\u201cIn a good economy there would be no such thing as waste\u201d writes farmer and poet, Wendell Berry. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We know this is true of natural systems, where anything that builds up too much, soon becomes a resource for another species or part of the system. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our industrial economy hasn\u2019t quite comprehended this yet, with \u2018wastes\u2019 regularly building up to dangerous levels, causing damage and needing to be managed or ‘thrown away’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But there is no \u2018away\u2019 we can throw things, everywhere is connected to everywhere else by air, water and soil and by the creatures that move in and through them. Every landfill site is a neighbourhood, a farm-scape, a water catchment, an ecosystem. Nowhere deserve to be trashed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Home composters seem to understand these things intuitively. Rather than seeing food \u2018waste\u2019, the composter sees wonderful rich nutrients just waiting to be processed back into their garden. Rather than seeing an annoying pile of leaves and twigs, the composter sees ingredients that will balance those food scraps in their compost pile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is no reliable information on just how many home composters there are in each community (information we would dearly love to know here at YIMBY*), but the last time it was asked in the census, 25 per cent of households said they composted, we think it\u2019s higher in rural areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We collectively pay for the waste-system through our rates or rents, and the fees are pretty flat, yet the real costs of having our \u2018waste\u2019 removed for us goes up and down with how much \u2018waste\u2019 we generate and how much \u2018waste\u2019 service we use. Bins collected weekly cost more than those collected fortnightly or monthly. Every time a truck stops outside our house to pick up a bin it costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every kilo or ton of general \u2018waste\u2019 or organic matter costs to transport, tip and process and those costs are different for different waste streams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are also hidden costs we collectively bear the burden of, like the air and noise pollution from the rubbish trucks and the danger they pose on our streets. Heavy trucks do more damage to our roads than any other vehicle type, grinding up the asphalt, and then the particles from those tyres become the largest contributors to microplastics in our environment, ending up in our soil, our food and our bodies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We know not everyone can be a home composter, but those who are do an amazing service for the whole community, keeping tons of material out of landfill, reducing the impact of trucks on our roads, cutting pollution and emissions, cycling \u2018waste\u2019 food nutrients back into food and saving us all quite a lot of money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you are one of those home composters, thank you, and please keep up the good work.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2013 Joel Meadows works with *Yes In My Back Yard, (YIMBY), a community-scale composting initiative in Castlemaine and surrounds. Send questions or comments to hello@yimbycompost.com, or to book in for a compost workshop!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cIn a good economy there would be no such thing as waste\u201d writes farmer and poet, Wendell Berry. We know…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":20494,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[5409,3105,4321],"ppma_author":[5225],"class_list":["post-20492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","tag-the-compost-conversation","tag-yes-in-my-backyard","tag-yimby-composters"],"yoast_head":"\n