New Compost Center Recycles Zoo Waste

The words of the day were “zoo doo.”

At the grand opening of the Griffith Park Composting Facility on Wednesday, city official after city official delighted in the phrase.

So may Griffith Park’s plants, which “Zoo doo” will soon help grow. Instead of being dumped in landfills as is done currently, the four tons of animal waste produced every day at the L.A. Zoo will instead head to the new composting center.

The site, in operation since the end of January, already composts shredded plant clippings and “biosolids” from the Hyperion Sewage Treatment Plant near El Segundo. (Biosolids are, more or less, the human doo you flush down the toilet.) For the city, this pilot project could save a quarter of a million dollars a year in landfill and other costs.

The $1.2-million composting site is undergoing a 12-month trial period. If successful, the city may decide to build more facilities.

To the uninitiated, the facility looks like a parking lot, 1 1/2 acres of blacktop dotted with rows of what looks like dirt, each more than 2 yards high and 16 yards long. A pungent whiff of decay washes past, and you realize it’s not dirt.

Each pile starts with 70 tons of green trimmings and biosolids. (The city will start adding the zoo doo one or two months from now.) Bacteria chew away at the mixture for a couple of months, reducing it to 12 tons of compost that is then used at Griffith Park.

An adjoining self-guided education center tells visitors about various home composting options.

City officials recommend calling (800) 773-CITY to find out the best times for stopping by.