ECRI – RI Future

The 2016 Rhode Island Compost Conference and Trade Show will be held on Thursday, March 10 from 9 to 3 in the Student Union at Rhode Island College in Providence. The conference is annually organized by the Compost Initiative of the Environment Council of Rhode Island, and this year is being held in partnership with the Office of Sustainability of Rhode Island College.

As the wave of the Green Economy washes over Rhode island and the planet, composting food scrap is often the odd man out after solar energy and storm water management. But creating a compost industry needs to be front and center in the Green Economy as it is part of both healing ecosystems and providing new resources for the economy. Creating and using compost reduces trash, stores carbon in the soil, reduces runoff, and improves the size and quality of the food supply, while offering jobs in the places in RI that could really use them.

The way Rhode Island deals with food scrap is changing. The organics collection law passed in 2014 has taken effect, and with facilities coming on line to compost and digest the food scrap, New regulations are going into effect that will boost the development of community and neighborhood composting.. The annual compost conference is the best place to learn about what is going on and to connect to the people making it happen.

This year the keynoter will be Michael Bradlee of Earth Appliance. Bradlee is a long time composter and compost bin innovator and will talk about his work with the pilot compost project in Providence, his data on how much compost you can get from food scrap, and where he thinks the industry is going on Rhode Island. Bradlee’s talk will be particularly informative for school, Community Gardens and Urban Farms.

Workshop presenters include:

Richard Pederson, the longtime City Farm Steward for Southside Community Land Trust, will be speaking on Urban Agriculture Composting
Waylon Pleasanton of Sustainable Generation, was the Facilities Operations Supervisor for the Delaware Solid Waste Authority’s Cherry Island facility and now works with Sustainable Generations customers to get operations up and running. He will discuss “Lessons Learned in a Food Waste Composting Operation.”
Marissa Desautel is an environmental attorney who will explain Rhode Island’s new compost law and regulations.
A new Vermiculture cooperative, the Rhody Worms Cooperative is getting off the ground. Monique Bosch and Bob Barnes will lead the discussion about what they are doing and how you can participate.
Michael Bradlee will join Leo Pollock, one of the founders of The Compost Plant, and some surprise guests for a discussion of where RI is going. Speakers will offer their perspectives on how the industry is progressing in Rhode Island and what some of the obstacles and opportunities are. This is also an excellent opportunity for others to share what they are seeing in RI as the speakers are just to get the ball rolling.
We are also still trying to add a speaker from one of the anaerobic digesters being built in Rhode Island

The focus at lunch time will be the annual trade show. Exhibitors include:

Buxton Hollow Farm
Earth Appliance
ecoRI News
EJ Prescott/Filtrexx
O2 compost
Rhody Worms Cooperative
URI extension
The Wormladies of Charlestown

There is still room for additional exhibitors.

The day will end with a panel of Christine Beiling of USEPA, Michael McGonagle of RI Resource Recovery Corporation and Christopher Shafer of RI Department of Environmental Management.

This panel will focus on what our government agencies are doing to reduce food waste and where this is heading from the government’s perspective,.

Information and registration are available at http://www.environmentcouncilri.org/content/2016-compost-conference-trade-show Admission is $35 including lunch Questions can be answered if you call the ECRI office at 401-621-8048 or email environmentcouncil@earthlink.net

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse was wrong to suggest the so-called “larger environmental community” isn’t disappointed that the climate champion of Congress is supporting a fossil fuel power plant in Burrillville, Rhode Island.

That’s the opinion of the Environment Council of Rhode Island, a coalition of 62 different groups that protect the environment in the Ocean State.

“While ECRI has deep respect for Senator Whitehouse’s work in the U.S. Senate to address climate change,” the group said in a prepared statement sent widely to local media. “ECRI regrets that in his Jauary 22 interview Senator Whitehouse misrepresented the views of Rhode Island’s environmental community.”

In an interview with WPRI’s Ted Nesi, Whitehouse said the “larger environmental community” understands why he supports a methane gas-fueled power plant in Rhode Island, which he says would help lower energy prices in the Northeast.

“There’s a small group of people who would like to have me change my position,” Whitehouse told Nesi. “From the larger environmental movement – the Save the Bays and the League of Conservation Voters and the Nature Conservancies and all that – there’s no blowback whatsoever. They understand the difference between the national and the local concern.”

Said the Environment Council of Rhode Island today: “To be clear: ECRI strongly opposes the proposal to build a new, long-lived fossil-fuel plant in Rhode Island, because building this plant would make it impossible for the state to meet its short-, medium-, and long-term goals for carbon-emission reductions.”

On September 14, ECRI, of which the Nature Conservancy is a member, took an official position on the Burrillville proposal:

Climate change is the most urgent problem facing Rhode Island and, indeed, the world. One of the major causes of climate change is the burning of fossil fuels, like coal, oil and natural gas, to make energy. In this context, the Environment Council of Rhode Island (ECRI) strongly opposes the proposal to build a new, long-lived natural gas fueled electricity generator in Burrillville. ECRI supports the quickest transition to clean, renewable energy and greater energy efficiency; this is not the time to be building new fossil fuel-fired power plants.

Steve Ahlquist reported subsequent to the WPRI interview that Save The Bay and the League of Conservation Voters had no position on the proposed methane power plant. He wrote, “Given that two of the three groups that Whitehouse named have no position on the project, and the third group, “the Nature Conservancies and all that” doesn’t specify any particular agency, it appears that Whitehouse’s answer was intended to minimize the importance of local opposition to the power plant, not honestly appraise the support for natural gas infrastructure expansion that exists in the wider environmental community.”

The proposed gas-fueled power plant in Burrillville has exposed a rift between local environmental activists and the elected Democrats they often support. Governor Gina Raimondo was an early and ardent supporter of the project. Whitehouse was more measured. In August, his office told WPRI he was “still reviewing the details of the proposed power plant.”

The proposed power plant opposition has been led by grassroots activists, some of whom associate with a group called FANG or Fighting Against Natural Gas.

Tag: ECRI

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