Institute for Local Self-Reliance

Today I'm talking with Brenda at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance about composting as an environmentally friendly self-reliant activity. You can also follow on Facebook.

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00:00
This is Mary Lewis at A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters. If you're enjoying this podcast, please like, subscribe, share it with a friend, or leave a comment. Thank you. Today I'm talking with Brenda at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. Good morning, Brenda. How are you? I'm great. Thanks for having me. You're welcome. You're in Minneapolis? I'm actually in the Washington, D.C. office. Oh, okay.

00:29
All right, cool. What's it like in Washington, DC today? It's it's actually a very nice day. It's in the 70s. I don't have the AC on. I have the fans going. Very nice. It's it's overcast in Minnesota, but it's also not hot yet. So that's a good thing. All right. So tell me about yourself and what you do. Well, I head up one of our.

00:56
initiatives at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance. We are a national non-profit research and technical assistance organization and we were founded in 1974 so we turned 50 this year and we have championed local self-reliance, a strategy that underscores the need for humanly scaled institutions and economies and the widest possible distribution of ownership. So what does that mean? Well we work in key sectors of the economy so

01:25
We have an independent business initiative, which is fighting the outsize monopoly power of corporations like Amazon. Before that, it was Walmart, which has kind of been dwarfed by Amazon. We have a community broadband initiative, which is promoting municipally owned broadband fiber optic networks, for instance. We have an energy democracy program, which is promoting community controlled utilities and.

01:54
Looftop solar and the like, and I head up our composting for community initiative and have been working on waste issues for 38 years. I've been at ILSR for 38 years and, um, most of that time I've been fighting trash incinerators and documenting communities with the highest recycling and composting levels and in.

02:18
probably the last decade began to focus more and more on composting because composting is inherently local. We can do it in our backyards, in our communities, at schools, community gardens, urban farms. You can do it anywhere in the world. Wherever we are eating, which hopefully if we're lucky we're eating at least three meals a day and you have food scraps, so we should be doing something with those food scraps.

02:45
Even the final product that you make from compost is generally used locally. We're not shipping the food scraps from coast to coast. You know, we have, you know, markets for waste paper and steel and metals, other types of recycled commodities. Those can be global markets, but we're not shipping our banana peels from the East Coast to the West Coast. And then the finished product tends to be used within local and regional markets as well. Back into the soil. Good. Okay.

03:15
So I am gonna, I'm gonna tell you my experience with composting in a small town. We don't live there anymore, so I don't have to abide by their rules now. But back when we lived in this small town in Minnesota, in town, we were only allowed to have the compost barrels that get closed up and you turn them. We were not allowed to have any kind of open compost bin.

03:45
And I think the reasoning was that it would draw in pests. So do you hear this in cities that there's specific ways you're allowed to compost? Yeah, there are definitely archaic and two laws on the books, old laws. And there was ones like the one you described that are just far too prescriptive. So I actually did a report a few years ago called Yes in My Backyard.

04:15
for local government on home composting programs. And we had a whole chapter on how to address archaic laws and ordinances. And we actually called out the problem with the specifics like what you just mentioned is, and let me just back up and say that there are a few things that you need to keep in mind for successful composting. And they are things like you gotta balance your

04:40
nitrogen rich materials, that's your food scraps, glass, grass clippings, think of nitrogen rich materials and things that can rot easily or have a lot of moisture. And you got to balance that with carbon rich materials, that's your browns. And the right ratio, you got to pay attention to oxygen, composting is an aerobic process, it needs oxygen, and it needs moisture. And you know, you need enough mass, but to do it successfully and to keep out...

05:07
unwanted critters like rodents or raccoons or possums. It's not about whether it's enclosed or not. I mean sometimes that can help but I know lots of composters that are and even in Brooklyn, New York there's a site that has open piles but they seal the piles, they're composting correctly, there's open space around them. So composting successfully is not so much about the system

05:36
but about whether you're taking into account things like the recipe and the oxygen and the moisture. Sure, yes. So when we moved to our acreage, we were so excited to have room for actual big old compost bins that weren't regulated by the city. And we've been here almost four years, on our fourth anniversary, August 7th. And we have three huge compost bins out by our tree line.

