• A coolseat that’s a compost for food waste outside Cafe Guilia, Chippendale
A trial to end cafe food waste in the country and city is underway in NSW.
Funded by the NSW EPA and using only Australian materials and labour the project seeks to grow local economies by keeping local money in local economies.
In addition to using labour and materials from Bathurst, the project seeks to make local cafes more viable by halting the contribution they make to the river of gold leaving local economies in waste bill payments.
The seats also cool adjoining pavement and reduce the invisible heat of pavements and walls which increases local temperatures. The damage to human, animal, bird and insect life from road, footpath and dark roofs and the lack of trees is severe; more people die from it than from bushfires in Australia. Data and solutions and actions are being developed by many including, for example, streetcoolers and sweltering cities.
Strategically, composting food is something any of us who eat three times a day may do where we live, work and eat. To avoid smells, to find a design that pleases the eye and the behind of those who sit on them, several designs and prototypes were trialled in Chippendale resulting in the coolseats being used in the trial at Bathurst, Orange and Chippendale like the one shown in the photo above. Cafe Guilia is a much-loved local cafe serving food sourced as locally as possible and with a long time composting ethic.
(Chippendale residents are now composting over 400kg of food waste each week in their footpath garden compost options.)
Like the Cafe Guilia owner, Stefan, the coolseats folk and the EPA are keen to get data on the food, pollution and money saved. (Stay tuned to this blog and the data will be published here.)
Why is this little project valuable?
Because, when the pollution from food waste is graphed as a ‘country’ it’s the third largest polluting ‘country’ on Earth.
• When graphed as a ‘country’ food waste is the third most damaging to Earth’s climate after China and the U.S.
Those of us lucky enough to eat three times a day are lucky enough to have three chances a day to end our bills and pollution by composting.
• Composting at cafes, houses, flats or big trucks + big money + big pollution + poorer people
My dream is to inspire a generation of school kids to compost and their parents.
Let me know if you’re interested in having a coolseat where you live, work, school or play. To end food waste, empower communities and local businesses to end their waste bills we can compost.
There’s no such thing as ‘waste’, just a failure of imagination.
Anyway, in our culture those who make the waste are those who sell us their wares, and make us pay to take away the waste they create. That’s institutionalised abuse and commercial laziness.
But wonderful manufacturers are already accepting that they need to take back their product waste, or to make it compostable, or to sell things that don’t depend on ‘waste’ to go with the purchase - that’s a story for another blog.
Until then, compost as though our Earth depends on it - it does.
Michael Mobbs