• Looking for my green thumb - Ashley Qiu managing compost
Ashley Qiu, intern with Sustainable House,
describes her journey with food and her search for a green thumb.
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(Warning: U.S. spelling not Australian spelling eg liters not litres etc)
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 cooking and have pieces like stems or ends of veggies and fruits that I don’t use in the recipe?
Do I just throw them away? Or do I compost them?
How about you?
Watch out . . . incoming advice . . . “We should all be composting our food waste!”
It’s easy for me to do, and by doing so, all of us can protect our Earth! If I can do it, you can, too.
There are many benefits to composting, which include less embodied transport (no garbage truck needed) and less of the associated energy use and climate pollution, helping to grow tree canopies and vegetation to cool the streets and increase property prices, and slowing stormwater to keep the rain where it falls, making harbors and oceans cleaner.
How much food waste do we contribute on average?
The average Australian has about 312 kg of food waste per year, making it 7.6 million tonnes of food waste per year for the entire country (Tackling Australia’s food waste - DCCEEW). For several months this year I interned with Michael Mobbs of Sustainable House in the Chippendale area. 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:
1 kg = 2.2 pound
312 kg x 7,800 = 2,433,600 kg/year or 5,353,920 pounds
When food waste decays in garbage dumps each 1 kg of food waste creates 1.5 kg to about 2.2 kg of carbon pollution in Earth’s atmosphere (actually methane but let’s use carbon pollution here as its the most common measure of climate pollution).
Thus, each year the little suburb of 7,800 people in Chippendale puts about 3,650,400 to 5,353,920 kg of carbon pollution into the air.
Although the food waste is 0.03% of Australia’s total waste, this is still a lot! We can all play a role in reducing our food waste and composting and make this number significantly decrease. Here’s what I’ve done to reduce food waste this year.
How much can we fit in the compost systems, and how long does it take to manage them by ourselves?
• Beth and a coolseat compost outside Kissa 101 Cafe, Chippendale
Each week, I managed 8 Coolseats. Half contained two bins and hold 172 liters total, and the other half have one bin and hold 86 liters total. I also kept 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.
• Some Chippendale footpath garden compost bins for residents and businesses to grow the gardens
To maintain all of them, it took 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?
* Rhyll in her unit’s garden - Rhyll is one of the footpath gardeners and also manages the composting there
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 101 Kissa Cafe.
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 you dispose of your food waste into the compost bin, might as well take that extra 5 minutes to mix it in and speed up the process!
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, Chippendale would save 3,650,400 kg of CO2 equivalent emissions per year. That’s astounding!
To compost all of this at once, we would still need compost bins to hold 2,431,848 liters extra of waste. If we were to install the most up-to-date Coolseats, which each hold 172 liters total, we would need roughly 14,138 more bins. Or if we installed more of the 300 liter capacity bins, we would need 8,106 more bins. Either way, that is still a long way to go, so we need to encourage the instalment of more compost systems!
But, in practice, as this food waste is created daily, we would need only about 200 compost bins.
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 would take to upkeep the compost.
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 through this link. You can input your amount of food waste per day, and the calculator spits out results that show you your daily and total CO2 equivalent emissions that you redirected into the soil, rather than releasing it into the air and hurting our Earth. Here are some screenshots of my results:
Some of my coolseats calculator data
• Day by day data
• My four weeks of composting adds up . . .
What is the potential impact on tree growth, tree canopy, water retention, and property values from more vegetation?
Having more composting 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.
All of this points to us needing to compost!
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.
• Data from Streetcoolers calculator on options and impacts for cooling streets and cities
So how do we get more people on board and end food waste from households in Chippendale?
Over my internship, I have engaged with locals and made observations during my rounds. I noticed a common trend of lack of awareness.
Solutions?
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 during my internship 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.
Pertaining to the Coolseats specifically, 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 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 and 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 significant costs, so we need to make people more aware of the personal benefits. For example, using compost for your garden saves money that you would have used to buy produce; compost is a natural fertilizer and weed suppressant, so we will not need to buy any of the 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 (Financial Benefits of Composting).
Towns can 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.
From having essentially having no experience in food waste and composting to being a pro in the game as I came to 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 so much more wisdom. I appreciate having this truly one of a kind internship experience because it has opened me to show much more than I could have ever imagined.
I encourage you all to take that leap out of your comfort zone and into something you know nothing about but always had a curiosity for because who knows what you could learn?!
Oh, and I am happy to report that I do have a green thumb now :)
Ashley (Green Thumb) Qui