Our Story

Earth Matter was conceived in spring 2009 to address the dual problems of resource recovery and healthy soils with a single solution: promoting the local composting of organic waste into a healthy soil amendment. We are passionate about resource recovery and healthy soil as primary goals of a 21st century urban environment.
The three founding directors of Earth Matter, Marisa DeDominicis, Kendall Morrison and Charlie Bayrer, bring together many years of experience in urban community greening. They first combined efforts in the Brooklyn-Queens Land Trust (BQLT) healthy soils initiative (2007 to 2008).

This project evaluated soil health in 34 community gardens and promoted remediation by organic amendment. Concurrently, they were involved in organizing the Fort Greene Compost Project (2005-present), a community based, volunteer-led effort to capture residential food waste for composting in local community gardens.

Mission

Earth Matter NY is a 501(c)(3) non profit organization.

We seek to reduce the organic waste misdirected into the garbage stream by encouraging neighbor participation and leadership in composting.

We see that:

• There is one soil, one air, and one water, all commonly held and stewarded by one people, the nurturance of which is critical to a verdant world.

• Organic waste should not be part of modern landfills because the waste of any process is food for other processes.

• Transportation of waste far beyond the source unnecessarily despoils the soil, air, and water.

• Society needs to alter the way waste is treated as part of an integrated, long term solution to food, climate, and energy issues.

• The power to manifest global social change lies within each of us. The challenge to take action rests on our shoulders.

We endeavor to:

• Compost organic waste locally on behalf of our friends.

• Educate, encourage, and support ongoing community composting efforts.

• Utilize best practices for the improvement of soil health.

• Promote water conservation practices to reduce the Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) burden on municipal sewer systems.