- The New York City Department of Sanitation has
officially suspended the city's composting program
through June 30th, 2021?
Today I'm on a mission to find out how
my old food gets turned into compost.
The 101 on composting in New York
Find a drop off location, dump it in.
This suspension is because of budget cuts
associated with COVID-19
and there are grassroots efforts
underway to reverse this decision.
But in the meantime, I think we need to
figure out some alternatives.
So I wanna know
This week I'm going to explore three ways to compost.
First, for people with a backyard,
I'm gonna set up a backyard bin.
It's so big I can inside of it and there's room to spare.
For people in apartments, I'm gonna learn
how to worm bin compost.
- The next big step is to get your worms.
And for people who'd like to drop off,
I'm going to interview the creators of ShareWaste,
and app that helps you find composting sites
in your neighborhood.
- One single person can make a
massive change in their communities.
- [Lucy Biggers] I'm Lucy Biggers,
and this is One Small Step.
Composting is such an important climate solution
that it's so disappointing that
New York has suspended its program.
For one, organic waste like food, when sent to landfill,
Secondly, compost is like an organic
fertilizer for your plants.
It helps the surrounding soil
retain water and adds nutrients.
According to the climate solution project, Drawdown,
if the world composting rate increased to 48% by 2050,
To put that in perspective, in 2018
we released globally about 36.6 gigatons
of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels.
In the US, our composting rates
are nowhere near where they need to be.
In 2017, only 6.3% of food was composted in the US,
a slight increase from 5.3% in 2015.
Although in this video we'll be exploring
how individuals can compost, make no mistake:
Okay, so before I jump into learning how to compost,
I wanna show you what I've been doing at my parents' house
for the past six weeks.
Here's our freezer, and in here we've got this big
Tupperware container that we've been putting our compost in.
Usually what happens is while one of us is cooking,
we're taking our scraps and we're putting them
into this container as it goes.
Then we put it back into the freezer.
When this container gets full,
I'll show you where we take it.
In here is where we've been keeping our scraps,
and I'm excited to talk with the backyard composting
consultancy, Java's Compost, to learn
what we should do with these.
Because of quarantine I've been out at my parents' house
in the suburbs and they don't compost
so I would love for you guys to kind of
talk me through what we can do.
I actually have a picture on my phone.
This is kind of where they put their yard waste.
So I figured we could just put something right next to that.
- Yeah so we recommend a specific one it's called a
Jora, j-o-r-a, tumbler.
And it's insulated so it gets really hot
so the temperature can reach up to 140 degrees in there.
And the way that it's designed, it's on a swivel
so it's just really easy to turn.
The other thing you need to look for in a tumbler
is something that has two sides
so you can constantly compost like fresh food scraps.
So one side you fill up all the way, you leave it closed
and then you have the second side to fill up
with the fresh scraps.
And by the time the second side is full,
that first side is ready to be emptied and used.
You could also use a box bin, an earth machine that
sits on the ground and those are very inexpensive but
you need to just be careful of animals burrowing underneath.
So you won't be able to compost bones, dairy, oil, fat,
you can't put that kind of thing in the earth machine
that sits on the ground because animals will smell that.
Whereas the tumblers, you can do more material
because they're enclosed and animals can access them.
- I like to tell people that if you do go with the
earth machine style, if you can get something
that goes underneath it so that animals can't penetrate,
could be a large piece of plywood, or wire mesh,
that can be one remedy.
- And you can't just like, put it in a pile
in your backyard?
- We usually will discourage people from doing that
just out of consideration for how close everybody lives
together and if you end up with a infestation
of rodents or whatever, then you know, it's likely
that it's gonna become an issue for one of your neighbors.
- So after some research, I've gone with the D.F. Omer
garden compost bin, which I'm gonna assemble right now!
- I don't know if this is a two person job or not
- One side!
- Okay so it fits together nicely,
there's like a lock area here I feel like
so you could really lock it for pests.
Now I have to pick the actual location
where it's gonna be permanently,
I wanna ask my parents where they want it to be.
And I'm also gonna put a screen down on the bottom
to keep out pests from burrowing under.
We've picked a location for the compost.
It's gonna go right in this little corner.
- [Dad] Guide it to where it's lined up
Yeah, it's gonna be like right on the,
yeah you're good.
Let's move it this way.
How do we make sure that our compost doesn't smell?
- (laughs) That's like everybody's main concern.
So, you really need to balance it.
