Baltimore youth collect food scraps and turn it into compost for a community garden in the city.

The Baltimore Compost Collective, a food scrap collection service based in Baltimore, is employing local youth to pick up food waste from residential customers and turn it into compost.

The project provides compost for the Filbert Street Community Garden, which generates produce for neighborhood and educational programming for schoolchildren. According to a Baltimore Brewreport, the Compost Collective has the capacity to produce nearly 800 pounds of compost.

Baltimore Brew has more details:

Disgusting garbage.

That’s how most would view this pile of banana peels, whole tomatoes, rotting watermelon rinds and more steaming away under the hot sun in Curtis Bay one recent afternoon.

But to 19-year-old Anthony Walton, who was standing atop this mini-mountain of food waste, chopping at it with a long-handled tool, it represents something else entirely:

Opportunity and redemption – for him and for his community.