06:05
And we have had them since we moved in, I think. And we have made the most gorgeous compost for our big garden. And we do all the things you just said, the greens, the browns, the whole bit. So it is absolutely doable. But can you tell people who live in cities how to go about it? Because again, there are, there are regulations and laws on cities about how you're allowed to do it. How do you, how do you get around that?

06:36
I guess is what I'm asking. Yeah. If you're in a city, contact your local recycling office, Department of Public Works, and ask what kind of resources they have for home composting. Increasingly, we're seeing cities and counties offer educational materials at the local level. You can also contact your local extension agent. Sometimes they

07:04
local university extension offices will have actually do training on how to compost and level up. Take a course, take an evening course. Many are offered just an hour. Increasingly with COVID, we have more opportunities to learn virtually. I do think that that can help, but there's nothing like an in-person class to learn how to compost and get your hands in there and smell the system and build a pile together.

07:32
But if your community offers a course, it's not rocket science, but you do need to know the basics. And so taking a short course can really help. As I was mentioning, some cities and counties have programs where they might give away a home composting bin for free, like the City of Orlando in Florida does that. Or they might offer, you can order online a few times a year.

08:02
bulk purchasing so you can get a bin for wholesale prices. Then they might have a day where you just go, all the bins are delivered, come pick up the one you ordered. There are cities that have those programs. If your city does not, which is perhaps sadly more common than if it did have a program, then advocate for one and contact your local city council or county council rep.

08:30
They need to hear from their constituents about the programs that you need. You need the resources, you need the bins, you need the equipment. But if you want to get started, we have some resources on our website, ilsr.org. And you can go just Google once you're on there for home composting. Actually, you could just Google ILSR home composting resources. We have a series of YouTube videos, so you can watch those there. You can watch the whole.

09:00
One hour training we do or it's broken into pieces. Like, how do I know what bin to get? Or now that I've made compost, how do I use it? We also offer that training in Spanish. So, um, and we're increasingly looking at offering more of our resources in different languages. Awesome. That's fantastic. Um, okay. So it might seem weird that I asked, asked you to be on the podcast, but

09:27
Part of the reason I asked you is because I had never heard of the Institute for a local self-reliance. And I have actually been being fed through my Facebook feed a lot of places that I didn't know about because they relate to my podcast topics. And it's frustrating to me that I don't know. I didn't know that your organization existed. There's been a couple other organizations that have been fed to me. And I was like...

09:56
Who are these people? I didn't even know they existed. Like there's an organization, I can't think of the name of it right now. And it's Water and Land Conservation is part of the name. And they've been around forever and I didn't even know about them. So how can help? I mean, I'm trying to help get you out there in the world so people know about you.

10:25
by having you on the podcast. But how can we get organizations like yours more known? Do you know? Wow. Thanks for finding us. I'm so happy to be on here. Thanks for finding us, Mary. And you know, we're not a huge nonprofit organization. We're fairly small as national.

10:47
nonprofits, we're not strictly like an environmental nonprofit like the Sierra Club or Natural Resources Defense Council, or the Nature Conservancy. And we really do have a unique mission and lens, which is fighting concentrated corporate power. So we don't really fit into one of those kind of silos, but you know, for lack of a better byline where we really do promote sustainable.

11:13
local economic development or promoting a homegrown economy. But you can follow us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. So I think our Facebook is, I mean, not people are moving away from Facebook, but more and more but facebook.com slash local self-reliance on Instagram, where instagram.com slash ilisr.

11:40
underscore org. But anyway, if you go to our website, ilsr.org, you can click on any of our social media handles. And, you know, if you go to our website, we have a lot of resources. One of our biggest campaigns right now is fighting the proliferation of dollar stores and in both rural and urban communities. And there are now more dollar stores in America.

12:08
Then there are Starbucks, McDonald's, Walmart's, and Target combined. Think about that. It's like 36,000. It's probably more than that because every day there's more. And at best a dollar store, you know, when it comes to healthy food, at best it's like frozen waffles and canned peaches. So they, um, their model is really putting out healthy local grocery stores in communities and taking over. And there's.

12:37
Most of those stores that I mentioned are owned by two companies alone. And so this is, you know, this is the kind of monopoly corporate concentrated power that is our lens to fight. And we have, if you're facing a dollar store, there's just lots of resources on our website about that. Um, Amazon, you know, it was very popular for many reasons. It's kind of like frictional, frictionalist buying, but they're outside control.

