Composting Is for Everyone

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Commons Team

June 18, 2024

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Composting is one of the easiest climate actions out there, and there are so many ways to do it! On this episode, you'll get a straightforward explanation of how composting works, and get all the inspiration and guidance you need to start composting — no matter where you live. Listen in to hear:
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On this episode, you'll hear:

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Listeners' firsthand advice for composting in any living situation
Your composting questions answered by Dr. Sheridan Ross of Compton Community Garden
The carbon impact of composting our food waste
If you want to get personalized recommendations for composting in your area, try the Composting action in the Commons app.

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Find Second Nature wherever you listen to podcasts: Spotify | Apple Podcasts

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Here are some of the people you'll hear from in this episode:

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Citations and further reading

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Citations:

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Further reading:

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Episode credits

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Listener contributions: Nicole Collins, Joëlle Provost , Lindsay Kerns, Bo Meisl, Sameera Mokkarala, Melissa Athina, Yolanda Gonzalez, Gracon Ladd, and Daniel Goh‍
Featuring: Dr. Sheridan Ross and Sanchali Seth Pal‍
Editing and engineer: Evan Goodchild‍
Hosting and production: Katelan Cunningham

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Full Transcript

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Katelan (00:00):

Hi there. Welcome back to Second Nature. This is a podcast from Commons where we talk to people about how they're living sustainably In an unsustainable world,

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Katelan (00:11):

If you were at a friend's party and you saw someone throw an empty soda can in the trash instead of the recycling, what would you do openly reprimand them? Immediately judge them. If it were me, I'd just discreetly dig it out later and move it into the recycling bin. A lot of us have spent the bulk of our lives saving that glass, aluminum, plastic, and paper from the trash. It's ingrained in us that these materials can be recycled after we're done with them. But what happens at the same party? When you see someone throw a pizza crust or a watermelon rind into the trash, do you get just as fired up? Just like paper, plastic and metals, food waste is a valuable resource. And yet each of us in the US are sending an average of 124 pounds of food to landfills each year. Skipping right over. One of the most crucial, and I'd argue simplest, climate solutions, composting. While composting is simple, I'll admit that it can seem really intimidating at first, but I've got some great news. No matter where you live, anyone can compost. I'm your host, Kaitlyn Cunningham, and on this episode of Second Nature, we're helping you find the perfect composting solution for you. With help from our community, I'm visiting the Compton Community Garden to get a composting 1 0 1 session from the one and only Dr. Ross. And we're coming to grips with how much of an impact we can make just by composting our home food waste. Let's get into it.

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Katelan (01:45):

So to find out why composting is so important for the environment, we have to head to the landfill. Let's say you finished eating an apple and you threw the apple core in your trash can. Maybe you already had some bubble wrap in there, dryer lint, chip bags, candy wrappers, I don't know. Then on trash day, you tie up that plastic trash bag and the garbage truck picks it up. Eventually, that trash bag ends up in a landfill, and in that landfill, your apple core is trapped amidst all your garbage inside the bag, underneath other bags of garbage in this huge smelly pile. And in that environment, the ACO is missing a key ingredient that it needs in order to compost Oxygen.

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Katelan (02:27):

Landfills are anaerobic environments, which means that they lack oxygen. When organic matter, like your Apple core is surrounded by a bunch of inorganic matter and it lacks oxygen, it can't compost, it'll break down slowly over time, but without oxygen, it releases methane as it decomposes. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas in our atmosphere. Over 20 years, it traps 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide. And landfills are the third biggest source of methane emissions in the world. Most of their methane emissions come from that Apple core and a bunch of other rotting food. Composting is how we ensure that our food turns into nutrient rich organic matter instead of landfill waste and methane gas. In addition to oxygen, you need a few more things to start composting. You need heat and a good mix of greens and browns. Greens are things like your aico or eggshells that are rich in nitrogen or protein. Browns are rich in carbon. They're things like dried leaves or coffee filters. Once you get started, it's easy to get the hang of it. Our listeners are proof that there are so many ways to compost your food scraps indoor or in small spaces. And if you wanna make sure that your food waste is composted, but you don't wanna do it yourself, don't worry. We got you.

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How to Start Composting Wherever You Live: Listener montage

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Lindsay (03:44):

Regardless of whether you throw your food scraps in the green bin for industrial composting, or whether you compost at home, or whether you take your compost scraps to like a farmer's market or a community garden, drop off. The first barrier, of course, is retraining your brain to not throw your food scraps in the trash. My other tips are super practical. The one thing I'd say first is to make space in your freezer for a compost bag or a compost bucket. If you freeze your scraps, they're not gonna stink up your kitchen or attract bugs as they sometimes can. And the other tip would be to keep your compost bucket just right on the counter, right next to where you would chop vegetables or prep food. I think if it's out in the open, you'll be reminded to use it.

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Katelan (04:33):

You'll always find a Tupperware full of food scraps on my kitchen counter, and then I just take 'em out to my Tumblr bin on the patio.

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Gracon (04:41):

I compost outdoors using a 50 gallon Tumblr. It's split in the middle. That way I can consistently have a fresh patch of compost and an older patch.

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Joelle (04:53):

And we've been composting by literally just digging deep holes and then putting our compost daily into the ground, and the soil is looking so much better.

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Dan (05:01):

Okay. How do you compost? So composting is definitely my wife doing that. So she bought one of those Boi composting kits, I guess you'd call them, which turns the veggie waste products into a juice.

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Katelan (05:20):

Yeah, bokashi another great way to break down your food scraps. It's all contained into this bucket. You use this stuff called bokashi brand to get the microbes going, and then in a couple weeks, you essentially have pre compost in addition to the veggie juice <laugh> that you can bury directly into the soil.

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Yolanda (05:36):

Well, I've gotten into mermicomposting, and I'm able to set that up in my apartment, and it's pretty low maintenance, and it's fun to kind of see what the worm's like to eat and what they leave behind and check in on them. Yeah, it's the most low maintenance pet that you can have in your apartment.

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Katelan (05:54):

I love a vermicomposting tower. It's basically this multi-level worm mansion, and you fill up each level with food scraps, and then the worms sort of work their way up the tower, eating all the scraps as they go. And you can do this inside or outside if you don't actually wanna do composting at home. No judgment. You can always drop your food scraps off at a community garden or with a pickup service in your city.

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Melissa (06:17):

The way a compost now is a bit different than back at home, since I live in a high rise now, when I was moving into my new building, they were actually about to begin their compost program, which was great timing. They offered many compost bins for our apartments, which we empty into larger bins in the garbage room, which are taken out weekly.

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Sameera (06:35):

When we moved to Philadelphia, we realized that there wasn't municipal composting where like, you know, somebody would come and pick up your food scraps. And so we enrolled in a subscription service that comes and picks up our compostables once every two weeks.

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Nicole (06:50):

My university has a composting program called Compost Cats that's free for students. I even went as far as to buy my parents a home composting robot called Lo Me that Christmas of the same year, because I knew that when I went home from break, I would lose my mind if I wasn't able to compost 'cause I was so used to it at school.

