Quest to Compost

by Elizabeth Lowell

As a kid growing up in a single-family home with a yard and a father who gardened, I was used to putting food scraps in the compost bin. Fruit and vegetable peelings, coffee grounds and egg shells always went into a bucket under the sink, right next to the trash can. The only thing that went into that other can, food-wise anyway, was meat, which couldn’t go in the backyard composter.  For as long as I can remember, the five members of my household filled our kitchen garbage can, a six-gallon, white plastic bin to be exact, up once a week with kitchen waste.

But, as it does for most young people, the day came when I found myself living in a cramped apartment in a multi-family building with a roommate. There was no “garbage day”, so we brought our garbage down to the building’s dumpsters whenever the bins were full. From the vantage point of the 5th floor, I began to notice just how often that was. Instead of filling our kitchen garbage can up once a week, we were filling it up every four or five days, and there were only two of us instead of my family of five! Needless to say, I was appalled, especially given the fact that I had to go up and down five flights of stairs every time I took out the trash.  We were still recycling all the same products, so what had turned my roommate and me into garbage-producing machines overnight? Food waste!

Now, you may be thinking to yourself, how much can two people really eat? But ask yourself this: If you take out food waste, (all those plate scrapings, fruit peels, and vegetable trimmings, not to mention that container of who-knows-what with the green tinge to it in the back of the fridge), AND you recycle everything your town allows, what’s left in the trash?

At about the same time I was completing my metamorphosis from average, American 20-something into full-fledged evil garbage monster, the city I was living in began to allow residents to place food scraps, including meat and dairy products, in their yard waste bins if they lived in single-family homes.

Recognizing my last chance at salvation, save starvation that is, I immediately went out and found a nice, 3-gallon bucket with a lid and a handle and started filling it with all our food scraps. I emptied it at my friends’ and family’s homes, in their yard waste bins, so the scraps would be taken to a composter instead of the landfill. Admittedly, they thought I was little nuts, but it worked. Almost immediately, I was no longer making my bi-weekly journey to the dumpsters at our apartment unit. Instead, I found myself making that familiar trip maybe every two weeks because, at some point, you just have to empty that can, even if it’s not full, right?

But not every city offers collection of food scraps to its residents. Recently, I made the move to a new city, albeit to an all-too-familiar cramped apartment in a multi-family building. I can’t unload my food scraps in friends’ yard waste bins because the city doesn’t collect food scraps with yard trimmings (for a number of reasons), and I don’t have the option of setting up my own home composter. I have watched in despair as the volume of waste my roommate and I generate has shot back up due to the food scraps that have nowhere else to go but the garbage. What has made it all the more painful is that working for Harvest has taught me so much about the benefits of composting those food scraps.

Millions of apartment-dwellers like me find themselves in the same situation. They want to reduce the amount of waste that goes to the landfill, but they have no options.
Or do they?

A few months ago, I decided I had had enough. I started a little research project and discovered that my local health food/organics store allows customers to bring in their food scraps and dump them in collection carts specifically for organic waste. The store then pays for a hauler to collect the organic waste and transport it to a nearby industrial composter. I’ve been at it for a few months and have, not surprisingly, seen my trips to my apartment’s dumpsters (along with my trips up and down four flights of stairs carrying a garbage bag) decline dramatically. And the local health food/organics store is on the way to my roommate’s job, so we’re not going out of our way to recycle our food scraps.

Until we can get collection of organics in multi-family units across the country, I encourage you to do a little research. Check your local health food and organics stores, and your city’s Public Works Department webpage for an organic waste depot. There may an option. And trust me, it beats the stairs.