Dear CSA Members,
Christophe and I drove to Stockton last Monday to a Honda distribution warehouse, which distributes motor parts etc. to dealers all over northern California. We went there to see their new cardboard shredder. We’re looking for just he right shredder to use in our packing shed.
We were greeted by Craig Christiansen, the facility manager, who was very friendly and informative. He told us his warehouse was 300,000 square feet of floor space filled with pallet racks three stories high, every nook and cranny storing the 68,000 parts to repair Honda cars, boats, and garden tools. It was VAST. AND SQUEAKY CLEAN. As we walked down long corridors of pallet racks he told us that every night they loaded 13 semi-trucks full of parts to be sent out to dozens of dealerships all across Northern California. Each and every part had to be separately packed in a box with packing material to keep it from moving around and possibly breaking.
Until just recently they had to buy all of this packing material, while at the same time spending considerable resources to dispose of the cardboard boxes used to get all this machinery from the factory to them.
He was describing this elaborate process while he demonstrated to us how his new cardboard shredder could take virtually all of this in-coming cardboard, shred it, and produce the packing material needed for shipping each part back out again to the dealerships. I quipped “GARBAGE IN GARBAGE OUT”. He exclaimed very proudly, “This stuff isn’t garbage anymore!”
At the farm we have the same problem. For any of you who have visited the farm, you may have noticed the big yellow container about the size of a large dump truck along the canal where we park. In the summertime we fill that container one to two times a week. When the container is full, the cardboard is sent off to recycling.
Our operators consume large quantities of cardboard. If fact you, our CSA members, get a small portion of “corrugated” each week – the box your fruit comes in.
We thank each of you for returning those boxes each week so that we can re-use them. We will re-use them many times, but eventually they become unusable. Our current practice is to send them off to the recycling center. But, if we had a shredder just like the one we saw at the Honda warehouse we could recycle it ourselves. Our intention is to stop sending off the cardboard and to start turning it into soil and packing material!
We could make good use of shredded cardboard when we ship our olive oil, conserves and dried fruit. And the cardboard shredder will enable us to use old boxes as a carbon source for our compost and vermicompost. The cardboard will act as a valuable carbon source to balance the fruit (nitrogen source) that we add to the pile. We haven’t been able to use the cardboard for the compost because large pieces take too long to decompose. By shredding the cardboard, the juices from the fruit, water, and other biodegradable materials will be able to mingle with the cardboard and allow the compost process to happen immediately. The worms in our vermicompost will also be able to eat the cardboard once it’s shred. Essentially, it become digestible once it is small.
We will be ordering the shredder soon and are excited to put the equipment to work! We hope to be shredding boxes to feed the worms and the compost piles by our first cherry harvest. Pictures to follow!
