ISHPEMING, Mich. (WZMQ) – An Ishpeming farm is expanding with a new sister company, Partridge Creek Farms has created Partridge Creek Compost. The new company’s goal is to create a solution to food waste management in Marquette County.
Partridge Creek Farms has been creating fertilizer at its site in Ishpeming for years. With grant funding from the USDA and Michigan EGLE, Partridge Creeks Founder, Dan Perkins, says they’re doing what they can to keep food waste out of landfills.
“The biggest pollutant in landfills is compost,” said Perkins. “By diverting that compost out we’ve reduced methane emissions and created a much healthier environment while creating the soil we need to grow the food.”
Partridge Creek collects food waste from restaurants and kitchens in the area like The NMU Training Kitchen. They can use almost anything that comes from nature: food scraps, even meat and dairy, and cardboard, paper, and compostable serve ware.
They then mix the scraps with carbon rich materials like wood chips to help break down the compostables and create a nutrient rich fertilizer for everything from potted plants, to farms. In the end, the broken down mixture is anywhere from a third to half made up of food waste.
Partridge Creek Compost Business Director, Phil Carter said they’ve been partnering with the city to obtain their carbon materials, and they hope to gain more sources of food waste this summer.
“We’re really out to revolutionize the food production system in Marquette County and far beyond” Carter said. “We’re looking to play in harmony with nature instead of on top of it and not only benefit the humans in our community but the ecosystem we live in as well.”
According to Partridge Creek, 60% of what goes into The Marquette County Landfill is compostable. Along with the food waste collected from local businesses, Partridge Creeks hopes to drop that percentage with a pilot residential curbside pickup program starting in Ishpeming soon. May Tsupros, The Farms Executive Director says they hope to expand enough to be the food waste solution for all or Marquette County.
“Were running out of places to put our waste,” Tsupros said. “And so that’s really the why behind this is ya know, the up being geographically isolated, want to find our own solution.”
Tsupros said operations like this will only become more common as the state of Michigan moves towards requiring compost sites as a part of general waste management. The Partridge Creek Team says this just puts Marquette County a head of that curve, and they are excited to be creating a model right here in The UP.
