schaffer_introduction_letter

Dear Brian Ukena [maybe?],

My name is Guy Schaffer, and I am a sociologist of waste with an interest in municipal composting and waste reform movements. I am writing to introduce myself, and to ask if I can interview you about the composting program at Eureka! Recycling.

I first came across Eureka! Recycling six years ago when I was working at Common Roots Café, one of the first small businesses to take advantage of the institutional composting project at Eureka. I remember vividly the excitement of throwing out compostable cups and coffee grounds, knowing it would all decompose into useful fertilizer not far from where it was getting thrown out, rather than fill up a landfill, or get trucked to a recycling plant hours away. Throwing things away has never been as rewarding as it was at Common Roots Café.

Now I am a graduate student studying (among other things) the emergence of municipal composting systems in the U.S., and my memories of Eureka! draw me back there. I find myself asking—how did this composting system emerge? What conditions are necessary for the development of municipal composting? And how do public-private partnerships in the resource management sector facilitate new options in waste management? My current asks these questions with a practical bent—I am working with a group of waste reform advocates to get a municipal composting system started here in Troy, NY.

I would like to interview you in order to better understand the work of Eureka! Recycling, its goals as an organization, and the process of constructing a municipal composting system. I’m also very interested in trying to understand //your// understanding of waste problems, and the work that composting is doing to fix these waste problems.

I have interviewed the managers of municipal resource composting systems in Dubuque, IA and Utica, NY, as well as the coordinator of a composting program in Queens, NY. There is an interesting excitement that I hear from compost managers, a genuine love of good dirt and a reluctance to waste. This excitement isn’t just relevant to my research (how does excitement about compost motivate waste management?), it’s catching—a good interview sends me out the door to turn my compost pile, it gets me dreaming about new ways to get my city to compost.

If you’re interested (and I really hope that you are), I’d like to try to schedule an hour-long phone interview with you sometime in the near future, but at your convenience. I would tape and transcribe the interview, and give you a copy to make any edits, and for your own purposes.

Thank you so much for your time, and I look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Guy Schaffer