A Day in the Life of a Composter

I get asked for meetings all the time.  "Hey, let's get coffee" or "Let me buy you lunch!" and these are from friends.  Friends who were with me at strategy meetings and potlucks where we talk about veganism (I am a budding vegetarian and yes I have slips from time to time. I love bacon but I digress.) Lately I have had to turn a lot of those requests down.  Here is how my day goes...

I am new to South Carolina.  I was born and raised in Southern California and my academic advisor told me that there was an opportunity out here to help to build a community and get credit towards my masters degree in Sociology.  So, here I am.

The plan is simple and the goal is to answer some simple questions.  What is the nature of community? How does one form a community?  How does form a community in a first world country.  Is it possible to integrate 3rd world mentality into first world community constructs using modern technology. Essentially, how do you get a bunch of Americans to work towards a common goal in real life.

It is not as easy as it sounds in part because of social media and other sociological substitutes.  Early villages and towns had early constructs for interaction.  Word of mouth and letters were first, of course, but then when we look at how languages evolved and the introduction of the phone, the computer, etc. the foundational elements of societal tribe building brought with it a paradigm shift.  People do not get to know each other the way they used to.  That is where this project was born and why I now get up at 4 a.m.

I thought about who I am.  What are the things that I value. I value the earth, health, nature, helping my fellow human, and sustainability.  There is more, but the goal for finding or creating my tribe started with those.  I have to eat.  I have to have a roof over my head.  How do I satisfy these needs in a manner in keeping with my values.  I want to live small, cheaply, and sustainably with limited

resources.  That means living in a place where I know where my food comes from, where I know my neighbors (hopefully other people working towards similar goals and coming from similar circumstances).  The answer...live on a farm with other people who share my ideals.

So we have to set up the farm.  It is November and getting cold outside.  We have a need to be productive, to get things done even when things are not growing.  We need to get things ready to grow.
One of the biggest problems in this state is that it only recycles 29% of its waste.  The numbers for food are far worse and we saw this as an opportunity to solve a problem...Two birds, one stone. My desire is to capture a portion of that (we have set a goal of 100 tons which, is a really small amount of what actually goes into land fill and put it to work growing more food; growing other food).

So I get up at 4 a.m. The weather fluctuates here so I dress appropriately, hoodie and work gloves.  We get buckets from a deli in Columbia that sets the empties aside for us, though sometimes they are not completely clean so I spend about 20 minutes hosing out potato salad, pickles, and/or mayo. and letting them drain before putting them in my car.

We operate in Clemson, Greenville, Columbia, Moncks Corner, and Charleston.  My weekly travels take me literally the length of the entire state.  Mondays, I am in Clemson.  There are two coffee shops there that donate their spent coffee grounds and most days they are outside waiting for pickup which is great for everyone because it saves the baristas from taking them to the dumpster and it adds both heat and odor control to the compost pile.  The rest of Clemson is households who subscribe to our service.  We are currently at 104 homes across the state who pay for us to pick up their compostables. We pick up the full bucket on the curb and leave an empty one.  Some of our subscribers have started a book trading system, so if they have requested a book in particular, we will leave it or pick it up.  Like a library that delivers.

DHEC says that we cannot haul great amounts of garbage since we are not commercial so we carry small amounts and we have Compost Hosts who let us dump the stuff in their yards.  We have set up 6 foot by 20 foot compost piles at each of these sites to begin a hot composting process. Each "pile" is no more than 4 cubic feet.  Hot composting or active composting means that we get and hold the compost at 140-160 degrees for three days to kill off any harmful pathogens.  This causes the compost to cook faster and by flipping, moistening, and aerating the pile, the process gets faster sometimes finished product can be spreadable and ready in about three weeks.

So, we add to the pile, flip the rest, then cover with coffee grounds to quell the smell and cook the stuff underneath.  We do this every other day all over South Carolina.

Tuesday it's the same thing in Greenville, then Columbia, etc.  Charleston is my favorite.  Some days I get to watch the sun rise and contemplate how the sun is on the wrong coast, missing California.

Most days I am done by 8 a.m. and exhausted because I spend so much time during the rest of the day doing other things but mainly my problem is that it is inefficient.  We can do better.  If you are like me then you have realized that the obvious problem is seven people coordinating schedules to see who will toss the pile who will pick up and who will drop off.  With the travel, we are still near our carbon footprint and our compost hosts are more than willing to host an overnight guest so we are not driving tired.

So what do I do all day?  I pick up compost, I drop off empty buckets, I dump compost,  I flip compost.  I repeat...I spend a lot of time talking about it.

There are seven of us right now.

Let's see if we can get more people.

Let's see if we can save more.

Let's see if we can do more.

Contribute to actual change...
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/completing-the-food-cycle-from-the-ground-up/x/6821972

There is a saying that we have at 99Knives and it is catching on.  We are having our "meetings in motion"....Talk with a bucket or a shovel in your hand!