13:06
in so much parts of the economy now is really scary. I mean, you go online and you're like, I don't know, looking for pot holders or bar stools for your kitchen. They control so much of the internet infrastructure that they can now feature their store above any other independent suppliers or vendors. Not only that, but their algorithms now

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show that, will tell them the data that what's popular, what people are looking for. So then they can start manufacturing that and put out other independent businesses. So the way that Amazon just needs to be broken up. I mean, it's just too much concentrated power. So most of our resources are really oriented, not necessarily towards the everyday person on our website. You know, it's, it's, um, we,

14:04
run a coalition Athena of independent business owners. So, you know, elected officials, we do a lot of policy work. And I would say our home composting resources is one of the outliers on that, that of course we're trying to reach people who, you know, like to garden, have big yards, or wanna really be able to use that black gold. Maybe you're buying soil amendments and you realize you can create your own.

14:32
So, but I think part of the issue for people not knowing who we are is partly because our audience isn't necessarily just the everyday person. Okay, that makes sense. Wouldn't it be nice if corporate America and the little guy could maybe shake hands and cut a deal and the healthy things that the little guy is trying to create or produce could be marketed by corporate America and that way corporate America is not this big

15:01
scary in it only for the dollar thing. I mean, that's very, very, very idealistic, I understand. But wouldn't it be nice? Yeah. And you know, we're not against, you know, just to be clear, we're not against businesses and corporations. I just mentioned the Athena coalition where we have thousands and thousands if not hundreds of thousands of independent businesses, part of that coalition through independent business coalitions that exist in

15:30
So we're just against concentrated monopoly power. And you know, you think about, you know, this election that's coming up too, is people are feeling disenfranchised and left out of things and that the system is rigged against them. And a lot of the reason that they're feeling that way is because of whose pockets are being lined, it's not theirs.

15:59
It's the big companies, you know, profits are at all time highs for so many companies, Amazon being not an exception to that. And so this is this is kind of the one of the big structural issues that's facing us as a country and our economy and some of the key problems that and challenges that people face on a day to day basis. Yep, absolutely. The other problem with with.

16:28
what you're talking about is when you buy something that is manufactured, it's probably going to break sooner than something that someone actually built themselves. And I'm going to give you an example. My husband built me this beautiful desk for the corner of our bedroom and our house. And I wasn't going to give that desk up and move because it's gorgeous and it's solid and it's never going to fall apart.

16:57
So we made a spot for it in the new house. That thing is made out of maple. It is never gonna break. And when we moved in here, I really wanted a coffee table and there was no time to make one. So I ordered a coffee table through Amazon. It lasted two months. If people are interested in buying long lasting things, then maybe find a local

17:28
business that isn't a corporation where they actually do build things by hand. And yes, you are going to pay more for it, but it's going to last you a lifetime and probably your grandchildren's lifetimes. Yeah. And you know, there's a, there's a growing sharing economy too. Um, I was looking for a nice dining room table set because we just needed a new one and, um,

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you know, I wanted to support local artisans and it was so expensive. Like, you know, talking thousands of dollars for the table, the chair. And I'm like, Oh, I thought I got to buy something that fits in with my values. You know, not gonna, you know, and, but then I'm on my community listserv and somebody says, I have my family dining room set and I'd like to sell it and it's Oak and you know, I want it to go to good family. So.

18:22
My husband and I went over there and we ended up buying this beautiful set for like a thousand dollars. I had the seats reupholstered and I supported a local, talk about reused, reupholstery business and picked out the fabric. And it's just like so great to have this table. And the woman who sold it to me was so happy that her family set ended up with another family. My kids were young at the time. We've had it for 20 years now already.

18:52
Yeah, I mean, there's so many other ways to get durable products. And, you know, back to your compost bin and your town that was so prescriptive, oh, you need to have this, you know, enclosed system that you buy. Well, it is actually, um, if you have somebody who's handy, like, it sounds like your husband is to build your own, they actually work better. Like you can take repurposed wooden pallets. It's cheaper local resource. You can, um, if you are in an urban area and you're concerned about.

