• Will the sun set on food waste in Chippendale?
Blog by Ashley Qiu, intern with Sustainable House.
“Chippendale can stop the suburb’s food waste this year”.
So says Ashley Qiu, intern from the US working with Sustainable House.
(Warning: a mix of US and English spelling ahead eg ‘liter’ instead of ‘litre’.)
To support plans for ending food waste in Chippendale I’m working out how much food is wasted in this small inner Sydney suburb.
In the first blog of my internship which began six weeks ago I described how, with my very brown, very non-gardening thumbs, I began to garden and compost in Chippendale’s footpath gardens. Six weeks later, here is the new ‘me’. In this blog I’m asking some questions and sharing some calculations which I’ve come up with during my internship. The good thing is, I don’t have all the answers, and I’m wondering if you, Michael (from Sustainable House with whom I’m interning) or I might come up with some solutions.
I’ve been tracking my time and the amount of food waste I’m composting in the footpath gardens each week for the last six weeks.
Chippendale is composting over 300 kg of food waste each week.
Here are my figures. What do you think of them - I’d love to know?
Please comment as much or as little as you wish on this blog using the comments box below my guest blog here.
Some questions I’ve been asking of myself include:
- What do I do when I have a little bit of food left on my plate that isn’t enough to save for another meal?
- What do I do when I’m cooking and have pieces like stems or ends of veggies and fruits that I don’t use in my recipe? Do I just throw them away? Or do I compost them?
How much food waste do we contribute?
The average Australian makes about 312 kg of food waste per year. Or about 1 in 5 bags of groceries.
That’s about 7.6 million tonnes of food waste per year for the country. And about 10 million tonnes of climate pollution going into Earth’s air!
I’m interning with Michael Mobbs of Sustainable House in the small inner city suburb of Chippendale - its .7 of a square kilometre. There are roughly 7,800 people in this suburb. If we do some quick math, we can see how much food waste there is in total for Chippendale each year:
312 kg x 7,800 = 2,433,600 kg/year, or, 2,433 tonnes.
Although that small suburb only makes 0.03% of Australia’s total waste, it’s still quite a lot! Now, I know we can all play a role in reducing our food waste, composting, and make this number significantly decrease wherever we live.
How much do we fit in the compost systems, and how long does it take to manage them?
Each week, I manage 8 Coolseats. Half of them contain two bins and can hold 172 liters total, and the other half have one bin and hold 86 liters total. I also upkeep 2 square and triangle bins with a capacity of 300 liters each that are placed near a 120 liter rotating bin. In total, all of these composting bins can hold 1,752 liters of compost.
• Chippendale’s footpath gardens grow abundant trees and plants fed by rain and compost
To maintain all of them, it takes me 1.5 - 2 hours/day, including walking time to each compost. Also, the time varies depending on the compost’s moisture levels and contents. If the compost is wetter, that means I have to spend more time mixing in cardboard/paper to make it drier and balance the wetness. If the compost has large chunks or stalks of food, like celery, I have to spend more time cutting the pieces apart to make them easier to break down.
How long could it take to manage compost systems with the community’s help?
I am lucky to have met volunteers Beth and Rhyll, who have recently started helping me manage the Coolseats. It takes Beth as little as 10 minutes to as long as 30 minutes to turn 4 of our largest Coolseats outside of Cafe Giulia and 101Kissa. Rhyll turns 3 of the Coolseats near her home, and it takes her roughly 15 minutes total. Having more hands on deck significantly decreases the amount of time needed to upkeep the compost. So if you were to even simply mix one compost bin, once a week, that would only be roughly 5 minutes of your week that you would dedicate to doing that. When we put our food waste into the compost bin, we might as well take that extra 5 minutes to mix it in and speed up the process!
For reference, it takes the food waste about 3 weeks to become compost, and augering the compost speeds up the process.
• Chippendale gardeners (L to R), Rhyll and Beth
How much food waste could we save?
So how much could we save if all the food in Chippendale was composted? How much more capacity and time do we need in order to do so?
If we were to compost all 2,433,600 kg/year of food waste (2, 433 tonnes), Chippendale would save 3,650,400 kg of CO2 equivalent emissions per year (3,650 tonnes). That’s astounding!
I’m working with Michael Mobbs at Sustainable House who is planning how to compost all of this food waste by the end of this year. Keep your eyes peeled for Michael’s blog about how this can be done, and contact him if you wish to hear about this or other blogs.
How much time would it take to manage this food waste?
It takes Beth roughly 0.029 min/kg to maintain the compost, so if we use this as a baseline for how long it would take for all of Chippendale’s food waste to be managed, it would take about 22.67 hrs/wk. But again, the more people that help, the less time per person it takes to upkeep the compost.
How I track amounts of food waste and pollution
Each day, I have been tracking how much food waste I have composted and the subsequent pollution savings. I have been using the COOLSEATS Food Waste Calculator, which you can use, too, for free by downloading it.
Anyone can use this calculator and may plug in the amount of their food waste per day. Then, the calculator spits out results that show our daily and total CO2 equivalent emissions that were made into soil and fertliser for gardening, which also prevented the release of food waste pollution into Earth’s air. Here are some screenshots of my results for four weeks:
What is the impact on tree growth, tree canopy, water retention, and property values from composting?
