12/21 the great escape: bin 1 turn
happy holidays, a big year, and other (un)mentionables
Soundtrack: New EV Rules from the Catalyst Podcast
Hello compost fam and happy holidays! It feels good to be back with the Bean and feels even better to report on a major update in our system! For the former, have no fear that the compost cycle has been faithfully churning each week, despite the lack of commentary to show for it. (If 1,000 rubberbands are removed from a compost system and there are no labeled photos to document it, did it really happen??) In the last few months, I’ve distracted with adapting to graduate school but aim to post more regularly.
For the latter, the Wylde Center has transitioned its public composting service to be subscriber based! The newly formed Compost Club requests $100 for members and $120 for non-members to join and provides subscribers with 1) access to drop-off their food scraps, 2) ability to use finished compost, and 3) opportunity to participate in quarterly educational activities. If you came across the Compost Bean after joining the Club, welcome to the fam! I’m so excited to have you here and to hopefully meet you in-person at the next educational opportunity :).
Lastly, a big shout-out to those that have been following along since the beginning of the Bean in June 2023! Thanks so much for staying tuned, y’all <3.
Now, onto the stars of the show.
Big Moves
For those that have been through an unexpected transition, you know how difficult it is to escape the unexpected baggage that comes along with it. As with the “Maintenance Period” from September of this year, some compost donors were caught off-guard and disappointed by the new locks on the compost bins and chose to leave their food scraps behind anyway. I’m choosing to highlight this instance not to shame anyone, but to document that there is at least one person (me!) on the receiving end of actions like these. There have been no issues since, which is wonderful!
A Not-So-Normal Treasure Time
In the past few months, the waste I’ve removed from the bins has been standard — rubber bands, fruit/vegetable labels, the occasional straw, a few plastic bags, etc. Even when I’ve found knives or light bulbs, I usually wait until the end of a post to spotlight them. However.. this week is more of a Public Service Announcement meant to be relayed with a delicate tone, fitting for the extra empathy that “pads” the holiday season.
To the person that added their sanitary napkins to bin 1 in the last couple of weeks: I see where you were going with that train of thought, but unfortunately, this is not the correct destination.
Blame games will naturally kick in, but I think we all know that this donor’s heart was in the right place, as was the heart of the Transition Baggage’s previous owner. In the language of microeconomics, these situations are negative consumption externalities due to asymmetric information. A more colloquial way of saying the same thing is, “don’t you know what happens when you ASS-U-ME?”
Before moving into my prediction about the root of the assumptions at play and the reasons why they are detrimental to this system, I’d like to gently stress the public health hazard of disposing used menstrual items in a community compost bin. Please pass word along to refrain from doing so. That said, each of the items pictured below has the ability to contaminate the finished compost in their unique way — albeit less so in the winter in the summer — which is why they get removed.
Starting at the Root
Since the 1980s, Americans have been stressed about their plastic waste. This episode of Planet Money explains that when the rise of mass-manufactured plastic was threatened by consumers’ anxiety about the accumulation of plastic waste, Big Plastic’s response was to start confusing consumers through a marketing scheme.
All of you are familiar with the small, triangular symbol with a number inside printed on most plastic containers, but did you know that it has no bearing on whether that plastic is actually recyclable? Plastic companies started printing the “recycling” label to convince consumers that plastics weren’t contributing to landfill waste although the actual amount of landfill waste from plastics changed little to none. Non-recyclable plastic sent to recycling centers still gets thrown in the landfill (with a lot more labor involved), but consumers have less buyer’s guilt — and that’s what matters to the company selling the product.
Much like a product’s compostability, its recyclability is dependent on local infrastructure. The company that puts the recyclable/compostable/biodegradable label on their product is hedging that the average consumer cares more about the first half of the supply chain (purchasing the product) than the last half (disposing the product). Unfortunately, while the first half of the (often global) supply chain gets continuously optimized by the Amazons and Walmarts of the world, the last half of the (primarily local) supply chain is an ever-complicated burden only for those paying attention.
It’s probably overkill comparing Big Plastic companies to those creating compostable materials, but the effect is the same. Unless you live in California, or another state that has Extended Producer Responsibility legislation, you are responsible for what your waste is and where it goes. An organization like CompostNow accepts different inputs than the Wylde Center because it has a more advanced composting ability and capacity.
Our System
At the Wylde Center, we use a 6-bin cold compost system to create garden-ready compost in 30 weeks - about 6.5 months from start to finish. Like CompostNow, there are a number of large-scale private or municipal compost systems that participate in industrial composting, which has an environment that stimulates a faster rate of breakdown and can handle a wider variety of inputs. As a “cold compost” system, the bins at the Wylde Center are primarily meant to entertain food scraps (a source of nitrogen) and leaves/branches/woody materials/paper (a source of carbon) because they create juuuust the right amount of heat relative to the oxygen flow available. Although turning the bins each week enables more oxygen flow, the environment isn’t suitable for breaking down more complex materials like bio-plastics, even though the marketing on the label makes it seem so.
Likewise, a complex material like the one shown below (perhaps a mop-head?), is too difficult to breakdown. However, it has the best chance if it is broken up into smaller pieces that increase the area where micro-organisms can work. I am also more likely to test its breakdown potential if it’s in a fun-sized form, rather than throwing it out on-sight.
Wrapping up the Year
As a final treat, I present to you all my last compost friend of 2023… Mickey the Mouse!
Writing for the Bean this year (despite its lags) has been such a blessing and I’m so grateful for everything I’ve learned along with you all! For anyone that followed the project tracker on Airtable, I double-thank you and look forward to adding to the dataset in the new year. See ya then, dear reader!