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Lindsay (07:14):

So my final tip might sound like a really big step for you, but I really, really strongly recommend it. This tip is if you can please go volunteer for like a morning or an afternoon with just a local community garden or a local composting organization. I think just literally getting your hands dirty and seeing the composting happen on a larger scale, seeing the stages of composting, seeing how it goes back into the earth, shoveling it, turning it, smelling it even, it's really gonna give you a lot more motivation to contribute on your individual level. And when you drive by that community garden, or when you see the green bins getting picked up on your street, I really think it's gonna help you feel more connected to your community and even to the earth. Hopefully the next time you're prepping a salad for dinner or des stemming some kale, you're gonna feel really good about keeping those scraps out of the trash. Good luck on your composting journey. I hope you can find a way to make it fun.

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Katelan (08:19):

One of the biggest myths around composting is that it stinks, but I would like to bust that myth right now. If you're composting at home, your pile, Tumblr or bin, it shouldn't smell like rotting food. If it does, it might just be a little too moist. Try throwing in some browns like paper or dry leaves to let it dry out a little bit. When I open my Tumblr bin, I see a mix of potato skins, mushy fruit, parsley stems. But because all those scraps are getting eaten up by those microbes, it doesn't stink. It just kind of smells like dirt, like really good dirt.

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Interview with Dr. Sheridan Ross, founder of Compton Community Garden

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If you love the smell of good dirt, you love the smell of Compton Community Garden. It's the smell of healthy soil mixed with mint, lavender and honey. Dr. Ross started the Compton Community Garden in 2013. It's his 60th community garden. I met up with him in the back shed on a busy day at the garden to talk about the science behind composting and why it's such a valuable resource for our soil and our plants. Hello, Dr. Ross.

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Dr. Ross (09:23):

Hi, How are you?

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Katelan (09:24):

I'm great. Thank you for inviting me to Compton, to community garden into the beautiful shed. <Laugh> <laugh>.

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Dr. Ross (09:33):

Oh yeah, no, this garden has, has, has been a godsend for this community. This was a, a vacant lot that had set vacant for 19 years. And when we got it we had weeds that were so high that you couldn't even see from the street to the alley in the back. And it took us about all about three weekends to build this entire garden.

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Katelan (09:57):

So you come here and you get the garden set up. How soon after you get here do you start focusing on composting?

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Dr. Ross (10:04):

We start composting as soon as the first crops actually start coming in. Any type of leaves or anything that, that are dying off of the plants, the green plants, the part of the plants that are, are not eaten and everything after harvest, we use all of that to make your compost. What compost is, and what most people don't understand is that compost is all of the green matter that's out there. All of the dead leaves and with a, about a third of amount of soil. You mix all of those together. And what happens is that the microbes that are in the soil will do their job and start eating that and turning into compost. Compost is what's called liquid gold. Because what compost does is that everything that that plant has taken up, microorganisms eat it and release it back to that soil so that it can do continue to do work.

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Katelan (11:00):

Got it. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, can you explain to us what a microbe is?

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Dr. Ross (11:04):

Put it this way. A microbe is, is a microscopic insect that's in all soil. And to give you a good idea, if you had a, if you had a teaspoon of soil, you have about a million microorganisms just in one teaspoon, and you have microorganisms everywhere in your soil, in the air, but they're all doing one thing. And what their job is to turn anything which was once alive back to its natural state, which is back to the dirt. Right now, more people are aware of composting than ever because they understand the value of what's happening with waste. Our landfill spaces running out. And, and so we're kind of mandated now to take that waste and, and, and reuse it, and actually make better soil than we actually have inside of a compost pile heats up and it'll heat up to about between 130 to 163 degrees. Once it does that, that's like putting the microbes on a freeway and telling them, you know what, eat all you can <laugh>. And that's exactly what they do longer, that they do that. And the more that they're eating, the faster that the compost pile will be turned back into normal soil.

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Katelan (12:29):

Okay. So we have a lot of listeners who live in apartments or they don't have access to an outdoor area. So if I'm composting inside Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> can I do that? How do I do that inside?

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Dr. Ross (12:40):

Yes, you can. All you need is a small container, which is a, about maybe 12 inches tall and maybe a foot to a foot and a half across. Make sure that that container has a lid on it. And what you're gonna do is, first thing is that you're going to go get soil from outdoors and put in the bottom of your container. Next you're gonna put in the food scrubs, and then you're gonna go outside and find dead leaves that are in there. If it's not in your yard, ask your neighbor and you're gonna mix that in there. You are gonna put the top on it, and then you're gonna just shake it up. And then once you shake it up, you're going to take the top and you're gonna just skew it just a little so the air can continue to circulate inside.

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Dr. Ross (13:23):

Okay. And you've, you started composting. The thing about compost is that you have two different types of compost. You have what is called passive composting, which means that all you're doing is that you're putting the dirt, your green matter and, and your brown matter together. And you just let that sit there. And you have active composting, which means that you're doing the same thing except for every two days or so. You're gonna just, just shake it up. By doing passive, you're letting the microorganisms develop big giant colonies up underneath your, the surface of your product that you, that you're composting. And once they do that, those colonies will start eating and eating foods. And what they're doing is that those microorganisms are actually building cities. And as they're building those cities, they're eating it. When you're doing active composting, you're letting them build the cities for a couple of days and you're breaking the cities down. And then the microorganism says, okay, you broke my cities, I'm gonna build more. And while they're doing that, they're continuing to eat. Okay. And so they'll eat on fa they'll eat faster and faster because they want to continue to build that city.

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Katelan (14:39):

So how often should I be shaking it up? And how do I balance out the food scraps? The greens with the browns,

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Dr. Ross (14:48):

And the way that you balance this out is you always do one third soil, one third food scrap, and one third brown material. Now, if you don't do that, a couple of things are gonna happen. If you have too much brown material, then what's gonna happen is that the heating process is gonna stop. 'cause You don't have enough liquid from the green material that's in there. If you have enough green material or food scraps, you may start getting smell. And that's telling you that you don't have enough brown material and you have so much of the green material or the food scraps that it's too much for the microorganisms to all eat at the same time. If you're doing that and, and you start to get a smell, that means that you're actually generating too much water or too much liquid, and you may be drowning out the microorganisms

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Katelan (15:42):

And they can't keep up

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Dr. Ross (15:44):

And they can't keep up. And so you wanna do two, one or two things. You wanna increase your brown material or increase your soil. Once you do that, you mix it up again and everything and voila, you, you're on again. You are on composting again.

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Katelan (16:00):

Another option that people can do is those like worm composters. It's like the plastic bins.

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Dr. Ross (16:06):

Yes. Worm com worm composting is, is, is very, very good. Earthworms are always gonna be good for your soil, for your compost, everything. Earthworms, what comes out of their rear end after they eat is pure fertilizer. And so when you're putting that in your compost bin, you're actually making your compost better. You are always gonna have earthworms. What I tell people is that once it rains, go outside and you'll, you can pick up earthworms by the handful because they're gonna come out and they're gonna come up on top because they, they need to breathe also. And so pick them up. If you have flower pots in your house, put 'em in your house, they're gonna do their job, which is eat the soil and turn it to fertilizer for your plants to grow. Yes.

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Katelan (16:57):

So you can even have worms in an indoor compost.

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Dr. Ross (17:00):

Yes, you can. Yes.

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Katelan (17:01):

Okay. Yeah. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, even though people might be a little bit squeamish about that. Yes. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> <laugh>. Okay. so once we compost our food waste Mm-Hmm. We have, it's called hummus. Hummus. Hummus. Hummus. Yes. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. And then we can add it to our gardener gardens. How does hummus differ from like, a fertilizer that I might buy from the store?

