Dairy Creek GC’s zero-waste maintenance facility offers compost capabilities, guided tours of the property, and community outreach to spread eco-friendly practices.
To most people, zero is usually not a good number to associate with education. But Josh Heptig, Golf Course Superintendent for the San Luis Obispo (Calif.) County Parks, is not most people. And when it comes to combining a goose egg—as in zero waste—with educating people about the benefits of an eco-friendly lifestyle, he is at the head of the class, especially within the golf course industry.
Heptig was the impetus behind the development of a zero-waste park at Dairy Creek Golf Course in San Luis Obispo, one of three county-owned golf courses that he oversees. “We’re essentially trying to eliminate anything from going to the landfill from our operations,” he reports.
The Goal: Keep waste from Dairy Creek Golf Course out of the landfill, educate the community about recycling, and create eco-friendly compost products that the maintenance staff can use on the golf course.
The Plan: Build a zero-waste management facility with compost capabilities, offer guided and self-guided tours of the property, post signage around the property to encourage recycling, and train people to change their habits. |
Heptig, who has worked for the county since 2008, strives to provide environmental leadership on the golf course and in the community by example. But because it’s hard to get buy-in without community involvement, he partnered with local entities to launch the zero-waste park initiative, and Dairy Creek opened an on-site composting facility in November 2011.
The San Luis Obispo County Integrated Waste Management Authority donated two food composters, each of which can handle 3.5 cubic yards of compost and process 150 pounds of food waste per day, to the property. The Morro Bay National Estuary Program and Eco-Rotary of Morro Bay also provided funding for educational outreach and implementation.
“Eco-Rotary helped us come up with local businesses that donated materials like gravel and lumber,” reveals Heptig. “Since 2011, we’ve eliminated about 34,000 pounds of food waste from the landfill, just at our golf course.”
Food waste from the clubhouse restaurant isn’t the only discarded product taken to the compost facility. Dairy Creek’s maintenance staff also sorts through its trash to take waste such as grass clippings, chopped trees, fertilizer bags, and packaging from pro shop merchandise to the zero-waste park.
The facility features hot and cold composting capabilities to demonstrate the types of available methods to local residents. In hot composting—the more traditional of the two methods —microbial life is used to decompose the waste products. “It usually takes 12 to 20 weeks to create usable compost, but we can do it in four weeks,” notes Heptig.
Dairy Creek also has a vermiculture operation, where red worms are mixed in the cold compost bin to break down organic matter. And when they eat, they leave behind waste that is valuable as a fertilizer.
“The worms live in the enclosed container at room temperature, and they rifle through the food to create compost,” explains Heptig. “The only odor is an earthy odor, and the food never rots or smells. There’s also no way for any other animal to get into the bin.”
While the top goal of the zero-waste initiative was to educate local residents and teach them how to compost and eliminate food waste from the landfill, Heptig had ulterior motives as well. As a secondary objective, he wanted to create compost products that he could use on the golf course to reduce irrigation water, pesticide, and chemical fertilizer usage.
Because Dairy Creek had on-site injection pumps and a large silo that a volunteer had been using to brew compost tea for the local agricultural industry, Heptig was able to take advantage of readily available resources. “We did a test trial on our putting greens for four or five months in 2009, and there was no difference between the compost tea and regular liquids,” he says.
The staff combines the worm and regular composts to brew 500 gallons of tea at a time. “We steep it with air bubbles for two-and-a-half days, and it becomes a dark, nutrient-rich, microbial tea we can spray,” Heptig reports.
While he hopes to one day demonstrate the property’s reduced water usage from the time it started composting, weather patterns have not cooperated with those intentions, with the area mired in a record drought the last three years. “It will take about 10 years before we can quantify that, but estimates say you can reduce water usage by 20 percent,” he notes.
The maintenance staff puts the compost to use in other ways as well. “We use a lot of compost around landscape areas, flowerbeds, and tree wells, and we’re trying to develop funding to buy a grinder,” notes Heptig. “Then we can grind it before and after we compost it into finer materials for fairways and tee boxes.”
Dairy Creek has also found other ways to increase recycling efforts on the golf course property. “We used to have 13 or 14 trash cans, but we’ve gotten it down to one can,” reveals Heptig. “We can go two or three days before we empty the trash can.”
The golf course also has two stations where recycle and compost containers are available. “There’s a list of what goes in each one above it, and people do the sorting on their own,” notes Heptig. “It’s another way to train and change habits.”
In addition, the Integrated Waste Management Authority submitted an application to get recycling containers for Dairy Creek, and ultimately secured a $110,000 grant that provided a complete ball-washer assembly package—including a washer, spike cleaner, club cleaner, trash can, and recycle container—for every hole on 14 county golf courses.
Dairy Creek also depends on natural resources to increase its sustainable efforts. Twenty-five sheep, which gave birth to 40 lambs this spring, maintain the native areas on the golf course. Owl boxes and raptor perches, scattered throughout the course, attract birds to help control rodent populations that can wreak havoc on turf.
Self-guided tours of the zero-waste park are available, and Heptig is happy to conduct tours as well. “I try to assimilate golf into the tour as much as possible,” he reports. “It’s good public outreach.”
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