summer than in the winter. The short answer is heat.

Greens are out in a field under the hot sun until they’re picked. Once picked, a large commercial farm will immediately run the greens through either a hydro cooler, vacuum cooler, or a pressure cooler. Hydro coolers run produce through an icy cold bath and are commonly used for avocados and other stone fruits. This method isn’t great since it can leave you with water soaked and transparent leaves that have to be trimmed off. Vacuum coolers are perfect for greens, but can take more than five years for a high volume farm to pay off.

A pressure cooler is created by using a fork lift to place stacks of produce pallets in two rows on either of a large cooler fan. The pallets create a tunnel and are covered by a tarp to force the air from the fan through the tunnel. The pressurized cold air leaches any remaining sun heat out of the plants and temporarily stops the breakdown of the plants’ cells.

Small local farms don’t usually have access to these types of advanced and expensive cooling systems. They are a serious investment for such a low profit market and require a lot of open space to use that most small farms can’t really spare. Small farms usually use walk-in style coolers, which take a bit longer to remove the same amount of heat as the other types of coolers.

The time of day they are harvested impacts the amount of heat that is carried into the cooler. A one acre field of romaine lettuce harvested in the morning contains about the same amount of heat as 1/4th of an acre field harvested in the early afternoon. Another factor is how fast the greens are placed in the cooler after being picked. The longer the greens have to wait before going into the cooler, the less shelf life they will have.

Knowing the shelf life of your greens can help you plan which greens to use first when planning meals throughout the week. According to the Canadian Produce Marketing Association (CPMA), lettuce variety greens, like romaine, green & red leaf, or spinach, only last about one week in refrigerated storage. It is recommended to wash them before storing. Other varieties of greens, like collards, kale, and chard, only last between 2 – 4 days refrigerated before they start to develop spotting and it is recommended that you do not wash them before storing. So use the chard or kale right away and save the lettuce for later in the week.

There is also a great technique from Discovery Organics for extending the life of your greens that you can do right away. Immediately remove any brown or over-saturated leaves and trim the stem, so that it is freshly cut. Then, immerse the lettuce in bath temperature water for about one minute. Immediately immerse the lettuce into icy water following the warm water and leave for 2-3 minutes. Plants are made up of cells, just like we are, so this technique works similar to washing your face. The warm water opens all the pores on the leaves and allows them to suck in water. The cold water is quickly absorbed and causes the pores to seal in all that fresh cold water. Just make sure to dry any excess water off of your kales and chards before sticking them into the fridge.

Our newsletter is written for you, so feel free to let us know what interests you! I’m always happy to write articles regarding questions you might have or topics you’re interested in. ~ Rachel

Save the Bees and Ban “Neoinic” Pesticides

If you’ve been paying vague attention to the news over the last decade, you probably know that we’ve been seeing an alarming decrease in bee populations since the early 2000s. Considering that our produce doesn’t actually grow itself and bees are our primary source of pollination, this is a bit of a concern for future life on our planet. Various governments have thrown cabals of scientists at the problem and, while they spent the usual amount of time arguing with each other, recently we have begun seeing results from various studies.

The most widely agreed upon cause of colony collapse is neonicotinoid pesticide usage.

So, what are “neonic” pesticides and what have they been doing to both humans and bees? They were first developed in the 1990s by Shell and Bayer as a reduced toxicity alternative to current pesticides on the market that would only target pests and not helpful insects. Its base is a compound chemically similar to nicotine, which acts as a natural insecticide. FYI: I honestly don’t understand why people voluntarily smoke poison.

The first pesticide developed by Shell was found not to be photosoluable, meaning that it didn’t break down in sunlight and was not viable for use with human consumables, so it was never released for public use. The second, which has been commercially available since the early 2000s, is water-soluable and will break down slowly when left in the environment. Since then, two other varieties have been developed and virtually all GMO corn grown in the Midwestern USA is treated with one of these types of pesticide. (Yay! They’ve basically been adding nicotine to food!)

So now that we’ve established this pesticide as not the best thing in the world, although better than what we used to use, what is the impact of “neonics” on bee populations? It is true that they aren’t killed. However, when this type of pesticide is applied to plants and a bee lands on them, the bee loses its ability to learn and remember navigation routes from its hive to their pollen sources. Simply put, they can no longer find their way home.

If that wasn’t enough, the bees that do make it back to their hive with infected pollen have unwittingly brought back a slow acting poison. In low doses on plants the pesticide doesn’t kill bees, but when concentrated while making the honey that provides the hive with nourishment, it often becomes lethal. To put it plainly, the bees are making their own food poisonous, which begs the question… what about the honey and produce that the everyday human is eating? With our larger bodies and such small amounts there aren’t the lethal effects seen in bees, but what about the neurological effects that are keeping bees from remembering where their hive is? It would be interesting to find out if those who developed memory disorders have had a wide exposure to this type of pesticide.

The European Union has already banned this class of pesticide, but Canada and the United States have not yet done so. There are initiatives by environmentalists and beekeepers to ban neonicotinoids in the United States and they have even filed a lawsuit against the Enviromental Protection Agency. Until they succeed, and here in Canada, that still puts even the regular garden bee at risk because garden centers regularly spray their plants with pesticides. You could buy a “bee-friendly” plant in the spring that has already been sprayed with the same pesticide that has been harming them!

Help Canada take action by signing the Suzuki Foundation’s “Petition to Ban Bee Killing Pesticides”

Organic Versus Convential Farming. Go!

Controversy makes amazing news and nothing is more controversial than organic farming. Debates have already sprung up on the legitimacy of a recently released paper by Rodale Institute, the world’s leading advocate of organic farming practices - going back to 1947.

The company ran a 33-year Farm System Trial designed to compare the results of conventional farming with that of organic farming on CO2 emissions.  Despite citing sources from 75 different peer reviewed and unaffiliated studies, there are an amazing number of skeptics who would be more than happy to debunk every word in the report.

The trial compares neighbouring plots of land, one farmed organic and the other conventional. Both types of plots were divided into till and no-till sections to reflect farmers who use both methods. The organic fields used typical organic farming techniques like crop-rotation and cover crops, while the conventional fields used the most common forms of synthetic pesticides and GMOs.

According to the study: “Recent data from farming systems and pasture trials around the globe show that we could sequester more than 100% of current annual CO2 emissions with a switch to widely available and inexpensive organic management practices, which we term “regenerative organic agriculture.” These practices work to maximize carbon fixation while minimizing the loss of that carbon once returned to the soil, reversing the greenhouse effect” ~ Read about the White Paper ~

The downside, since no potential solution is ever perfect, is that the first few years those farms switch their produce to organic, the yields aren’t as high due to previous soil depletion and they don’t qualify as organic yet so farmers are investing a lot of money without equivalent return.

This prevents a great deal of farmers from switching, especially when they have such a low profit margin as it is. With so many farms already in trouble due to drought and pest problems, we’re not likely to see a rapid increase unless they apply for grants or subsidies from the government or private investors.