I know this update is long overdue, but from now on, I promise that I will make at least one monthly update on this blog.
This year we have seen a decrease in team members :(. Lesley is at Tufts getting her vet degree and Miriam is busy getting a Master's in Teaching and being a great TA at one of the local middle schools. Ashton is in Chile, Marcos is graduating in December and Nikhil transferred to USC. Amy is working for a mine and Blake is busy with his fraternity. So now only Alex and I are left from the old team (we are co-PMs). However, we have a new team member, Rachel! Welcome Rachel, to our awesome composting team. So lets get on with composting...
First, our pilot compost windrow is definitely done and within the next few weeks we will send it into a compost testing laboratory to make sure that we won't kill any plants with our black gold. If the compost is good and well, and has a good ratio of nutrients, we will be giving some to the Garden Team from our mother group (Students for Sustainability, at the University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ) and possibly giving some to companies that may be interested in buying our compost as sample compost.
Secondly, a very large change to the project is that we will now be doing only windrow composting. The higher uppers want to see us succeed at not using very expensive machinery first before they will approve of buying an in-vessel composter.
Third, because of the change from in-vessel composting to windrow composting, we will have to change and revise our business plan, proposal and executive summary. SIFE (Students in Free Enterprise at the UA) will also be helping us with editing the final drafts.
Lastly, many large companies are very interested in looking at selling our compost and if all goes well we will have our project up and running, hopefully by the end of the school year. This is our main goal for the year.
