This New Yorker’s Office Is a Mound of Dirt

Every weekday, Courtney Scheffler takes the 7:30 a.m. ferry to Governors Island to do the kind of work she prefers: outside and with her hands. The 27-year-old New Yorker works as a composting operator for the nonprofit Earth Matter NY.

“To be hands on and have tangible work — it's very tactile,” Scheffler said. “It feels like you're making something, it feels just like a really long-term cooking or culinary project.”

Composting is a year-long process where food scraps are decomposed into soil to reduce greenhouse gases from waste that would have otherwise been released in a landfill.

Piles of fresh food scraps, like orange peels and eggshells, are scattered around in mounds at the entrance of the site. Scheffler’s outdoor workplace on Governors Island sits on the Brooklyn-facing side of the historic military post, located just below Manhattan.

She works alongside a team of four full-time staffers to foster the decomposition cycle. First, they sift through freshly dropped off scraps. Then, they pump oxygen into the piles of waste to ensure that the material decomposes. Next, they screen the finished compost for any undetected plastics.

The final product is 42 pound bags of dirt that they deliver to other nonprofits and partners across the five boroughs, so that New Yorkers can grow their own plants.

“It's so incredible to be able to provide that [compost] for people without a cost barrier,” Scheffler said. “And I think there are so few things, especially environmental access wise, that people can have that are for them.”

Scheffler studied environmental science at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, NY. She said what fueled her study of the environment was a growing sense of anxiety about climate change.

“I felt very overwhelmed as a consumer," she explained. "How do I buy the most ethical thing that's good for the environment? I wanted to learn how to do that."

After college, Scheffler moved to New York City because she said she wanted the feeling of community. She started to work at another nonprofit, GrowNYC, where she delivered compost from farmers markets to Earth Matter’s site on the island.

“I really enjoyed that kind of meaningful work [for Grow NYC] of converting people's burden into something that's meaningful and that way you could return to them,” Scheffler said.

It was the in-between process of the actual composting process that Scheffler said she was missing out on. So last April, when a full-time operations position opened at Earth Matter, Scheffler applied.

The nonprofit’s site is its own community made up of staff like Scheffler. The microorganisms that make up the compost and animals, such as chickens and goats, are also essential to that community and the process. Mounds of compost inhabit the land in various stages of decomposition. Walking through the winding plot of land is a journey: the food scraps slowly disappear, and finished piles of dirt emerge in their place.

While the Earth Matter land is tucked away from tourists visiting the island, the site is no stranger to visitors. Scheffler and the team lead tours and encourage people to volunteer.

“We want people to have fondness and connection to the environment and see how they can be a part of it,” Scheffler said.

Scheffler and her team members have the ultimate goal of making Governors Island a “zero waste” island, meaning that all the waste that is generated on the island gets composted. According to Earth Matter, the island generates 125 tons of waste yearly from the high school and restaurant on the grounds, as well as the music festivals on Governors Island during the summer.

For now, when Scheffler finishes her workday, she heads home to Red Hook, Brooklyn. However, working with her hands and composting does not stop when she steps off of Governors Island. Instead, she puts them to use doing pottery, and her mind remains fixed on being conscious of consumption and disposal in her apartment, which she shares with roommates.

“That's on my mind all the time about how to be a mindful consumer,” Scheffler said. “I wish that was the case for reducing some of the waste that comes to us, because we'll see things in the piles, and we're like, this still was good.”