19:21
critters and rodents because you know that there's like in DC where I am, you know, and other major cities in America, there's a lot of rat problems. So you might enclose it with what's called hardware cloth, quarter inch will keep out mice too. It's like a steel mesh and you can build like three or four foot cubes and you could do like a multi bin. There's tons of designs, you know, online for these type of systems.

19:50
It's easier to compost in a multi-bin system. You can flip from one bin to the next and it'll last you longer. Whereas the tumbler that you're talking about, it's, I have tried to use those and it's really hard to get oxygen in there. So having the mesh, you know, in a wooden pallet is actually easier to do composting than an enclosed system. So then often with these tumblers, you end up with a mushy kind of mush in there.

20:17
you know, and it's harder to troubleshoot or you have to empty it. And so it's just, it's just almost easier to do composting and it do it yourself system. Yes. And the bin that we had, because we were going to do it, you know, we, we, we got a composting bin, a one that you rotate. And number one, that thing gets heavy when it's full. So it's really hard to rotate.

20:41
And number two, when you open it up, you might want to be wearing a mask because it does not work the way it's supposed to and it's super stinky. So yeah, don't, don't buy those rotating ones. If you don't have to, they don't work as well as other things that people have tried. Yeah. You know, a few things on that. The ones that rotate on the vertical access. So they're kind of taller when they're full.

21:06
they are actually harder to turn. So the ones that are on the horizontal axis are easier to turn. There's a lot of systems, the cheaper systems tend to be smaller and you do need sufficient mass to compost. I mean, they say you need like three feet by three feet by three feet in order to have enough of a pile that it can heat up. And by the way, the temperature when your pile heats up comes from the microbes consuming

21:36
the organic material you're feeding them and they're giving off energy in the form of heat as they consume the material. So that's where the heat comes from. It doesn't come from the sun. So you don't need a black bin to absorb the sun. You can compost during the winter. It can slow down a little bit more in the winter, but you can compost your round.

22:00
The heat comes from making those microbes happy. And one way you make the microbes happy is you, you don't, you have to have oxygen in there. So if you have a tumbler and. You know, in some urban areas where there are rat issues, you may want an enclosed system, but just know like you have to get air in there. You have to fluff it. You don't want it too wet. If you do have a strong odor.

22:25
that can indicate that the nose knows, as we say, people were training the nose knows. So if there is, composting does smell, there's an odor, but it shouldn't be a noxious odor that you think, oh, this is not good, then you got to troubleshoot, maybe add more leaves, more carbon, maybe it's too wet. Because when it's too wet, you fill up those spaces in your pile.

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what we often call pores, and then the pile goes anaerobic, meaning lack of oxygen. And when it goes anaerobic, then you produce methane and it creates more odors. So if you're having a strong odor, that's always a sign you need to just do some quick troubleshooting, fluff it, get some oxygen in there. Maybe it's too wet, put some wood chips in there to create some pore space. But you can compost in a tumbler.

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But don't get one that's too small. Sometimes they have these tumblers that are like split. So there's dual sides, which the reason they do that, it's a batch system. So while one side is composting actively and maybe you want to let it finish, because if you keep adding material, you're never going to get compost. You need to let it cure and finish and stabilize. So that allows you to start a new batch on the other side. But what happens is it makes them,

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each chamber gets smaller often. And so then you don't have that adequate mass to, to be able to enable the microbes to heat up the pile. And so just keep that in mind when you're buying a tumbler, it's bigger to get a, it's better to get a bigger tumbler for more mass. And, and, um, there are some systems that are insulated that can help through the, that really, um, deep winter, which maybe in Minnesota might, what it would have been interesting if you had tried some of those. So.

24:17
You know, not all tumblers are created equal and you can actually make your own tumblers. There's lots of good design on those too, but I just think they're just a little more challenging. Yes, we, we think so too. And we, we kind of love our open bins because they're made out of pellets, because that was the easiest way to do it. And the least expensive. And, uh, last winter, my husband took the tractor out and wanted to see how hot the inside of the

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compost pile was. So he took the tractor and he dug into the middle of the pile from the outside, flipped it, and it looked like smoke out there. It was so hot on the inside. So yes, composting does work in the wintertime, even at minus 20, which is good to know. Yeah. So tell me what, I know what we use compost for, but tell listeners why compost is important and how you can use it once it is compost. Yeah.

