Compost Maven: My Journey Towards Zero Waste

April 30, 2008

The following sign is on our magnetic board in the kitchen:

SAVE!
- Coffee Grinds
-Used Coffee Filters
-Used Tea Bags
- Vegetable waste (incl. potato peels)
- Fruit waste
- Human Hair
- Egg Shells
- Plain Cardboard
- Moldy and Burnt Bread
- Lint from dryer

What I am doing is active composting as opposed to passive composting. Active composting involves having the right amount of oxygen, moisture, and mix of brown and green waste. I entered into this seeing how much coffee we brew everyday and how the grinds and cut up filter improved the health of our plants. Now I want to mulch almost everything in our yard and go full force on the composting. I try to cut up stuff into small pieces with good kitchen scissors every time I put stuff into my bin as well as cutting them up as the food scraps are put in.

The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that yard trimmings and food residuals together constitute 23 percent of the U.S. waste stream. The average American generates 200 pounds of kitchen waste a year. Why should these things go to our overburdened landfills?

The West End Neighborhood Association and the San Rafael Fire Department are gearing up for Chipper Days 2008. They are taking reservations from residents for the Fire Department to come out with a chipper and reduce everything to mulch for the resident to use or haul it away. The number to call is 415-457-8909 and talk to Janis Peter.

I am hoping that this program can be expanded throughout Marin County, not only for fire safety, but to encourage people to compost and keep as much compostable materials out of our landfill. This practice also has the benefit of more healthy gardens without the need for commercial fertilizers and pesticides. Gardens with compost use water more efficiently. Compost has been found to help clean up contaminated soils, prevents soil erosion, and helps with water drainage.

Fogcity Journal has a report that talks about converting food waste into energy and the danger of having food waste in landfills.

A combination of mulching and composting is a great way to save water in your landscaping. Water is going to be a huge issue sooner than we think. If you think fights over oil are nasty, just wait for the war over water.

There are toilets that compost human waste but I am not quite ready for that.

The Next Step

I think that manufacturers have to consider packaging that is compostable, so we can truly be zero waste.

Energy

Jamie Hyneman from Mythbusters brokedown the various energy sources of the future for its viability for the latest Mother Jones (May + June 2008).

ENERGY SOURCE: Cow manure
HOW IT WORKS: In an anaerobic digester, bacteria break down manure and produce methane, which is trapped and used to generate electricity.
PLAUSIBLE: It’s already being used in California. “nasa actually investigated this, because if you’re going to Mars and you’ve got people on board, you’ve got poo,” says Hyneman.

ENERGY SOURCE: Unicellular green algae
HOW IT WORKS: Deprived of sulfur and oxygen, they produce high yields of hydrogen.
PLAUSIBLE: JH: “Algae are such basic, simple organisms. If you optimize them, they are going to produce massive quantities of whatever you have tailored them to.”

ENERGY SOURCE: Grape juice
HOW IT WORKS: NanoLogix uses bacteria to convert Welch’s sugar runoff into hydrogen.
PLAUSIBLE: JH: As with algae, “with microbes there is no bottleneck to slow you down.”

ENERGY SOURCE: Greenhouse gases
HOW IT WORKS: Los Alamos scientists propose exposing air to potassium carbonate, which absorbs carbon dioxide that is then converted into methanol, gasoline, or jet fuel.
PLAUSIBLE: JH: “How do you come up with the energy to do this conversion? If you can get it from something like sunlight, then there is your free lunch.”

Another article in Mother Jones (p.34) says that Photovoltaic Solar has the potential to provide from 22% to 69% total power (currently 0.02%), with wind power potentially providing 20% power (currently .8%), and geothermal providing up to 10% total power (currently .4%). If you can trap the CO2 emissions from coal and convert that into fuel while co-firing with Biomass, I think we would be set.

I had a great conversation with Caroline Webb, who is an advocate of nuclear power. There are stirrings even among environmentalists that it may be time to rethink nuclear power. If they can reliably find a solution to the waste and security issues with nuclear power I may be convinced since it does provide power that isn’t that CO2 producing.

I am convinced no one power source will be the answer, but a combination of sources. I think one lesson we should take away from our current mess is we should never rely on just one source to power our country.