If you have things to turn into compost, a Guelph community collaboration wants to hear from you.
Royal City Brewing, the Compost Queens of the Royal City and Yorklands Green Hub have teamed up to create a new community compost system and pollinator garden.
"It's not a backyard composter, and it's not the municipal waste facility. It's something in between," said Karen Houle, co-founder of Compost Queens of the Royal City.
"We don't have any of those in the city, except the other one we built at the Two Rivers (Huron Street Community) Garden last August."
The system and garden is behind the plaza that houses Royal City Brewing at the corner of York Road and Victoria Road South, next to the parking lot you can enter at the York and Audrey Avenue intersection.
It runs on a sloped hill, with the thought of using gravity to their advantage.
Houle said composting "is a system, it's not a junk pile" and while it's something that can happen naturally, people can also be involved in the production of good soil.
The slope design helps in utilizing the system and the turning of the soil, another important part in managing compost.
Another thing they needed was a good location for people to access it.
"Folks can easily see it," said Avery Meron of Royal City Brewery, who was credited with the idea of the collaboration. "It's easily accessible to come in, park, throw your compost in, or take your food scraps and take some of the compost and bring it to your own garden, or use it to sustain our garden here."
Businesses and individuals community-wide can contribute. Things like coffee grounds and wood chips, a brewer's spent yeast and grain, vegetable and fruit scraps, cardboard products, hair and much more can be used for composting.
"Every small business will have something that they could divert to this community-level compost system," Houle said. "I think of it as sort of a catchment area for local businesses."
Right next to the composting system is the Polli-Patches program garden, put on by Yorklands.
Polli-Patches started as a pilot project in 2020, where they put pollinator plants in gardens, while also providing educational resources. It has since expanded to a number of houses around Guelph, and now they're taking the next step to businesses.
"We find that a lot of people don't know about the native pollinator plants that are out there that are really good," said Julia Harvey, the summer environmental programs coordinator with Yorklands.
"People are more familiar with non-native plants like clematis that are helpful pollinators. But we are really focusing on getting the message out for more native pollinator plants."
She said about eight to 10 pollinator-friendly species of plants can be brought in for businesses interested in collaborating with them.
Harvey added they've been getting feedback that they've been seeing a decline in pollinators, such as bees or monarch butterflies.
There's been such a decline in monarch butterflies, they were declared an endangered species by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature Thursday.
The hope for the entire setup is to expand in future years, and even have some vegetable gardens available next year.
"That (so) folks who maybe are dealing with some food insecurity can have access to and come grab some fresh tomatoes and cucumbers off the vine," Meron said. "(They can) have access to fresh food, beautiful flowers and then also be able to learn about what composting does for us."
You're being asked to contact either Houle, Meron or Harvey for more information and how you can contribute and collaborate.
You can also visit the compost site Sunday afternoon for the official launch, take in some compost demonstrations, check out a garden market and participate in activities.