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Dr. Ross (17:22):

Compost is a fertilizer, but it's the best fertilizer that you can get. And so you have to be very careful when you're getting fertilizers. If you don't know about fertilizers, you wanna make one, make sure that you know what you're getting. Because some of the fertilizers that you get out there have petroleum derivatives in it. And so they're doing, they'll do good, but they also do bad because they will also destroy your soil. And so be very careful when you're choosing a fertilizer. Always tell people, make sure that it's an organic fertilizer. And the reason I don't say natural be because the word natural does not mean anything when you're talking about organic. And so people confuse that when they see the word natural, they figure, okay, that's good. It doesn't necessarily mean that they can put natural on anything.

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Katelan (18:17):

So what makes compost such a good fertilizer for our plants?

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Dr. Ross (18:22):

Compost is such a good fertilizer because it not only has the three substances that plants need, which are potassium phosphate and potash, but it also has the, what's called the micronutrients from the plants, that it is broken down. And the micronutrients are anything fromum to calcium, to zinc, magnesium, all of those are broken down from the leaves and stuff that, that come from composting.

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Katelan (18:52):

So we can use compost on our inside home plants as well as our outdoor plants.

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Dr. Ross (18:56):

Yes, you can. Yes.

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Katelan (18:57):

Okay. Yeah.

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Dr. Ross (18:58):

On your inside plants, you wanna do it the same way and just put it right on top of your soil. Now you don't need as much compost inside because your plants inside don't have to deal with the elements. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And so just use about half as much as you would outdoors.

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Katelan (19:17):

Can you talk to us about when we add compost to our soil, be it in a potted plant or in the ground outside in a garden, how does it change that soil? How does it, if I have a very clay based soil or a very sand based soil, can it help to amend those soils that are typically a little tricky to grow in?

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Dr. Ross (19:35):

Yes. When you're adding compost to the soil, it will amend the soil, especially things such as your clay soil or your sandy soil. It adds character and it also adds kind of for clay soil, it also kind of breaks it down for sandy soil. It'll, what it'll do is that it'll actually become the substance that holds more water in your sandy soil. And so it's, it's a good substance to either type of soil that you want, even in long soil. You always wanna add your compost into those soils because your plants are gonna be the benefit of them.

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Katelan (20:09):

It seems to me that the soil is kind of like the lifeblood of the garden. It feels like we're often so excited to see what comes above Right. <Laugh>. Yes. But, but compost is kind of focusing on the very the main thing, right? Like the first thing <laugh>, it feels so essential.

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Dr. Ross (20:27):

Your soil is the lifeblood of your garden. And, and also the lifeblood of your plants. Think of it as as like giving it extra vitamins to sustain your plants as they're growing. It's just an added food source for that plant to help it grow and to help it sustain itself.

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Katelan (20:45):

And it's also nice because every day when we eat our apples and we have our apple core or we eat lettuce, and there's like the slimy parts, there's all these things that we otherwise were throwing away. But it's kind of nice to know that they're going back into the soil and can be sort of recycled.

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Dr. Ross (21:00):

Definitely. When we eat a lot of things and we throw things away, what we're doing is that if we don't put it back into the soil, we're actually depleting the soil. Because if those things come out of the soil and we throw, we're throwing them away and we're not putting them back, eventually that soil is not gonna be able to sustain itself. And so by putting it back into the soil, we make that soil in the original condition that it was. Hmm. To give you a good idea, the soil here in our community garden, this is the same soil that we did in 2012, and it's still producing because we use all the compost to put it back in there.

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Katelan (21:39):

I've never thought about it like that. Like when you, when you grow a tomato here Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> at, at the community garden. Mm-Hmm. That's taken a lot of nutrients out of the soil. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And so it's important to put that back in. Yes. It's Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> rather than toss it into a landfill basically. Mm-Hmm.

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Dr. Ross (21:54):

<Affirmative>. Yes. And even when you're growing plants and everything and you have weeds and stuff that are coming up in your garden, if those weeds haven't generated any, any seeds, instead of you taking them up and and throwing them away, break 'em up and put 'em in your compost pile. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Or break 'em up and put 'em back into your soil. Because if you're throwing it away, that weed is also taking out food from your garden. You always want that to stay in your gardening, to stay in, in your swamp. So whatever you're taking out of the swell, you put back into the sua and it keeps your soil healthy.

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Katelan (22:27):

Thank you so much. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> for sharing all your knowledge about composting and gardening. And I look forward to coming back to visit you. Thank

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Dr. Ross (22:35):

You. Thank you.

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Starting community compost with Bo Mies

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Katelan (22:36):

Compost is such a valuable resource for our soil. It doesn't just grow better plants, it makes the soil better at retaining moisture, less prone to erosion, and it helps to capture more carbon. So compost isn't just a climate solution for our food waste, it's a climate solution for the land and the atmosphere.

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Bo (23:03):

To be honest, composting really changed my world and the origin story is a bit embarrassing.

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Bo (23:16):

My name is Bo. I am 32 years old and I'm building soil with my neighbors and pals in Burlington, Vermont. I started composting when I was a research assistant for an academic institution and my projects revolved around phosphorus recovery. So I was touring compost facilities across the world and meanwhile, I had yet to compost in my own backyard. So in my shame, my roommates and I built a setup from two by fours and chicken wire that was mostly passive, but it worked well enough. And in the process of bearing witness to nature's transformation, it really reframed my thinking entirely. Like I really saw myself in that pile. Then I kind of shifted from studying soil based on global flows of staple foods and mineral fertilizers to really just communing with the earth and with myself. So I really, I needed to find my community be, and I had to open up to receiving help as well. I found so much hope when I went to Southern California and witnessed the incredible successes of their community composting networks. And to know that it started with Michael Martinez working with his friends to build a pile on his own backyard. I was like, wow. Why can't any of this be possible? Why not?

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Bo (24:59):

Our backyard setup, very proud to say, is critter proof and neighbor friendly and it stays hot all winter long and Vermont has pretty brutal winters. I found that building a collective pile with neighbors and friends really helps to build up enough mass to generate heat. It is three feet in diameter and we have it situated upright, so it's five feet tall. We introduce air into that system by Augering about twice a week. And we use plenty of wood shavings to keep the carbon content high and the odor minimal. It is so important that we consider the critters and we've gotta keep our neighbors happy and you know, reduce odors as much as possible. That's what I love about my current setup, that I'm always wanting to share with others. I've never had to deal with any pest issues and I'm super relieved to know that the neighborhood critters are safe from anything that could harm them in my pile.

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Bo (26:02):

I have found composting to be incredibly meaningful as a ritual just to participate in the process of decay, which in and of itself is like the mechanism that shepherds fertility through the precipice of life and death. Yeah. Just witnessing decomposition unfolds into a rich medium for growth. I just find myself in awe at the cyclical nature of life every time I go out to my pile. And to see organic material for the richness that it really holds, like keeping compost close to home and engaging with the process really reminds me of the non-capital wealth that we are capable of generating ourselves.

