Community Compost – Who Pays? – by Flavia Franco
There is an expression on one of the Compost graphics that I came across: “One person’s trash is another’s Black Gold”. And this is true, there is value added to the trash (in this case – food waste) to turn it into black gold. But there’s also labor and effort applied along the way to create that value. So let’s take an economic look at the process to answer the question.
Not Your Father’s Economics
The title from this section is borrowed from a new brand of alcoholic root beer. But it is very appropriate. The traditional cost / benefit analysis tended to ignore “externalities” – which is defined as: “a side effect or consequence of an industrial or commercial activity that affects other parties without this being reflected in the cost of the goods or services involved, such as the pollination of surrounding crops by bees kept for honey.” The community compost process is chocked full of externalities – both costs and benefits. Until now we have accepted that there is no community wide composting program because it wasn’t “economically feasible” (i.e. the cost outweighed the benefits, i.e. not enough profit to make it worth anyone’s while).
The biggest benefit that won’t show up in anyone’s bank account comes from preventing methane gas from being generated in the landfill when food waste is not diverted.
The other benefit is restoration of soil health, which is essential in order to continue to produce food for a growing demand.
Great soil health requires less irrigation and also less artificial fertilizers, which can be a serious water pollution issue, so that is a third and fourth benefit.
As a supporter of Southern Oregon Food Solutions, you might already know about that. But to most families, this is not common knowledge. And getting this information to become common knowledge is one of the challenges (and costs) of Community Compost. So in addition to hidden benefits, there are also costs that are not obvious to most, and that is discussed next.
To get food scraps to “Black Gold” status of finished compost, many contribute along the way:
• Families collect their scraps and bring them to a drop site or pay for curbside pick-up or neighborhood pick-up. So even to use the free drop site, those families are still using their efforts to get them to the drop site.
• The service that Adam Holtey provides should not be considered “free”. For example, at the Growers Market after a good day, he is lifting over 500 pounds into his truck and then lifting it again at the farms to unload it. So being able and required to lift 1,000 pounds a day is a risk and requires him to be mindful of his fitness. Then there’s also the transport cost of fuel and the bins. This is a key part of the process, but other parts are also critical.
• At the farms, the food scraps do not just sit to rot and attract pests. It has to be phyisically mixed with carbon sources (leaves and branches) with water added and it must be turned regularly to expose surfaces to oxygen as it makes the transition to “black gold”. So to participate, farms have to have the right equipment to handle the food scraps and also experience so that they get good results for their efforts.
• Last is the effort it takes to expand this practice in order to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from the landfill and to increase the good regenerative agricultural practice of restoring soil health. The growth in volume at the Ashland Growers Market started in 2022 with one banana peel the first week. It has been through a conscious effort of communication and outreach that the drop site is as successful as it is currently. Alongside promotion of community compost, there has also been the promotion of education about preventing food waste, since prevention of waste is the most effective way to reduce the green house gas emissions related to the current food system, and it’s also the best way for the food system to use the planet’s resources of land, labor, water and transportation more effectively. The materials and effort have largely been supported by volunteers, with the SOFS brochures paid for from a grant from 2020. To make a significant increase in activity, there will need to be more investment in outreach efforts – more than what one volunteer (or even two) should have to bear.
Funding sources
To grow beyond current levels, Community Compost needs to develop more sources of funds. The coalition is paying attention now to grant opportunities and will be applying for them when it’s eligible to do so. If there were no community benefit provided, such as education about food waste or greenhouse gas emission reductions, or soil health restoration, then this service would not be eligible for most of these grants. Gratitude goes to the Ashland Rotary Club for initiating the Ashland Growers Market Free Food Scrap Drop Off site and to Ashland Food Coop and Ashland Climate Collaborative for facilitating the funding for the 2024 season.
To grow this activity beyond current levels, the challenge ahead will not be just to secure funds for hydraulic lifts, additional driver labor and more outreach, although that is a significant challenge in its own right. But the challenge will also be to:
Engage with a significant number of families to encourage participation, and have the service eventually be self sustaining through subscriptions with a rate that is affordable for families, so that grants are only needed to either subsidize low income families so that they have access to participate, or individuals who live alone and don’t generate enough volume to justify even the most affordable rate.
So, to answer the question: Community Compost – who pays?
Given this background information, hopefully, the reader will agree that making sure one’s food scraps get put to good use (either by composting or by feeding livestock) should be part of the cost of living – sustainably. After all, everyone eats, therefore, everyone has food waste to contend with and should be responsible for their own said waste. And to keep the cost per family affordable, society should pitch in too, because society benefits from this process, and because society is also partially responsible for abandoning sustainability practices (when we had a more agrarian culture), and for previously ignoring the hidden costs of taking all garbage to the landfill.