25:16
I like to call compost black gold because there are so many benefits to using it. So when we throw our food scraps in a landfill, landfills are actually anaerobic conditions without oxygen. So you're producing methane. Landfills are one of the top sources of methane, very potent greenhouse gas. So one of the top sources in our country of manmade methane emissions. And if they say a food waste was a country, it would be the fourth.

25:46
Just the food, yeah, food waste, if food waste was a country, it would be the fourth largest emitter of greenhouse gases. So how we handle our food scraps and wasted food has very direct connections to climate protection and climate disruption. So, but when we make compost, that black gold, it's a soil amendment. Now, compost is not soil, but it's something that you can amend your soil with.

26:15
helps sequester or store carbon in soil. So when you're adding compost to soil you're now instead of emitting methane you're now putting carbon into the soil and holding it there. Once it's in there it can improve soil structure, it improves the water holding capacity so if we're facing more drought conditions it can be the difference between your tomato plant surviving or a crop for a

26:45
because of its water holding capacity. And even during storm water conditions, because there's humic acids in compost, kind of humic acids act like a glue, like an aggregator of soil particles. So compost is organic matter and it holds soil together, which is one of the reasons why it increases water holding capacity in your soil. But it also, during storm events, it can prevent soil erosion.

27:15
that works much better when you've got plants in it too. So when plants go into the soil amended with compost, you have bigger root structure, you have bigger plants, more photosynthesis, so then you're getting those added compost benefits and you're holding the soil in place, so you're having less soil runoff and soil erosion. In addition, there has been many studies on the benefits of

27:42
compost to plants. Like a lot of people, if they're doing like fossil fuel based fertilizers, it's like, you know, it's more like steroids. You know, you're giving your plant, you know, food for a day. But if you're feeding the soil, then you're actually helping the plant survive over the long term. So studies show you're resisting plant disease when you're adding compost, you're improving growth hormones. So the ability to put us for seedlings to.

28:12
leaf growth and grow early on in their life. So there's all these nutrient benefits, plant growth benefits and carbon benefits to compost. Okay, thank you. Cause I just talked with my friend who's a master gardener on my other podcast, which is Mary and the master gardener. My friend Liz is the master gardener. We did a whole episode on compost that hasn't been released yet. And so...

28:39
Um, that one's being released probably Monday and then your yours and my episode will be released a week or so from now. So there's gonna be two compost episodes coming up. So if people want to know about compost, I have people covered. Um, so I, I'm going to say this, probably going to sound stupid. We knew all this stuff back in the day. We just didn't know the science behind it.

29:08
like in the 1800s, farmers did this stuff all the time, yes? Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, indigenous knowledge and ancestral knowledge. I mean, the Mayans were doing it thousands of years ago. I was in the lease on an island, Ambergeese Key, and the local guide said, oh, if you go down to the southern side of the island, you know, the mangrove groves are like, whatever they were, I don't remember exactly, but like 10 or 12 feet tall, because the Mayans would compost back.

29:38
that you know down there at that side of the island. So yeah, composting it, you know, has been around for a very long time. So the question for me is, how did we get so far away from all of this stuff?

29:55
Well, you know, there's probably many factors like with so many problems, but just coming back to the corporate concentration piece, I mean, in the U.S., there are just a handful of companies that control the $90 billion solid waste sector. I mean, think about that. There's like three companies that own more than 50% of the landfills. So they're a vested interest.

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that want to see us continue to consume and produce waste and throw them in their landfills so they can line their pockets. Whereas the alternative, you know, is for the public good is community, cities, and counties giving out bins, training their citizens how to do this in their backyard, educating them on the connections to healthy soils, which we need to survive, and climate protection and waste reduction.

30:53
frankly, controlling cost. I mean, if you have a truck coming every week to pick up your food scraps, which is the heaviest part of what we put out at the curb every week, then your local government is saving, you know, a boatload of money. The research I did and that guide I mentioned earlier on yes in my backyard showed that for every 10,000 households composting, local government could avoid up to $250,000.

