The Community Compost Dream
Thinking longer term than my worm bins and outdoor compost bins, imagine a handful of neighbors and friends pooling scraps into a shared system. That means quicker, hotter piles, better diversity of inputs, and better compost as an output. Everyone who gives in, gets some compost out. That's the dream I keep coming back to.
Why It Matters Here Specifically
If you've read my first few blog posts, you already know the pieces that this idea rests on. Composting has to be bear safe by design. And having a supply of compost to build soil isn't just a nice-to-have. Building soil is a requirement for combatting drier, hotter summers. Real soil allows us to use our rain barrels or grey water systems to fully support our gardening desires. If you mull on this long enough, the realization becomes clear that to do this well is to work towards solving it as a community. Rather than duplicating effort, concentrating on individual building blocks that all come together makes more sense.
What a Community System Could Look Like
A rough idea of a basic community system could be neighborhood by neighborhood. A few people have larger compost bins, and their immediate neighbors fill bokashi buckets that then get deposited in the (bear proof, mind you) bins. In spring, finished compost gets dished back out to everyone who contributed. Saving water by building soil ultimately benefits everyone, as it's a shared resource.
I'm not pretending to have the entirety of the logistics worked out, but basically bokashi ferment, centralize, redistribute finished product. It's on a scale people could self sufficiently organize in their own communities up here.
The Eco-Friendly Case
Even if you don't garden but you're concerned about the environment, there's a case to be made for buying into this idea of a shared system. Nationally, food is the largest component in U.S. landfills, making up 22% of municipal waste by weight. When food is buried in a landfill, it breaks down without oxygen and produces methane which is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, which is the gas primarily produced in composting processes.
What does that mean for Gilpin County? Well, we have about 6000 people. Commonly cited USDA and EPA figures put U.S. food waste at roughly 325 pounds per person per year. That math, assuming EVERY person in the county participated (I am not naive, I know this is not the case) works out to almost 1,000 tons of food waste per year, county-wide, that could be diverted into compost bins instead of put into a landfill. Again, this is not perfect math. Some people already compost or otherwise get rid of their waste. This is all just a best-case-scenario estimate.
What's already in motion?
This isn't necessarily just an idea, though the larger "everyone's doing it" is still a dream. I've already been accepting food scraps from some neighbors I trust, who understand what can and can't go into a compost bin, etc. They've helped me form ideas around what they'd like to get out of sharing their scraps with me. Next step for me, personally, is ironing out the bokashi techniques in a way that my neighbors can continue to contribute without needing a PhD in composting. From there, I'd like to see how quickly the scraps break down and if I could bring on another neighbor or two to my pilot program. This is all relevant for figuring out how to design a system that would work at scale.
The Invitation
This doesn’t start with a large, shared system on day one. The reasonable next steps are on YOU. More people understanding compost fundamentals means more people who can provide input to create a more robust system at scale. And my workshops today? Just the on-ramp. So get going with your own bin, build some soil, and start sharing knowledge with your neighbors and friends. If you’re interested in the bare minimum, a little basket buried in the ground to start a patch of garlic or flowers, check out my first upcoming workshop, Clove and Compost.
Where This Is Headed
The exact reason I started Grow in the Mountains is not clearly defined. I wanted to educate people to do some of the things I've been doing - building soil to grow food, no matter the amount, while reducing waste going into the landfill. With time, I want to adapt to what the people around me need. Who knows, maybe someday Gilpin County could have its own compost center where you buy in to become a member, bring your food scraps when you're already on the way to the transfer station, and leave with some finished compost.