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What Happens if We Get This Right, with Sanchali Seth Pal

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Katelan (26:53):

You may be wondering what exactly can I compost? Well, there are some general rules of thumb at home. You can compost fruits and vegetables as long as they weren't cooked in oil or fat. But proceed with caution when it comes to citrus. Citrus is acidic, so it can throw off the pH balance of a compost bile. You can also compost eggshells, coffee grounds, tea leaves. You can compost any non glossy paper products. So like paper towels, egg cartons, tea bags, coffee filters. But there are some things that you want to avoid composting at home, like sugars, meat, dairy, cooked rice, bread oils to break down properly. These things require higher temperatures than your home setup can reach. So it's best to leave these things for the industrial composters so you can keep critters and harmful bacteria at bay in your home setup. But if your city offers composting, their industrial setup should be able to take basically anything you can eat. So like any animal-based foods or plant-based foods, raw, cooked or otherwise. But this may be wonder if composting is such an important climate solution and we all have food waste that we can contribute to the cause. Why don't more cities offer curbside compost pickups for food waste? And how much does our home food waste really matter? I brought these questions to commons founders, St. Charlie, St. Paul.

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Katelan (28:13):

Hey Sanchali

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Sanchali (28:14):

Hey Katelan.

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Katelan (28:16):

So food waste is a big problem in our landfills and it's not just coming from our homes. We get food waste from restaurants, farms, and other places. I'm wondering, in the grand scheme of things, how much impact as individuals do we actually have when it comes to food waste?

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Sanchali (28:29):

Okay, so I have a really shocking stat for this.

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Katelan (28:32):

Oh no. Okay, I'm ready.

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Sanchali (28:34):

According to the National Resources Defense Council or the NRDC, 40 to 50% of all the food wasted in the US is actually happening in our kitchens.

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Katelan (28:44):

Oh no. That's like kind of embarrassing.

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Sanchali (28:47):

I know. It's pretty surprising. And almost all of that food that we're wasting from our kitchens go straight into landfills. About 96% of it, the U-S-E-P-A says just the remaining 4% was composted. And a lot of that is actually from just buying more than we need. So part of this is like we could just spend less money on groceries in the US the average family of four spends about $1,500 a year on food that doesn't get eaten.

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Katelan (29:13):

Oof. Okay, so we gotta get it together here. We gotta buy less food or buy just what we're going to eat. We gotta eat the food that we actually buy, but I feel like we're still gonna have food waste, right? We're gonna have apple cos we're gonna have that slimy lettuce in the back of the fridge that we forgot about and we have to stop sending that stuff to landfills.

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Sanchali (29:29):

Absolutely. Like no matter how much we try, we're still gonna have some food waste or organic waste from food and it actually matters. Trying to think about what we do with that waste. Because food waste is a really big part of landfill emissions. In 2020, food waste generated over half of the total methane emissions from municipal landfills, actually 58%. And that's like the actual emissions of 15 cold fired power plants.

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Katelan (29:54):

Oof. That is a lot of slimy lettuce. So what happens when we stop sending this food waste to landfills and instead start composting it?

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Sanchali (30:01):

Great question. Composting food waste cuts emissions by about 38 to 84% versus tossing them into landfills according to a study last year from nature.

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Katelan (30:12):

That's really great news to hear and we have some great ways to start composting at home or with community programs, but I'm wondering like why it's not easier. I love home composting. It's really fun for me. And in LA they just rolled out the green bins so we can start composting at our curbside. But I'm wondering why more cities don't have this? Why did LA get it so late? Why is it so much harder to compost and like essentially recycle our food waste than it is to recycle our plastic and paper?

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Sanchali (30:38):

That's a great point. Recycling on the curbside really increased participation in recycling. And right now having that kind of access for composting is not super widespread. A 2023 study by Biocycle found that only about 12% of US households currently have access to municipal composting. But the good news is it's improving quickly. That 12% is already a 50% improvement over just two years earlier in 2021.

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Katelan (31:05):

That's good to hear. So, so there's hope. Hopefully, we assume with cities rolling out composting programs, what cities out there are doing a really great job at composting right now?

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Sanchali (31:15):

One example that's pretty interesting to look at is San Francisco. It's right on the other side of the bridge from where I live here in Oakland. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And according to the NRDC, San Francisco was the first US city to start citywide composting back in 1996 by just four years in. And in 2000 it had achieved the statewide goal that California set to divert half of all landfill to composter recycling facilities. And now the city actually compost or recycles over 80% of our household waste. That's more than any other city in the us.

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Katelan (31:46):

Wow, that's shocking. Super inspiring. How many emissions are they saving by composting all that food waste?

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Sanchali (31:52):

It's actually super inspiring. So some of the latest estimates show that San Francisco had an impact like saving over 250,000 tons of carbon through its composting program. And this is data from Recology, which runs the municipal composting program in San Francisco. Okay. So that's like a quarter of a million tons. It's a huge number and but then in context, it's like taking 60,000 to cars off the road every year. So San Francisco has about 400,000 cars in the city. That means the city composting program is having an impact, like taking 15% of our cars off the road.

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Katelan (32:26):

Whoa. That's some serious composting goals. But as we've heard, we don't need to wait for our cities to be at San Francisco status in order to start like taking advantage of composting, right?

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Sanchali (32:36):

Yeah, totally. That's right. I mean, we should totally write to our city reps to advocate for access to composting. You deserve that no matter where you live, but you also don't need to wait for that to come online. Composting with local community pickups, community gardens, apartment composters, backyard composters can be a great way to start directly tackling emissions and creating a family practice of reducing food waste at home. So kind of regardless of where you live, even if it's an apartment or an rv, you can probably find a way to start composting in your community today.

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Katelan (33:06):

I can't wait. Let's do it.

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Sanchali (33:08):

Let's do it.

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Katelan (33:12):

Composting our food waste is such a beautiful way to return what we've taken from the earth, which I know sounds a little grandiose for what is essentially tossing your banana peels or melon RINs into a bucket or onto a pile. But that's the beauty of it. Whether it's a corn cob, a can, or a crop top, just because we're done with it doesn't mean that it's waste. If you wanna start composting and make the most outta your food waste, you can get personalized recommendations to get started based on your location using the composting action in the Commons app. Thank you so much to our listeners who invited us into their home composting setups today. You heard from.

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[Episode Contributors say their names]

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Katelan (33:51):

If you'd like to be on the show, we'd love to have you go to the Commons earth slash podcast to tell us what your sustainable life looks like. And remember, we're all doing the best that we can. It's all about progress over perfection. We're over halfway through our first season and we really wanna hear what you guys think of the show so far. Consider leaving a rating or review. Our team would love to hear what you think. Speaking of the team, our editor and engineer on this episode was Evan Goodchild. It was Fact-Check by Commons Carbon Strategy Manager, Sophie Esky. It was written and produced by me, Kaitlyn Cunningham. For more stories from our community, join us on Instagram, follow the show as Second Nature Earth. Next week we're tackling another big climate opportunity, your job, but till then, I'll leave you with these last words from Samira in Philadelphia.

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Sameera (34:51):

In terms of thinking about food waste with respect to compost, it has made me a lot more conscious actually of how much food that we buy or that we cook doesn't actually get consumed. You know, when you have to actually scrape it out into a bucket in the backyard, you are a little bit more cognizant of it. And so it's actually helped me, I think, be a little bit more mindful about what I'm buying, what I'm cooking, and making sure that it's actually in the correct amounts for what we need.

