Thank Goodness for Small (?) Favors...

A few months ago I got involved with an organization that works to put together community gardens.  Their problem was that they needed to raise funds for the next year and buying fertilizer.  I asked them why they didn't just get manure from the zoo and other farms in the area.  This is, after all, a farming community.  So I made a call.
I called the Greenville Zoo and asked them for a truckload of manure.  They said they didn't do that.  The next question was what did they do with it?  It goes in the dumpster and gets hauled to landfill.  It took me a moment to catch my breath.  I am a novice gardener, but I am learning quickly.  I knew that they had two elephants and I had a general idea of how much waste an elephant produces. I had a general idea how useful this stuff could be.  I then asked who could I talk to about changing that and that set me on a path where that general knowledge got a lot more specific.
The zoo was in an awkward position literally, figuratively, and politically.  The Greenville Zoo sits in the middle of the city of Greenville.  Even though it has been there since 1960, people still complain about the smell and the noise.  I live a short stint away from it and I personally like the sounds of the lions in the morning.  Composting the manure on site proved somewhat difficult due to smell concerns and limited space.  The zoo is carved into the hills and it is really difficult to find level ground to control the leachate (urine)
The second problem is/was that they only had the two elephants.  The average elephant produces approximately 600 pounds of manure a day.  That is a lot of manure but oddly that is a small amount compared to other larger zoos that deal with tons of the stuff on a daily basis.  Basically, it is not enough to keep or to make it worth the management and that made it more expedient to throw the stuff in the dumpster and let it be hauled off.
The third problem was more political in nature.  They did not have the staff that they could task to work it.  Other organizations did not want to deal with it.  We worked very hard to solve all of the other problems.  Long story short, it is finally here.  24 (yes 24 tons) of manure for our gardens and more.
We are even gathering much of it by bike...yes bike to be carbon neutral....
24 tons that will be saved from landfill...
24 tons that will be used to grow things...
24 tons that we will put to good use...

Is the moral of this story to be careful what you

wish for?
I am not disappointed.  We saw a problem and dove in.  These are the ways these problems are solved. If you want to live in a sustainable world, it can get a little...ahem...stinky at times.