I'm a Jerk; Tom Responded!

So, yesterday I received a response from Tom Marshall, the man I contacted at the Bethlehem Compost Center. I now feel like a jerk for my previous post about Bethlehem Compost. Tom seems great, and would even give us a tour of the compost center if we would like. Anyone interested?

Below, I will first paste my e-mail to Tom, and then I will paste his response below that.

Hi Tom,

I called the Bethlehem Compost Center this morning to find out a  
little more about the actual compost, and I was given your contact  
information to extend my questions to. Thank you so much in advance  
for your time. Any help or information that you can give me would be  
greatly appreciated.

My name is Courtney and I am a student at Lehigh University. I am  
currently working in a community garden with one of my classes, and we  
had gotten on the topic of compost in class. We had a couple of  
questions that we were wondering if you could help us out with.

I know that your compost is mostly leaves from the road and people's  
yards. It would probably be impossible to separate cigarette butts,  
plastics, wrappers, and other foreign objects from the leaves. Is  
there any way to deal with this? What do you do at the compost center?

Second, the gas and oil that cars leak on the road seeps into the  
leaves that sit there. Is there any way that the compost center deals  
with this issue?

Finally, if there is any other information that you think is important  
about your compost that you would like me to share with my class, I  
would love to hear it.

Thank you again,

Courtney


Hello Courtney,

There can be quite a bit of debris when leaves are picked up from the
gutter as we do here in the City. There are machines that the leaves can
be processed thru to eliminate most of this. The most frequent item is
plastic. The expense of these machines and the labor intenseness of the
operation preclude us from purchasing the equipment.

I know of no equipment that would extract oil or gas from leaves. I
would think that the "cooking" of compost would eliminate most of this.

I would be happy to host your group for a tour of the compost center.

If you have any further questions please feel free to contact me.

Tom