Curbside composting is growing. We need this.
Enabling more people to compost food scraps has enormous potential to offset global warming, and many people are unaware of the growing number of easy curbside pick-up options. We need lots more, but it’s possible to compost even if you have to go it alone, for now. Photo source: Isla Vista Compost Collective
When I was young, my mother tossed our leftover fruit and vegetable scraps into a plastic bag and kept it on the kitchen counter, right next to the toaster. I found it repulsive that we saved rotting food in the place where we cooked, and worried my friends would see it the same way.
Fast forward 12 years, and my mother is still doing her own composting, but I’ve learned to appreciate it, thanks to a conservation degree from college and the chance to work with Recology, a superstar waste management facility based in San Francisco, which collects recyclable and organic materials in 140 different communities across California, Oregon, and Washington.
Recology pioneered curbside composting programs in San Francisco in 1996 and now recovers tons of vegetable scraps, coffee grounds, eggshells, and yard trimmings every day, turning it into rich, nutrient-dense soil. The program is so successful that out of the blue (recycling), black (garbage), and green (compost) bins set out on curbs in San Francisco, its biggest operation, it is the green bins that fill up the most.
San Francisco is among the very few cities that diverts more waste for reuse than it sends to landfills. In 2018, its composting and recycling program reduced the amount of waste going into the landfill by 80 percent and converted 255,000 tons of organic material into rich compost. In the process, it lowered trash bill costs for customers by shrinking the amount of waste taking up space in landfills, and selling compost to local farmers and vineyard owners in the form of finished earth, who heaped it onto fields, capturing and sequestering carbon in the process. In other words, municipal composting just makes sense.
Inside Recology’s composting annex in San Francisco. Photo source: Recology
So why isn’t it more widespread? San Francisco is one of about 100 cities across the country offering municipal composting programs, and it’s mandated for citizens. But only three percent of households across the country have access to curbside food collection programs. Strapped city finances and different priorities are among the reasons more cities haven’t embraced it. The pandemic has likely made the prospect of doing so even dimmer. New York City halted its own composting program for six months due to COVID-related expenses.
The consequences for our environment are profound. Thirty percent of food produced globally is tossed into the trash, accounting for about six percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. In the US, the number is even higher–40 percent of all food produced is sent to landfills.
Recology reported that the amount of organic waste it collected in 2018 and turned into compost that year offset emissions equivalent to 89,900 cars removed from the road for an entire year. "Researchers have calculated that if every city in the U.S. replicated San Francisco’s compost collection program,” says Robert Reed, a spokesperson for Recology, “we could offset 20 percent of the nation's carbon emissions."
Source: Recology
So what options do you have if you don’t live in one of the cities that offers such a program? It is entirely possible to compost on your own, both in your backyard and indoors. And if you don’t have a place to keep your scraps, a service called Share Waste will connect you to someone in your community, at no cost, who has a compost pile and is actively accepting donations.
But if self-composting seems more aspirational than practical, consider supporting one of the businesses willing to do it for you. As of 2018, more than 100 private composting companies are making curbside stops in Austin, Atlanta, Boston, and Washington D.C., a few for as little as $8 a week. (This handy interactive map helps you find a service near you.) They range from truck-dependent operations that cover a lot of ground to more modest services that limit their carbon impact even further by biking to your curb.
If it turns out there is no composting service option nearby, perhaps you’ll find inspiration in Jacob Bider’s story.
As a student at UC Santa Barbara, Bider was stunned by the lack of composting options in Isla Vista, a residential square mile inhabited by college students. “Our current system is flawed,” he says. “We’re in need of more composting systems that support and give back to the local community.” So in 2017, he started the IV Compost Collective.
Student volunteers biked around the neighborhood to pick up food scraps with five-gallon buckets, a pull trailer, and zeal. The composting service doubled each quarter, and now totals 96 houses, 500 residents, and has a waitlist of people hoping to get a worm bucket on their own front porch.
The IV Compost Collective recently raised $50,000 to establish a more permanent program, and is now part of Isla Vista’s residential services program. To date, it has diverted 24,374 pounds of food waste from landfills, now pays its dirt riders, and is still operating despite pandemic circumstances.
“For folks who want to compost when their city doesn’t offer a program,” says Bider, “I advise getting together with individuals who share a similar interest and discussing how you might be able to develop your own grassroots composting initiative within your community.”
Jacob attributes the popularity and success of the program to the quirky surfing worm logo on the buckets people put out for pick-up.
Jacob Bider tends to his weekly pickup.
For many around the world, conserving resources is a matter of necessity, just as it was for my mom who grew up on a tropical island with five siblings. Today she boasts four composting bins filled to the brim with new soil and earthworms, and a daughter who believes composting should be the norm in every household. I now see so much potential in food waste—in all of its gunk, goop, and transformational glory.
The pandemic has forced everyone to make hard decisions about what’s important and what is not, but climate change can no longer take the backseat to other problems. Composting is among the easiest, and most effective ways to do something about our warming world. Fortunately, many cities, grassroots initiatives, and private services are making it harder to come up with excuses for not doing so. Now we need to expand the demand for more of them.
ABOUT RECOLOGY’S ARTIST IN RESIDENCE PROGRAM
I recently worked with Leilah Talukder, Recology’s Artist in Residence. As part of the effort to provide education and resources for recycling and waste reduction, we created a video series called “Diverting Waste Using Natural Dyes.” In the series, students learn how unsustainable the fashion industry is, with its reliance on chemical dyes, and how to extract vibrant hues of yellow and pink from onion skins and avocado pits. This workshop invites people to think about the potential of food waste, and it’s power to become something beautiful and life-sustaining—if only we take the time to treat it right.
Cotton cloth dyed with discarded coffee grounds (left), red onion skins (middle), and beet peels (right).
Cotton cloth dyed using avocado pits (pink) and purple cabbage (purple).
Cailyn Schmidt is a News Fellow at Stone Pier Press and based in Monterey, CA.
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