Cork Urban Soil Project
LET’S STOP WASTING OUR WASTE.
START TURNING WASTE INTO A RESOURCE
Cork Urban Soil Project imagines a Food Secure Cork City. You need soil to be secure and CUSP creates community-scale composting. Our mission is to test urban food soil creation methods using would-be waste products like food scraps. Our first test uses a aerobic biodigestor, Joraform, donated by MTU. Working with the community, we aim to model new ways of addressing the city’s waste streams and to support food sovereignty.
Why does it matter?
The EPA estimates that 60% of organic household waste in Ireland still gets incinerated or landfilled. It's a big issue, as Cork City households alone produce around 30 tonnes of food scraps everyday.
What a waste. Food scraps are a valuable resource that, when composted, help support healthy soil. And healthy soil grows healthy food, retains water to help prevent flooding and erosion, and even sequesters carbon to combat climate change.
Composting addresses climate change in other ways, too. Composted food scraps can replace petrochemical fertilisers, prevent methane emissions from landfill, & reduce transport emissions (most of Cork City’s food scraps are exported to Sweden & the Netherlands for incineration).
The CUSP Solution
A “closed loop” waste system that treats food scraps as a resource. Convert urban food scraps into compost and then use this soil enhancer in local food growing and tree-planting initiatives. Composting food scraps as a community is good for our community. (And we hope you will join in!)
In the Media
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https://thegloss.ie/how-to-use-our-food-waste-for-good-starting-with-the-cork-urban-soil-project/
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https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/we-should-all-be-obsessing-over-the-magic-of-soil-1.4839182
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https://open.spotify.com/episode/6EnyjnsiHixTC6DeUHOte1