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Composting Is for Everyone

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Composting is one of the easiest climate actions out there, and there are so many ways to do it! On this episode, you'll get a straightforward explanation of how composting works, and get all the inspiration and guidance you need to start composting — no matter where you live. Listen in to hear:
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On this episode, you'll hear:

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Listeners' firsthand advice for composting in any living situation
Your composting questions answered by Dr. Sheridan Ross of Compton Community Garden
The carbon impact of composting our food waste
If you want to get personalized recommendations for composting in your area, try the Composting action in the Commons app.

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Find Second Nature wherever you listen to podcasts: Spotify | Apple Podcasts

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Here are some of the people you'll hear from in this episode:

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Citations and further reading

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Citations:

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Further reading:

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Episode credits

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Listener contributions: Nicole Collins, Joëlle Provost , Lindsay Kerns, Bo Meisl, Sameera Mokkarala, Melissa Athina, Yolanda Gonzalez, Gracon Ladd, and Daniel Goh‍
Featuring: Dr. Sheridan Ross and Sanchali Seth Pal‍
Editing and engineer: Evan Goodchild‍
Hosting and production: Katelan Cunningham

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Full Transcript

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Katelan (00:00):

Hi there. Welcome back to Second Nature. This is a podcast from Commons where we talk to people about how they're living sustainably In an unsustainable world,

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Katelan (00:11):

If you were at a friend's party and you saw someone throw an empty soda can in the trash instead of the recycling, what would you do openly reprimand them? Immediately judge them. If it were me, I'd just discreetly dig it out later and move it into the recycling bin. A lot of us have spent the bulk of our lives saving that glass, aluminum, plastic, and paper from the trash. It's ingrained in us that these materials can be recycled after we're done with them. But what happens at the same party? When you see someone throw a pizza crust or a watermelon rind into the trash, do you get just as fired up? Just like paper, plastic and metals, food waste is a valuable resource. And yet each of us in the US are sending an average of 124 pounds of food to landfills each year. Skipping right over. One of the most crucial, and I'd argue simplest, climate solutions, composting. While composting is simple, I'll admit that it can seem really intimidating at first, but I've got some great news. No matter where you live, anyone can compost. I'm your host, Kaitlyn Cunningham, and on this episode of Second Nature, we're helping you find the perfect composting solution for you. With help from our community, I'm visiting the Compton Community Garden to get a composting 1 0 1 session from the one and only Dr. Ross. And we're coming to grips with how much of an impact we can make just by composting our home food waste. Let's get into it.

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Katelan (01:45):

So to find out why composting is so important for the environment, we have to head to the landfill. Let's say you finished eating an apple and you threw the apple core in your trash can. Maybe you already had some bubble wrap in there, dryer lint, chip bags, candy wrappers, I don't know. Then on trash day, you tie up that plastic trash bag and the garbage truck picks it up. Eventually, that trash bag ends up in a landfill, and in that landfill, your apple core is trapped amidst all your garbage inside the bag, underneath other bags of garbage in this huge smelly pile. And in that environment, the ACO is missing a key ingredient that it needs in order to compost Oxygen.

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Katelan (02:27):

Landfills are anaerobic environments, which means that they lack oxygen. When organic matter, like your Apple core is surrounded by a bunch of inorganic matter and it lacks oxygen, it can't compost, it'll break down slowly over time, but without oxygen, it releases methane as it decomposes. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas in our atmosphere. Over 20 years, it traps 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide. And landfills are the third biggest source of methane emissions in the world. Most of their methane emissions come from that Apple core and a bunch of other rotting food. Composting is how we ensure that our food turns into nutrient rich organic matter instead of landfill waste and methane gas. In addition to oxygen, you need a few more things to start composting. You need heat and a good mix of greens and browns. Greens are things like your aico or eggshells that are rich in nitrogen or protein. Browns are rich in carbon. They're things like dried leaves or coffee filters. Once you get started, it's easy to get the hang of it. Our listeners are proof that there are so many ways to compost your food scraps indoor or in small spaces. And if you wanna make sure that your food waste is composted, but you don't wanna do it yourself, don't worry. We got you.

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How to Start Composting Wherever You Live: Listener montage

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Lindsay (03:44):

Regardless of whether you throw your food scraps in the green bin for industrial composting, or whether you compost at home, or whether you take your compost scraps to like a farmer's market or a community garden, drop off. The first barrier, of course, is retraining your brain to not throw your food scraps in the trash. My other tips are super practical. The one thing I'd say first is to make space in your freezer for a compost bag or a compost bucket. If you freeze your scraps, they're not gonna stink up your kitchen or attract bugs as they sometimes can. And the other tip would be to keep your compost bucket just right on the counter, right next to where you would chop vegetables or prep food. I think if it's out in the open, you'll be reminded to use it.

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Katelan (04:33):

You'll always find a Tupperware full of food scraps on my kitchen counter, and then I just take 'em out to my Tumblr bin on the patio.

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Gracon (04:41):

I compost outdoors using a 50 gallon Tumblr. It's split in the middle. That way I can consistently have a fresh patch of compost and an older patch.

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Joelle (04:53):

And we've been composting by literally just digging deep holes and then putting our compost daily into the ground, and the soil is looking so much better.

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Dan (05:01):

Okay. How do you compost? So composting is definitely my wife doing that. So she bought one of those Boi composting kits, I guess you'd call them, which turns the veggie waste products into a juice.

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Katelan (05:20):

Yeah, bokashi another great way to break down your food scraps. It's all contained into this bucket. You use this stuff called bokashi brand to get the microbes going, and then in a couple weeks, you essentially have pre compost in addition to the veggie juice <laugh> that you can bury directly into the soil.

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Yolanda (05:36):

Well, I've gotten into mermicomposting, and I'm able to set that up in my apartment, and it's pretty low maintenance, and it's fun to kind of see what the worm's like to eat and what they leave behind and check in on them. Yeah, it's the most low maintenance pet that you can have in your apartment.

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Katelan (05:54):

I love a vermicomposting tower. It's basically this multi-level worm mansion, and you fill up each level with food scraps, and then the worms sort of work their way up the tower, eating all the scraps as they go. And you can do this inside or outside if you don't actually wanna do composting at home. No judgment. You can always drop your food scraps off at a community garden or with a pickup service in your city.

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Melissa (06:17):

The way a compost now is a bit different than back at home, since I live in a high rise now, when I was moving into my new building, they were actually about to begin their compost program, which was great timing. They offered many compost bins for our apartments, which we empty into larger bins in the garbage room, which are taken out weekly.

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Sameera (06:35):

When we moved to Philadelphia, we realized that there wasn't municipal composting where like, you know, somebody would come and pick up your food scraps. And so we enrolled in a subscription service that comes and picks up our compostables once every two weeks.

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Nicole (06:50):

My university has a composting program called Compost Cats that's free for students. I even went as far as to buy my parents a home composting robot called Lo Me that Christmas of the same year, because I knew that when I went home from break, I would lose my mind if I wasn't able to compost 'cause I was so used to it at school.