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a year just in collecting and throwing away the food scraps. Because now once you set up a household for composting, for success, that's why the training and the giving away bins is so important, that household will continue to compost for as long as they have that bin. And then those savings, you know, compound for that local government over time. And so there are all these benefits and we just need to do a better job of

31:52
telling that story and providing that narrative and fighting against the vested powers that be that make money off of us continuing to throw away our stuff. Yes, I agree. And honestly, we have we have chickens. So a lot of our food scraps go to the chickens. And then whatever's left goes to the compost pile. And so I guess what I would tell people is if your city allows you to have three or four chickens,

32:22
get three or four chickens and get a composting bin or figure out a way to do it. And then you can give the chickens treats and you can have a compost pile and you'd be well on your way to some self-reliance. That's what I think. Absolutely. And there are cities like Austin, maybe Austin's the only one, but they, Austin, the city of Austin offers a $75 rebate if you on the cost of building a chicken coop using a design that they have or the brand that they use.

32:52
But cities like Austin are actually encouraging backyard chickens. And chickens can eat a lot of food scraps, as Mary can attest to. Uh-huh. And they love it. And they're very fun to watch when you throw the food scraps in the run. When we buy strawberries, which doesn't happen often because strawberries are expensive. And we grow strawberries, but the one that's season here, we give them the hulls. And

33:18
The chickens lose their minds when we take the bowl of hulls up to them. It's like watching them dance. It's so much fun. That's great. And yes. Then you, and then how many eggs do you get every week or day? Well, a chicken lays an egg a day. So we have, I think nine chickens right now. So we get, well, we got a couple freeloaders. They're older, so they're not laying. So we get about seven eggs a day. That's a lot. That's, that's great. Yep. There's, there's a lot of.

33:48
good to be found in doing things the old-fashioned way. And that's part of this nice start of the podcast because I was like, there's a lot of people out there doing things the old-fashioned way. I want to talk to them. Yeah. And you know, one thing that we promote is, you know, there's many ways to compost from backyard bins or worm bin in a classroom all the way to huge industrial sites. And food waste recovery is growing. I mean, curbside collection, but I think there's a disturbing trend.

34:17
to collect food scraps and take them to far away industrial sites. And you know, at some point we may need those. I think the jury is still out on that, but they shouldn't be privileged over local, hyper-local options. I do some work in Baltimore. I've done over many years and there's a great site. It's called Hidden Harvest Community Farm in the middle of Baltimore. And

34:44
There's such a model, I think of what you're talking about, local self-reliance, because they have, they're all volunteer cooperatives. So there's volunteers that run the farm cooperative and there's volunteers that run the chicken coop cooperative. And then there's volunteers that run the compost cooperative, but right as part of the farm, they have a part of the farm that's set aside for growing, uh, plants for, for dying cloth, for dying textiles. So Marigold, gold, indigo.

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can't remember all the plants that they have there. And then right next to that in the alley there, they have a warehouse where they're drying the plants and creating the dyes and teaching workshops and how to use the dyes to dye textiles. And so I just love that it, and then in the alley too, they have a refrigerator for rescuing food. So people can come and drop off food that they don't need or want on, you know, unopened kind of stuff.

35:38
And then other people can come and take what they need. So it's the community fridge. And it's such a lovely model of community, local self-reliance, like, you know, it's in an urban area, it's a neighborhood. They're engaging the community. They're teaching classes. Um, you see people of all ages working together, coming together to build this fabric of community. And so, you know, growing food together. Um.

36:06
learning how to compost together and manage a little community site. And on Saturdays they have a drop off. So people from the neighborhood can drop off their food scraps. I think it's like 10 to 12 every Saturday. And I've been there a number of times and there's families coming in with their kids and then they come to the garden and they could get stuff at the farm. So it's just, it's just so lovely to see these things percolating and growing across the country. That is super cool. I.

36:34
I love it when communities come together to help each other out. I live in LaSore, Minnesota, and technically I don't live in LaSore County. I live in Sidley County because we're right on the border. But my mailing address is LaSore. And we have a really thriving farmers market in LaSore. And we grow a farm to market garden, so we sell at the farmers market. And there is a dollar store or a dollar general or something in town here.

37:03
And our town is like 6,000 people. And it's really interesting to me that we have this robust, thriving farmers market. It's just been growing and growing for the last three years. And people come, I mean, they walk from their homes in town to the farmers market. They don't even drive. And so they're not driving, which means they're not emitting greenhouse gases, which is good. And honestly, the dollar stores don't have.

