On a Saturday in March, Joycelyn Chui carried empty rice bags as she strode along the narrow paths between garden plots in the Danny Woo Community Garden. Some of the pathways of this P-Patch, perched on a hillside in the Chinatown-International District (CID), are canyoned by makeshift fencing made of pallets or found items, like old bed frames. Between the pallet slats, you can catch glimpses of lush plots of onions and mustard greens, goji berry bushes, and peas.
Chui called out in Cantonese to the gardeners, most of whom are Asian elders from the neighborhood, announcing that bags of compost would soon be ready to distribute. Chui is the co-founder and strategic adviser of Restaurant 2 Garden, a nonprofit that aims to convert the neighborhood’s restaurant food waste into compost. The bags Chui carried had been gathered from the gardeners, and she planned to hand them over to a nearby workgroup that would fill them with rich compost.
In a corner of the garden, a couple of people filled bags with soil amendment while others headed into the neighborhood with empty pails. The second group was going to pick up food waste from Itsumono, a Japanese restaurant on South Jackson Street. They gathered the scraps, walked them up to the garden, and chopped them into bite-sized bits to run through a fermentation process. Others loaded buckets of fermented food waste from past weeks into a composting cube they referred to as Cubert.
Gathering and fermenting food waste from Itsumono is a weekly ritual, while gardeners wait about 8 to 10 weeks for the next compost harvest. The work party supports the operation of a full-cycle neighborhood composting pilot project with food waste contributions from Itsumono restaurant and Panama Hotel Tea & Coffee House.
Cubert, a roughly 4-foot-square box, converts a full load of food waste into about 1.5 cubic yards of soil amendment, enough to cover the floor of a two-car garage with a little more than an inch of compost.
Chui co-founded Restaurant 2 Garden with Lizzy Baskerville, the Danny Woo Community Garden’s former garden manager. In 2015, Seattle's garbage laws mandated that food waste be composted, and Chui was hired as an outreach specialist to work with CID businesses in Cantonese to help them stay compliant with the laws and to inform them of city waste services. Every business was required to sign up for compost service, with prices starting at $98 a month. “I saw that small businesses were paying a company to pick up their food scraps, which is typical nationally. At the same time, Lizzy was telling me how large compost donations to the garden would disappear within a couple of hours, so there’s demand for compost within the neighborhood,” Chui said.
The common practice used by the City takes time and fuel. After landing in the compost bin, food scraps handled by the City may travel to a transfer station, then be transported again to an organic processing facility, where they’re turned into compost over the course of a couple of months. From there, the compost is bagged and transported to public services and to sell at garden stores. “There’s a lot of transportation involved in the city service. For this [Restaurant 2 Garden] pilot program, the food travels as little as 75 feet,” said Chui.
Mike Vu, owner of Itsumono restaurant, which is half a block from the Danny Woo Community Garden, is a longtime supporter of the project.
“Sometimes, you’ve gotta give people a chance to try something out. I was given a chance to try out owning a restaurant. We need to be able to try things out knowing a project may make it or not make it,” Vu said.
Chui says up to 20 other restaurants are interested in paying for the Restaurant 2 Garden program. The nonprofit plans to expand after this pilot program, with hopes of producing 200 tons of compost a year with up to 30 participating businesses at maximum capacity. The harvested soil amendment would serve the Danny Woo Community Garden and the nearby Yes Farm, as well as be available to sell.
Amy Bettle Huynh is the organization’s director, and she's working out the details of an expanded iteration of the pilot project that would be permanent. She’s securing a lease with the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) for a small site just under the I-5 overpass on South King Street and 10th Avenue South, where the former Asian Counseling and Referral Service food bank was located.
When the lease with WSDOT is signed, contractors will lay a foundation and hook up electricity to the site to power a 20-foot, shipping-container-sized version of Cubert, outfitted with an auger that will churn food scraps from one end to the other. The larger version of the system can be fed continuously so there’s no weekslong wait time to cook the compost. The program is also looking into transporting larger volumes of food waste from more restaurants within the community using a compact kei truck or a cargo e-bike. Restaurant 2 Garden is fundraising for this effort.
“There are so many resilient people who make a living here. They work so hard to make their business successful. They want to see people gather safely,” Bettle Huynh said. “I want to be a part of something that makes the community more vibrant and active and contributes to our environmental goals.”
Ru Juan Ma has been gardening at Danny Woo for more than 10 years. When she was younger, she worked in the fields in Toisan, China, with her mom. Now that she’s over 80, she says she grows what’s easiest. She picked up a bundle of fresh-picked chives and watercress to show through the fence of her garden. “I’ll stir-fry the chives with egg and make a watercress soup,” she said through an interpreter. “I like the exercise and sense of belonging here. It makes me proud to make a meal out of what I grow. I also like to share my chayote with others.”
Shaotang Zhao has been gardening at Danny Woo for two years and lives in a nearby building. Zhao says she’s learned to garden by watching and listening to other gardeners there. “I follow what people say. They’ll tell each other it’s time to grow beans and peas. So I grow them,” Zhao said through an interpreter. She’s growing snow peas for a stir-fry. Her bok choy, she’ll blanch, then stir-fry with garlic. “The people bring me a lot of happiness. The other gardeners and the garden staff support me,” Zhao said as she embraced Chui.
Emmanuella Umoye, who works in tech, says she volunteers in food delivery or getting food to people. “I didn't know composting like this within a neighborhood was possible,” Umoye said. “There've been so many experiences of people wanting to help me and support me in different areas of my life.” Umoye says she gives back whenever she can. “That's how we continue to embrace connection and relationships and grow community: by supporting one another.”
Guiming Wang is growing onions and mustard greens and two types of Chinese medicine. She’s been gardening at Danny Woo for two years. “I like how green the garden is in the growing season, with so many types of produce, including melons that trellis," Wang said through an interpreter.
Damola Adebayo also works in tech. He’s helped with Restaurant 2 Garden a handful of times. “It's a full-circle thing that we're able to do: taking food and making sure it doesn't go wasted, using it in the gardens to make more food. It's nice to find communities like this that like to do stuff that I like to do, and to meet new people, form connections, make friends.”
Mike Seo lives in Columbia City and became an early supporter of Restaurant 2 Garden. He says he’s at the work parties almost every week. “We’re engaging with senior farmers, who tend to be first-generation immigrants. It makes me think about my roots, me being in America, and what that means. My parents came here with no support system, but somehow settled here, and they built some community. They hustled like I do now. We’re all trying to sustain ourselves and contribute to the community or family with all its joy and its burden.”
Editor’s Note: Translation for some interviews was provided by Joycelyn Chui.
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