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Lindsay (07:14):

So my final tip might sound like a really big step for you, but I really, really strongly recommend it. This tip is if you can please go volunteer for like a morning or an afternoon with just a local community garden or a local composting organization. I think just literally getting your hands dirty and seeing the composting happen on a larger scale, seeing the stages of composting, seeing how it goes back into the earth, shoveling it, turning it, smelling it even, it's really gonna give you a lot more motivation to contribute on your individual level. And when you drive by that community garden, or when you see the green bins getting picked up on your street, I really think it's gonna help you feel more connected to your community and even to the earth. Hopefully the next time you're prepping a salad for dinner or des stemming some kale, you're gonna feel really good about keeping those scraps out of the trash. Good luck on your composting journey. I hope you can find a way to make it fun.

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Katelan (08:19):

One of the biggest myths around composting is that it stinks, but I would like to bust that myth right now. If you're composting at home, your pile, Tumblr or bin, it shouldn't smell like rotting food. If it does, it might just be a little too moist. Try throwing in some browns like paper or dry leaves to let it dry out a little bit. When I open my Tumblr bin, I see a mix of potato skins, mushy fruit, parsley stems. But because all those scraps are getting eaten up by those microbes, it doesn't stink. It just kind of smells like dirt, like really good dirt.

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Interview with Dr. Sheridan Ross, founder of Compton Community Garden

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If you love the smell of good dirt, you love the smell of Compton Community Garden. It's the smell of healthy soil mixed with mint, lavender and honey. Dr. Ross started the Compton Community Garden in 2013. It's his 60th community garden. I met up with him in the back shed on a busy day at the garden to talk about the science behind composting and why it's such a valuable resource for our soil and our plants. Hello, Dr. Ross.

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Dr. Ross (09:23):

Hi, How are you?

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Katelan (09:24):

I'm great. Thank you for inviting me to Compton, to community garden into the beautiful shed. <Laugh> <laugh>.

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Dr. Ross (09:33):

Oh yeah, no, this garden has, has, has been a godsend for this community. This was a, a vacant lot that had set vacant for 19 years. And when we got it we had weeds that were so high that you couldn't even see from the street to the alley in the back. And it took us about all about three weekends to build this entire garden.

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Katelan (09:57):

So you come here and you get the garden set up. How soon after you get here do you start focusing on composting?

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Dr. Ross (10:04):

We start composting as soon as the first crops actually start coming in. Any type of leaves or anything that, that are dying off of the plants, the green plants, the part of the plants that are, are not eaten and everything after harvest, we use all of that to make your compost. What compost is, and what most people don't understand is that compost is all of the green matter that's out there. All of the dead leaves and with a, about a third of amount of soil. You mix all of those together. And what happens is that the microbes that are in the soil will do their job and start eating that and turning into compost. Compost is what's called liquid gold. Because what compost does is that everything that that plant has taken up, microorganisms eat it and release it back to that soil so that it can do continue to do work.

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Katelan (11:00):

Got it. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, can you explain to us what a microbe is?

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Dr. Ross (11:04):

Put it this way. A microbe is, is a microscopic insect that's in all soil. And to give you a good idea, if you had a, if you had a teaspoon of soil, you have about a million microorganisms just in one teaspoon, and you have microorganisms everywhere in your soil, in the air, but they're all doing one thing. And what their job is to turn anything which was once alive back to its natural state, which is back to the dirt. Right now, more people are aware of composting than ever because they understand the value of what's happening with waste. Our landfill spaces running out. And, and so we're kind of mandated now to take that waste and, and, and reuse it, and actually make better soil than we actually have inside of a compost pile heats up and it'll heat up to about between 130 to 163 degrees. Once it does that, that's like putting the microbes on a freeway and telling them, you know what, eat all you can <laugh>. And that's exactly what they do longer, that they do that. And the more that they're eating, the faster that the compost pile will be turned back into normal soil.

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Katelan (12:29):

Okay. So we have a lot of listeners who live in apartments or they don't have access to an outdoor area. So if I'm composting inside Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> can I do that? How do I do that inside?

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Dr. Ross (12:40):

Yes, you can. All you need is a small container, which is a, about maybe 12 inches tall and maybe a foot to a foot and a half across. Make sure that that container has a lid on it. And what you're gonna do is, first thing is that you're going to go get soil from outdoors and put in the bottom of your container. Next you're gonna put in the food scrubs, and then you're gonna go outside and find dead leaves that are in there. If it's not in your yard, ask your neighbor and you're gonna mix that in there. You are gonna put the top on it, and then you're gonna just shake it up. And then once you shake it up, you're going to take the top and you're gonna just skew it just a little so the air can continue to circulate inside.

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Dr. Ross (13:23):

Okay. And you've, you started composting. The thing about compost is that you have two different types of compost. You have what is called passive composting, which means that all you're doing is that you're putting the dirt, your green matter and, and your brown matter together. And you just let that sit there. And you have active composting, which means that you're doing the same thing except for every two days or so. You're gonna just, just shake it up. By doing passive, you're letting the microorganisms develop big giant colonies up underneath your, the surface of your product that you, that you're composting. And once they do that, those colonies will start eating and eating foods. And what they're doing is that those microorganisms are actually building cities. And as they're building those cities, they're eating it. When you're doing active composting, you're letting them build the cities for a couple of days and you're breaking the cities down. And then the microorganism says, okay, you broke my cities, I'm gonna build more. And while they're doing that, they're continuing to eat. Okay. And so they'll eat on fa they'll eat faster and faster because they want to continue to build that city.

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Katelan (14:39):

So how often should I be shaking it up? And how do I balance out the food scraps? The greens with the browns,

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Dr. Ross (14:48):

And the way that you balance this out is you always do one third soil, one third food scrap, and one third brown material. Now, if you don't do that, a couple of things are gonna happen. If you have too much brown material, then what's gonna happen is that the heating process is gonna stop. 'cause You don't have enough liquid from the green material that's in there. If you have enough green material or food scraps, you may start getting smell. And that's telling you that you don't have enough brown material and you have so much of the green material or the food scraps that it's too much for the microorganisms to all eat at the same time. If you're doing that and, and you start to get a smell, that means that you're actually generating too much water or too much liquid, and you may be drowning out the microorganisms

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Katelan (15:42):

And they can't keep up

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Dr. Ross (15:44):

And they can't keep up. And so you wanna do two, one or two things. You wanna increase your brown material or increase your soil. Once you do that, you mix it up again and everything and voila, you, you're on again. You are on composting again.

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Katelan (16:00):

Another option that people can do is those like worm composters. It's like the plastic bins.

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Dr. Ross (16:06):

Yes. Worm com worm composting is, is, is very, very good. Earthworms are always gonna be good for your soil, for your compost, everything. Earthworms, what comes out of their rear end after they eat is pure fertilizer. And so when you're putting that in your compost bin, you're actually making your compost better. You are always gonna have earthworms. What I tell people is that once it rains, go outside and you'll, you can pick up earthworms by the handful because they're gonna come out and they're gonna come up on top because they, they need to breathe also. And so pick them up. If you have flower pots in your house, put 'em in your house, they're gonna do their job, which is eat the soil and turn it to fertilizer for your plants to grow. Yes.

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Katelan (16:57):

So you can even have worms in an indoor compost.

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Dr. Ross (17:00):

Yes, you can. Yes.

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Katelan (17:01):

Okay. Yeah. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, even though people might be a little bit squeamish about that. Yes. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> <laugh>. Okay. so once we compost our food waste Mm-Hmm. We have, it's called hummus. Hummus. Hummus. Hummus. Yes. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>. And then we can add it to our gardener gardens. How does hummus differ from like, a fertilizer that I might buy from the store?