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produce really. They have stuff that's canned like you said. So our community is really stepping up and providing homegrown healthy produce for our town. And my husband and I are part of that because we grow the garden and we sell there from our stuff. And I feel like every little town that does something like my town is doing or like what you were just talking about.

38:02
It's one little tiny step, but if there's a lot of tiny steps, it becomes a week. Yeah. And you know, that's where a lot of the work we do is kind of structural work for on policies and, um, passing state laws. I mean, on the, I mentioned the community broadband work we did. Well, you know, in, um, there was, there were cities like Chattanooga that were early cities that developed their own.

38:31
municipal owned broadband and they could offer that service for cheaper prices at faster speeds to more of their citizens or residents. So it was an equity issue in terms of access. And then the big companies, telecom companies tried to pass statewide laws to prevent cities from owning their own municipal broadband networks because they didn't want to give up that market.

39:00
That's where the structural, like exercise, you know, we need to lead by example and do the things we're talking about. But it's also, I think, really important to exercise your civic muscle, your citizen muscle, and advocate for good policies. And fight, you know, they have so much money for lobbyists and to pass bad laws and prevent us from doing the things we need to be doing to promote.

39:27
you know, the sharing economy, reduce waste or save money or be more self-reliant or, you know, the homegrown economy. And so we have to really fight that power structure and we have to protect. And, you know, my, one of our co-founders, David Morris coined this term because we're a democracy, like we make the rules as a democracy and the rules make us so, you know, it's very important being engaged in the rulemaking in your community.

39:54
One thing I want to go back to that you said, what you talked about the table your husband made for you and durability, and then when you bought the coffee table from Amazon, it fell apart in two months, but durability and just moving towards more reusable products is really easy. And it can save a ton of money, not only for our local governments, but also individuals, as families. If we carry a water bottle and fill it up, we're blessed to have clean water in this country.

40:23
You're not buying bottled water, that's a ton of money. If you get old towels and you rip them up as rags and you're not buying paper towels or you use cloth napkins and you're not buying paper napkins, you're saving money, et cetera. So there's just so many ways that we can save money through reuse and I think some of the policies are catching up at the local level. There's now, I think it's, forget the...

40:52
some of the towns that have passed bills that if you're using single, you know, that single use like coffee cups, you can get a discount for usables, but you pay a fee for the single use. Same with like a lot of shopping bags. I don't know in Minnesota where there is, but it's big in Maryland, in my area, where in the county, Montgomery County, for instance, you pay a five and DC to you pay like a five cent fee for your plastic shopping bags.

41:22
everywhere you go, people are using, we use bags just to avoid that five cent fee. So it's, it's not a lot of money. It's not a big, um, incentive, but it's enough of a policy shift, setting the infrastructure that we can shift people to different behaviors. And I think that's just really important. Yes. And on that note, it takes a month to build a habit. I've been told. And.

41:48
We do shop at Sam's like once every couple of months because we need to stock up. This is how it works in my house. And we got the cooler bags for milk and butter and things. And we always remember to take the cooler bags because if we don't, then stuff gets warm and it might spoil and it's not good. Took us two months to remember to bring the cooler bags because, you know, it was new back when we started doing it. But...

42:16
Now there's always a cooler bag, at least one in every vehicle that we own so that if we do stop somewhere and get milk, the milk goes into the cooler bag. That's a reusable system. And really a lot of the stuff that we do in our daily life is habit. So it only takes a month to build a habit, whether it's bad or good. So if the listeners think that they can't change how they do things in their lives,

42:46
They can. It may take a month, but you can change to a better way of doing things.

42:54
That's right. And we're trying to, we've been doing work in the schools because there's nothing like your young kid coming home and saying, we're going to start doing it this way. So kids have a lot of agency and a lot of, um, and, uh, can get, you know, it was kids, they say has got us all to wear seat belts. They'd be like, your seatbelt's not on, you know, so, um, holding their parents accountable. Um, it can work both ways. I know, but, um, but. Yeah. Getting.

43:23
giving kids the tools that they need to improve their own world. I just find they're just fierce advocate advocates for the change we need to be making. And it's a good thing they are because if they weren't, they probably won't have a world to to be doing better things in. And I say that not to be a downer, but because I believe it's true. My son and I were talking, I don't know, last year about this time about something.

