Organic Waste: Work (still) in Progress

It began with a carrot.

As I was cleaning and prepping a box of fresh produce, I cut the green top off of a carrot and went to throw it into the trash. When I opened the lid, a pungent stench wafted up.

I froze. The idea of throwing this still-fresh plant into the garbage bin, sending it off to a landfill, seemed… wrong. Barbaric. Okay, that’s probably too strong a word. But definitely uncivilized, which is ironic, since waste management is one of the earliest concerns of civilizations.

Somehow, humans survived from the birth of the species all the way until 1935 when we built the first landfill in Fresno, California. In less than a century, the United States has seen the creation of no less than 10,000 Municipal Solid Waste landfills, more than 3,000 of which are still active today. It’s mind-boggling. And this is just what we use to dispose of the “non-toxic” waste that we civilians produce so prolifically.

These traditional “dry-tomb” landfills have become receptacles for all types of commercial and residential waste, all mixed together, which unfortunately creates toxic conditions in which leachate festers and leaks into groundwater. And then there’s the smell, and the pests, and the disease. Trash really is gross.

But it doesn’t have to be. We can fix this.

The three problems we have with managing waste are:

  1. How much there is
  2. What it’s made of
  3. How it is sorted

I’d like to address the last two points here. Our municipal waste currently includes recyclable materials and organic waste, but neither of those belongs in a landfill. We have begun to implement inorganic waste recycling for plastic, glass, and metal (and other students are addressing the problems with this system), but we don’t have smart ways to manage organic waste at scale.

Organic waste can be returned to the earth through composting and the nutrients can enrich soil for agriculture. Organic recycling is another possible use, in which organic matter is used as a non-fossil-fuel energy source. That’s less efficient and solves the energy problem at the expense of the soil problem, but it’s still better than a landfill.

My building was designed with trash chutes for garbage and recycling, but there is not an organic bin onsite at all.

So what could I do with these carrot tops?

I decided to start a compost bin in my home.

To create this vermicompost bin, I used a wire basket and two wood cutting boards. I lined the basket with cardboard and canvas, then layered in strips of paper that had been soaked in water and wrung out to get the proper moisture level. I added the worms, then more soaked paper, and topped it off with a couple sheets of dry paper and put all that between the two boards.

There are also large-scale composting programs being developed.

I am also starting an initiative in my apartment.

We will have a week-long organic waste collection event that includes:

  1. Educational marketing via social media, signage, and pamphlets
  2. A pre-event waste audit
  3. One week of organic collection and assessment
  4. A follow-up survey

Finally, I am developing this research into a multi-part photo story for New University newspaper.