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Dr. Ross (17:22):

Compost is a fertilizer, but it's the best fertilizer that you can get. And so you have to be very careful when you're getting fertilizers. If you don't know about fertilizers, you wanna make one, make sure that you know what you're getting. Because some of the fertilizers that you get out there have petroleum derivatives in it. And so they're doing, they'll do good, but they also do bad because they will also destroy your soil. And so be very careful when you're choosing a fertilizer. Always tell people, make sure that it's an organic fertilizer. And the reason I don't say natural be because the word natural does not mean anything when you're talking about organic. And so people confuse that when they see the word natural, they figure, okay, that's good. It doesn't necessarily mean that they can put natural on anything.

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Katelan (18:17):

So what makes compost such a good fertilizer for our plants?

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Dr. Ross (18:22):

Compost is such a good fertilizer because it not only has the three substances that plants need, which are potassium phosphate and potash, but it also has the, what's called the micronutrients from the plants, that it is broken down. And the micronutrients are anything fromum to calcium, to zinc, magnesium, all of those are broken down from the leaves and stuff that, that come from composting.

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Katelan (18:52):

So we can use compost on our inside home plants as well as our outdoor plants.

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Dr. Ross (18:56):

Yes, you can. Yes.

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Katelan (18:57):

Okay. Yeah.

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Dr. Ross (18:58):

On your inside plants, you wanna do it the same way and just put it right on top of your soil. Now you don't need as much compost inside because your plants inside don't have to deal with the elements. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And so just use about half as much as you would outdoors.

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Katelan (19:17):

Can you talk to us about when we add compost to our soil, be it in a potted plant or in the ground outside in a garden, how does it change that soil? How does it, if I have a very clay based soil or a very sand based soil, can it help to amend those soils that are typically a little tricky to grow in?

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Dr. Ross (19:35):

Yes. When you're adding compost to the soil, it will amend the soil, especially things such as your clay soil or your sandy soil. It adds character and it also adds kind of for clay soil, it also kind of breaks it down for sandy soil. It'll, what it'll do is that it'll actually become the substance that holds more water in your sandy soil. And so it's, it's a good substance to either type of soil that you want, even in long soil. You always wanna add your compost into those soils because your plants are gonna be the benefit of them.

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Katelan (20:09):

It seems to me that the soil is kind of like the lifeblood of the garden. It feels like we're often so excited to see what comes above Right. <Laugh>. Yes. But, but compost is kind of focusing on the very the main thing, right? Like the first thing <laugh>, it feels so essential.

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Dr. Ross (20:27):

Your soil is the lifeblood of your garden. And, and also the lifeblood of your plants. Think of it as as like giving it extra vitamins to sustain your plants as they're growing. It's just an added food source for that plant to help it grow and to help it sustain itself.

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Katelan (20:45):

And it's also nice because every day when we eat our apples and we have our apple core or we eat lettuce, and there's like the slimy parts, there's all these things that we otherwise were throwing away. But it's kind of nice to know that they're going back into the soil and can be sort of recycled.

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Dr. Ross (21:00):

Definitely. When we eat a lot of things and we throw things away, what we're doing is that if we don't put it back into the soil, we're actually depleting the soil. Because if those things come out of the soil and we throw, we're throwing them away and we're not putting them back, eventually that soil is not gonna be able to sustain itself. And so by putting it back into the soil, we make that soil in the original condition that it was. Hmm. To give you a good idea, the soil here in our community garden, this is the same soil that we did in 2012, and it's still producing because we use all the compost to put it back in there.

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Katelan (21:39):

I've never thought about it like that. Like when you, when you grow a tomato here Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> at, at the community garden. Mm-Hmm. That's taken a lot of nutrients out of the soil. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And so it's important to put that back in. Yes. It's Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> rather than toss it into a landfill basically. Mm-Hmm.

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Dr. Ross (21:54):

<Affirmative>. Yes. And even when you're growing plants and everything and you have weeds and stuff that are coming up in your garden, if those weeds haven't generated any, any seeds, instead of you taking them up and and throwing them away, break 'em up and put 'em in your compost pile. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Or break 'em up and put 'em back into your soil. Because if you're throwing it away, that weed is also taking out food from your garden. You always want that to stay in your gardening, to stay in, in your swamp. So whatever you're taking out of the swell, you put back into the sua and it keeps your soil healthy.

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Katelan (22:27):

Thank you so much. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> for sharing all your knowledge about composting and gardening. And I look forward to coming back to visit you. Thank

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Dr. Ross (22:35):

You. Thank you.

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Starting community compost with Bo Mies

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Katelan (22:36):

Compost is such a valuable resource for our soil. It doesn't just grow better plants, it makes the soil better at retaining moisture, less prone to erosion, and it helps to capture more carbon. So compost isn't just a climate solution for our food waste, it's a climate solution for the land and the atmosphere.

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Bo (23:03):

To be honest, composting really changed my world and the origin story is a bit embarrassing.

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Bo (23:16):

My name is Bo. I am 32 years old and I'm building soil with my neighbors and pals in Burlington, Vermont. I started composting when I was a research assistant for an academic institution and my projects revolved around phosphorus recovery. So I was touring compost facilities across the world and meanwhile, I had yet to compost in my own backyard. So in my shame, my roommates and I built a setup from two by fours and chicken wire that was mostly passive, but it worked well enough. And in the process of bearing witness to nature's transformation, it really reframed my thinking entirely. Like I really saw myself in that pile. Then I kind of shifted from studying soil based on global flows of staple foods and mineral fertilizers to really just communing with the earth and with myself. So I really, I needed to find my community be, and I had to open up to receiving help as well. I found so much hope when I went to Southern California and witnessed the incredible successes of their community composting networks. And to know that it started with Michael Martinez working with his friends to build a pile on his own backyard. I was like, wow. Why can't any of this be possible? Why not?

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Bo (24:59):

Our backyard setup, very proud to say, is critter proof and neighbor friendly and it stays hot all winter long and Vermont has pretty brutal winters. I found that building a collective pile with neighbors and friends really helps to build up enough mass to generate heat. It is three feet in diameter and we have it situated upright, so it's five feet tall. We introduce air into that system by Augering about twice a week. And we use plenty of wood shavings to keep the carbon content high and the odor minimal. It is so important that we consider the critters and we've gotta keep our neighbors happy and you know, reduce odors as much as possible. That's what I love about my current setup, that I'm always wanting to share with others. I've never had to deal with any pest issues and I'm super relieved to know that the neighborhood critters are safe from anything that could harm them in my pile.

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Bo (26:02):

I have found composting to be incredibly meaningful as a ritual just to participate in the process of decay, which in and of itself is like the mechanism that shepherds fertility through the precipice of life and death. Yeah. Just witnessing decomposition unfolds into a rich medium for growth. I just find myself in awe at the cyclical nature of life every time I go out to my pile. And to see organic material for the richness that it really holds, like keeping compost close to home and engaging with the process really reminds me of the non-capital wealth that we are capable of generating ourselves.