People kind of don't really understand that
which is also referred to as nitrogen and carbon,
and the nitrogen is your food scraps and
the carbon is your dry materials.
Things like dry leaves, shredded paper, wood chips,
so we teach our customers basically
a balance of a 1:1 ratio,
so one part food scraps, one part dry material.
- First thing I'm gonna do is put in some browns,
I'm doing leaves.
- Next up is all the food scraps
that we've been keeping since we started this journey
about a month ago.
(singing) Ahh, my first layer of compost.
Right now it's gonna stay as a one bin system
but in a few months, I will get a second bin
that can be filled while this one is processing
the food scraps and compost over the next few months.
And then that system will be complete.
So, I know not everyone's gonna have space for a bin
or even two bins like this.
So now it's time to tackle city composting.
The Lower East Side Ecology Center
that normally supports compost pickups in New York City,
has started offering worm bins to city residents.
These bins are small enough to fit under a bed or a sink
and contain
I'm excited to connect with Renee Crowley
to get the full picture on worm bin composting.
I've always been so curious about the worm bin
but I've just been like, okay my husband will not
be down with worms in my apartment (laughs).
So can you explain how it works?
- This is kind of what your basic worm bin can look like,
just kind of a plastic bin.
So I've even seen people just use even shoe box bins.
To prepare it for worm composting.
You wanna drill some holes in the lid.
And you wanna drill some holes in the body
so that the worms can have air and aren't suffocating.
And before you start adding food scraps,
one of the steps you can do to prepare your bin
is to use newspaper.
Tear it into strips, just kinda make
like a nice, fluffy newspaper bed.
You wanna like, mist it with water
just like any kind of composting science
you want the moisture levels to be like a wrung out sponge.
So once you have your bin prepared, you have your worms,
that's when you can start adding your food scraps.
Let the worms munch away.
So all this brown stuff is the
vermicompost that they've produced.
So you can like, sprinkle this on your house plants
or your tomato plants in your backyard,
and just like, give it a boost of nutrients.
- Honestly, the worm bin system was way less
intimidating than I was expecting.
But I know a lot of people will not be okay
with a pound of worms in their apartment.
So I've reached out to the creators of ShareWaste,
an app that connects neighbors with compost bins
to neighbors who have waste.
When you open ShareWaste, you sign up
as a host or a donor.
Once you've signed up, you can look for waste
donation sites in your neighborhood.
ShareWaste reports they have about
Obviously this is nowhere near the scale that we need,
but if it were to grow, and if you have a site
in your neighborhood, it can be a great option for you.
What have you heard back from people who use your app?
- If you use ShareWaste you probably already care about the
environment and care about the waste that you produce
and you immediately have some sort of connection
with the person who will accept your waste
so there's kind of a natural conversation starter.
- Some areas where we had no compost hosts at all,
there was just one enthusiastic, dedicated person
who just said, "okay, I'm going to tell everybody."
And they just spread the network where they live
and that's how it works.
- I would be worried about overloading the ShareWaste
system with all the people who were composting
in New York now going to ShareWaste.
And so, do you have any thoughts of like,
how to prevent that overload?
- The only thing that would happen would be that
a lot of waste donors would be reaching out to hosts
and they would be saying, "I'm sorry, my compost bin
"is at capacity."
So the best thing for that would be to encourage more
gardeners and more people who already have a compost bin
or have a compost heap, to register on the site.
- Is there any steps you're taking
to protect people during the COVID-19?
Just like the 6 feet social distancing stuff?
- We're absolutely supportive of anyone who wants to
disable this thing for now because they're concerned.
You can still donate your organic waste
without actually meeting with the host.
Just leave the bucket or caddy there,
on the porch for example, and they will take it.
They quickly sanitize it, they take it, they empty it into
their compost bin, and they return the caddy.
- There is no doubt that we need municipal composting
if we're going to reach our climate goals.
However, I do think knowing how
to compost at home is very empowering.
From setting up this bin, to learning about the worm bin
system and talking to ShareWaste,
I realized we have a lot of great options
at our disposal during this very difficult time.
So my one small step for this episode
is try one of these composting systems,
and let me know how it goes.
That's all for this episode, I'm Lucy Biggers,
see you next time, bye!
Mom, is that gonna go out to the compost?
- Caught me!
This is my greatest new kitchen tool.
Just a clear bowl where I can put all my scraps and then
you can walk them out to the compost.
Thanks, Lucy!
Okay I'll take them out.