Rodale Institute

Rodale Institute is a non-profit organization that publishes information on "organic" gardening but promotes the use of sewage sludge "compost," calling it biosolids.

Rodale Institute's "Using Compost" Video Promotes Sewage Sludge "Compost"

"Using Compost for Landscape and Nursery Production: A production of the US Composting Council and the Rodale Institute, with partners R. Alexander Associates, Inc. and Filtrexx International"

This online video presented by the Rodale Institute, the United States Department of Agriculture (via USDA CSREES Grant 91-COOP-1-6159), the University of Hawaii and the US Composting Council encourages gardening with sewage sludge and using toxic sludge as "natural," "biosolids compost," the PR euphemism for sludge.

The online hosts are Ron Alexander, described as a "leading compost marketer," and Rod Taylor, with the title of "America's compost gardener."

This substance is the product of municipal waste water systems and has been shown to contain many contaminants, including flame retardants, triclosan and other antibiotics, heavy metals like cadmium, lead, silver and gold, and, of course, human excrement.

USDA chief soil scientist Rufus Chaney is a long-standing advocate of putting sewage sludge on food-growing land and of calling the sludge biosolids or "biosolids compost."

The closing credits depict that the "compost" used in the video was "supplied by Lehigh County Office of Solid Waste Management Composting Facility and the Rodale Institute Experimental Farm."

Additional funds for this sludge industry PR spin video came from Houston-based Browning Ferris Industries, one of the nation's largest waste management companies. BFI companies are trademarked under the enormous waste management umbrella company, Allied Waste Industries.

View the video here:

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Connections with Sewage Sluge Promoter "BioCycle" Magazine

The Rodale Institute has shared employees with BioCycle magazine, originally published by the Rodale Press, a part of the Rodale Institute. Dan Sullivan, managing editor for BioCycle, worked at the Rodale Institute for five years and Organic Gardening magazine for 3 1/2 years. BioCycle is a major promoter of growing food in sewage sludge.

Mission Statement

According to its website, Rodale is "dedicated to pioneering organic farming through research and outreach. For over sixty-years, we’ve been researching the best practices of organic agriculture and ... educating consumers about how going organic is the healthiest option for people and the planet."

Board of Directors

Maria Rodale, co-chair: Rodale is the great-granddaughter of J.I. Rodale. Besides her Rodale Institute board chairmanship, she is a board member of the New York Restoration Project and a board member of the Mount Sinai Children’s Environmental Health Center for the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. (Rodale won the 2007 Americans for the United Nations Population Fund Award for her work to promote the "health and dignity of women." She also received The National Audubon Society’s “Rachel Carson Award” for “Working to Ensure a Healthy Environment for Future Generations” in 2004.)

Paul A. McGinley, co-chair

Anthony Rodale, chair emeritus

Ardath H. Rodale, co-chair emeritus in memoriam

Mark Kintzel, recording secretary

Kim Larson

Ethne Clarke

Helen Piszek Nelson

Louise Schorn Smith, CPA