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What Happens if We Get This Right, with Sanchali Seth Pal

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Katelan (26:53):

You may be wondering what exactly can I compost? Well, there are some general rules of thumb at home. You can compost fruits and vegetables as long as they weren't cooked in oil or fat. But proceed with caution when it comes to citrus. Citrus is acidic, so it can throw off the pH balance of a compost bile. You can also compost eggshells, coffee grounds, tea leaves. You can compost any non glossy paper products. So like paper towels, egg cartons, tea bags, coffee filters. But there are some things that you want to avoid composting at home, like sugars, meat, dairy, cooked rice, bread oils to break down properly. These things require higher temperatures than your home setup can reach. So it's best to leave these things for the industrial composters so you can keep critters and harmful bacteria at bay in your home setup. But if your city offers composting, their industrial setup should be able to take basically anything you can eat. So like any animal-based foods or plant-based foods, raw, cooked or otherwise. But this may be wonder if composting is such an important climate solution and we all have food waste that we can contribute to the cause. Why don't more cities offer curbside compost pickups for food waste? And how much does our home food waste really matter? I brought these questions to commons founders, St. Charlie, St. Paul.

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Katelan (28:13):

Hey Sanchali

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Sanchali (28:14):

Hey Katelan.

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Katelan (28:16):

So food waste is a big problem in our landfills and it's not just coming from our homes. We get food waste from restaurants, farms, and other places. I'm wondering, in the grand scheme of things, how much impact as individuals do we actually have when it comes to food waste?

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Sanchali (28:29):

Okay, so I have a really shocking stat for this.

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Katelan (28:32):

Oh no. Okay, I'm ready.

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Sanchali (28:34):

According to the National Resources Defense Council or the NRDC, 40 to 50% of all the food wasted in the US is actually happening in our kitchens.

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Katelan (28:44):

Oh no. That's like kind of embarrassing.

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Sanchali (28:47):

I know. It's pretty surprising. And almost all of that food that we're wasting from our kitchens go straight into landfills. About 96% of it, the U-S-E-P-A says just the remaining 4% was composted. And a lot of that is actually from just buying more than we need. So part of this is like we could just spend less money on groceries in the US the average family of four spends about $1,500 a year on food that doesn't get eaten.

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Katelan (29:13):

Oof. Okay, so we gotta get it together here. We gotta buy less food or buy just what we're going to eat. We gotta eat the food that we actually buy, but I feel like we're still gonna have food waste, right? We're gonna have apple cos we're gonna have that slimy lettuce in the back of the fridge that we forgot about and we have to stop sending that stuff to landfills.

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Sanchali (29:29):

Absolutely. Like no matter how much we try, we're still gonna have some food waste or organic waste from food and it actually matters. Trying to think about what we do with that waste. Because food waste is a really big part of landfill emissions. In 2020, food waste generated over half of the total methane emissions from municipal landfills, actually 58%. And that's like the actual emissions of 15 cold fired power plants.

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Katelan (29:54):

Oof. That is a lot of slimy lettuce. So what happens when we stop sending this food waste to landfills and instead start composting it?

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Sanchali (30:01):

Great question. Composting food waste cuts emissions by about 38 to 84% versus tossing them into landfills according to a study last year from nature.

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Katelan (30:12):

That's really great news to hear and we have some great ways to start composting at home or with community programs, but I'm wondering like why it's not easier. I love home composting. It's really fun for me. And in LA they just rolled out the green bins so we can start composting at our curbside. But I'm wondering why more cities don't have this? Why did LA get it so late? Why is it so much harder to compost and like essentially recycle our food waste than it is to recycle our plastic and paper?

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Sanchali (30:38):

That's a great point. Recycling on the curbside really increased participation in recycling. And right now having that kind of access for composting is not super widespread. A 2023 study by Biocycle found that only about 12% of US households currently have access to municipal composting. But the good news is it's improving quickly. That 12% is already a 50% improvement over just two years earlier in 2021.

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Katelan (31:05):

That's good to hear. So, so there's hope. Hopefully, we assume with cities rolling out composting programs, what cities out there are doing a really great job at composting right now?

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Sanchali (31:15):

One example that's pretty interesting to look at is San Francisco. It's right on the other side of the bridge from where I live here in Oakland. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And according to the NRDC, San Francisco was the first US city to start citywide composting back in 1996 by just four years in. And in 2000 it had achieved the statewide goal that California set to divert half of all landfill to composter recycling facilities. And now the city actually compost or recycles over 80% of our household waste. That's more than any other city in the us.

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Katelan (31:46):

Wow, that's shocking. Super inspiring. How many emissions are they saving by composting all that food waste?

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Sanchali (31:52):

It's actually super inspiring. So some of the latest estimates show that San Francisco had an impact like saving over 250,000 tons of carbon through its composting program. And this is data from Recology, which runs the municipal composting program in San Francisco. Okay. So that's like a quarter of a million tons. It's a huge number and but then in context, it's like taking 60,000 to cars off the road every year. So San Francisco has about 400,000 cars in the city. That means the city composting program is having an impact, like taking 15% of our cars off the road.

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Katelan (32:26):

Whoa. That's some serious composting goals. But as we've heard, we don't need to wait for our cities to be at San Francisco status in order to start like taking advantage of composting, right?

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Sanchali (32:36):

Yeah, totally. That's right. I mean, we should totally write to our city reps to advocate for access to composting. You deserve that no matter where you live, but you also don't need to wait for that to come online. Composting with local community pickups, community gardens, apartment composters, backyard composters can be a great way to start directly tackling emissions and creating a family practice of reducing food waste at home. So kind of regardless of where you live, even if it's an apartment or an rv, you can probably find a way to start composting in your community today.

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Katelan (33:06):

I can't wait. Let's do it.

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Sanchali (33:08):

Let's do it.

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Katelan (33:12):

Composting our food waste is such a beautiful way to return what we've taken from the earth, which I know sounds a little grandiose for what is essentially tossing your banana peels or melon RINs into a bucket or onto a pile. But that's the beauty of it. Whether it's a corn cob, a can, or a crop top, just because we're done with it doesn't mean that it's waste. If you wanna start composting and make the most outta your food waste, you can get personalized recommendations to get started based on your location using the composting action in the Commons app. Thank you so much to our listeners who invited us into their home composting setups today. You heard from.

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[Episode Contributors say their names]

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Katelan (33:51):

If you'd like to be on the show, we'd love to have you go to the Commons earth slash podcast to tell us what your sustainable life looks like. And remember, we're all doing the best that we can. It's all about progress over perfection. We're over halfway through our first season and we really wanna hear what you guys think of the show so far. Consider leaving a rating or review. Our team would love to hear what you think. Speaking of the team, our editor and engineer on this episode was Evan Goodchild. It was Fact-Check by Commons Carbon Strategy Manager, Sophie Esky. It was written and produced by me, Kaitlyn Cunningham. For more stories from our community, join us on Instagram, follow the show as Second Nature Earth. Next week we're tackling another big climate opportunity, your job, but till then, I'll leave you with these last words from Samira in Philadelphia.

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Sameera (34:51):

In terms of thinking about food waste with respect to compost, it has made me a lot more conscious actually of how much food that we buy or that we cook doesn't actually get consumed. You know, when you have to actually scrape it out into a bucket in the backyard, you are a little bit more cognizant of it. And so it's actually helped me, I think, be a little bit more mindful about what I'm buying, what I'm cooking, and making sure that it's actually in the correct amounts for what we need.

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