Having more compost means that there is more soil to help enrich tree growth. With tree growth, comes tree canopies and better water retention, and with more vegetation, property values increase.
For every 15% increase in the tree canopy, the temperature decreases by 1 degree Celsius.
• Chippendale’s street trees save lives - as do street trees planted anywhere
Researchers at the Portland Forestry Science Lab of the US Forest Service have discovered a direct, statistical connection between planting street trees and lower mortality.
All of this points to us needing to compost!
• Myrtle street and trees, footpath gardens
If this is not enough for you, how about knowing that you could be saving nearly $200 a year just by supporting tree growth (based on the Cordell Housing Building Guide 2015) Not only does the earth benefit, but so do we! Let’s invest in this mutually beneficial relationship.
So how do we get more people on board and end food waste from households in Chippendale?
Over the past few weeks, I have engaged with locals and made observations during my rounds. I noticed a common trend of lack of awareness. We can start building a culture around composting as daily practice instead of an extra task by instilling it in our children’s education at school. Local schools can have classes, volunteer opportunities, and clubs surrounding how to compost and why we should be doing it. Schools can encourage kids to directly engage in their community by taking them to the compost bins and showing them firsthand what they can be doing to help save our Earth.
I learned from Beth that Chippendale currently has a larger population of an older demographic that does not use social media as often, which is where I do my main form of spreading awareness. She shared that physical flyers can help spread the message. This is something feasible to be doing, and when we need to replace the flyers, we can simply compost them since they are paper!
Another way to motivate people to compost is to make more food waste bins and compost systems available so that it is easier for them to dispose of their waste.
I noticed that public parks typically only have waste bins, occasionally recycling bins, but never food waste bins. Oftentimes when people go to the park, they bring a snack or even share a meal with friends and family as they enjoy the lovely weather. Having a compost bin nearby would not only separate food waste from regular waste, but also create more soil for the parks to continue to flourish and bring people back to enjoy their beauty.
Also, my apartment in Sydney does not provide any recycling or food waste bins to residents, so my roommates and I have to consolidate all of our waste into one trash can. We would be reducing a significant amount of pollution if all types of residential accommodations, not just homes, had the three waste bins.
• A coolseat outside Cafe Kissa 101
Now, about the Coolseats.
Some of the residents I talked to did not know they were a compost system or a bench. There is some signage on or around the seats, but I think they are not that noticeable.
Having more eye-catching displays that describe what the Coolseats are would bring more users. For example, having a simple “sit on me!” painted across the seat of the Coolseat would make more apparent what part of its purpose is. Also, the Coolseats do not have a backrest, which most benches do, so that could be a later prototype to be explored. The posters that talk about composting with the Coolseats could be placed in higher places that are more at eye level. A future investment can be having signs on poles instead of the paper ones taped to the seats.
Finally, the biggest motivator for people to adopt a composting habit, or any practice is, unfortunately, money.
People want to either make money or reduce their costs.
Composting reduces costs for cafes who pay by the number and volume of the waste pick ups from their chosen service provider, so composting reduces pick ups and bin sizes.
But households who compost and reduce food waste must use local council bins, and unlike cafes and commercial properties, cannot choose another service provider. Households are locked into fixed bills with local councils and get no financial reward for composting. To free households of the local council billing system, over which households presently have no control, we need householders to be more aware of the gardening and Earthly climate benefits of composting - and persuade households to lobby their local councillors to allow households to choose not to use the local council garbage service, and be able to shop around instead.
For example, using compost for our garden saves money that we would have used to buy produce; compost is a natural fertilizer and weed suppressant, so we will not need to buy toxic chemicals and sprays to put into our soil. And if there is less waste to be picked up, then we do not need to be spending tax money to have garbage disposal services come to our neighborhoods.
Towns and states in the US where I come from reduce people’s taxes or give rebates depending on the amount of compost they have contributed; or take the extra money the town saved from composting and dedicate it to a fund to help improve its infrastructure and programs.
Michael says the stranglehold local councils have on garbage choices and costs is an “abuse of monopoly power”. After reading a blog by Marie Neubrander comparing choices and costs in Australia and the US I agree. Marie writes in her blog:
“In approaching this issue, local authorities can choose between two roads: policies that control or policies that motivate and empower their citizens.“
And . . . me?
From having essentially no experience in food waste and composting to being a pro in the game as I near the end of my 6 week internship, I am proud of myself and filled with immense gratitude for this opportunity.
I was intimidated by sustainability initiatives because they all seemed so far out of my reach, and I struggled to see what my impact could do. I often did the little things of recycling and eating less meat, but I did not know where to take it from there.
Working with Michael and Sustainable House has shown me how to take my contributions to the next level and understand their subsequent impact and importance, and how to engage with your community to play its part, too. It was hard work at first and a bit nerve-racking being thrown right into the deep end as I mentioned in my first blog, but looking at where I am now, I have come out of it with some wisdom.
I appreciate having this truly one-of-a-kind internship experience. It has opened me to see much more than I could have ever imagined. I encourage myself and all of us to leap out of our comfort zones and into something we know nothing about but always had a curiosity for because who knows what you could learn?!
And I thank the local council, Sydney City Council, for its inspiring success working with the local community to create its footpath gardens policy which the local community has embraced.
Oh, and I am happy to report that I do have a green thumb now.
Ashley Qiu
- Please reply to my blog in the comments box below - thank you, Ashley