43:53
And he's a young adult. I mean, he's 22 now. And I said something about the future, like 50 years from now. And he completely deadpan looked at me and said, it doesn't matter, I'm gonna be dead by then anyway. He's 22. And I said, what do you mean? And he said, the world is gonna blow up long before then. And he was not being silly. He was completely serious.

44:19
He said, mom, he said, all the damage has already been done. Do you really think we can fix it? And I just, I was so sad in that moment. I was like, this is my kid saying this to me, you know? And I said, I think that if we keep doing what we're doing and other people keep doing the kind of things that we're doing, yes, I think that the world can be saved. Do I know for sure that that's true? No.

44:49
So yeah, kids are definitely a good gauge of what we can do to make things better and they're sponges and they soak up everything. So if they get fixated on a good thing, encourage it. Yeah, and you know, I'm not a behavior expert, but my understanding is some of the research but from behavior experts indicate that

45:16
you have to give youth, all of us really, hope. Because once you give up hope, you can descend into despair. And once you do that, you begin to deny the science. So in the case of climate, we don't want people giving up hope and then beginning to deny the science on climate disruption. And so that's one of the reasons I love to work with youth is and...

45:40
particularly with, with, with food waste, because you can reduce it, you can rescue it. Kids are advocating for shared tables and fridges in their schools and composting, you know, in terms of the field in which I'm working, and I'm sure there's so many others that kids can be involved, but we're giving them something that they can work on and make a difference on gives them hope and gives them something to work on and provide some action and activity. And it's just so important right now.

46:08
And we can't let any of us give up hope. And the other thing I'll just say when it comes to climate is that if we're facing rising temperatures, there's a huge difference between four degrees of global temperature rise on average and eight degrees. So there's a lot of momentum towards global temperatures increasing and we have to still do everything we can to slow that down.

46:36
because the planet's warming, but we don't want it to be the catastrophic warming. So, and like I said before, food waste is a part in the pond, a low-hanging fruit, because along from farm to table and back into the ground, there's so many places along that route to avoid the climate implications of how we consume and use our food and discard it.

47:06
Yep, exactly. So I feel like I'm just saying, yep, yep, yep, a lot. And it's because I completely agree with everything you're saying. Not everyone does, and I guess that's okay. I mean, I don't think it's okay. I think that everybody should be trying to improve their world. But I'm trying really hard to get people to wake up a little bit. And that's part of the reason I do the podcast is because people need to know

47:36
is out there that they can do to change their little part of the world. Because if they change their little part of the world, it changes all kinds of things in the bigger scope. That's right. And you know, how we talk about things doesn't make a difference. I mean, just to give you an example, you know, when you talk about organic farming or regenerative agriculture, a lot of rural areas of farmers, you just cut off discussion for whatever reason. I think it's ridiculous. But

48:05
If we're talking about healthy soils, like everybody wants healthy soils, for some reason is just not as loaded. I have no term. So figuring out how to tell the story in a way that makes those connections and crosses the aisle or crosses the bridge and becomes nonpartisan, I think is just going to be increasingly important in our country. Yeah. Healthy soil, clean air, and clean water are the really important things.

48:34
And when you say it in those words, people are like, well, yes, of course I want those things. But then you get into all the layers of how we achieve that. And I think a big part of it is that people get overwhelmed. They, they don't, they can't take in all the information, but they understand healthy soil, clean water, and clean air. So I guess it's just a matter of, of trying to break it down enough.

49:04
little pieces. My friend used to say how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time? And so maybe what you're doing or what I'm doing, what a lot of the people I've talked to on the podcast are doing is that one bite at a time part. Yeah, yeah one step at a time baby steps. I mean we recommend that whether you're an individual or city like here's a whole menu of options you could be doing and you know if you don't have a

49:32
you know, millions of dollars to implement a program or a huge site, whatever you need, don't worry. You can do these other things. Just, you know, do something. Oh, yeah. And we like to emphasize the cost savings. So whether it's to the individual, like on the reuse examples I was giving or, um, for city, like doing these things actually really saves money and taxpayer money in the long run. I mean, if we're building more landfills and more incinerators to

50:00
you know, because we continue to live in this throwaway society, that's, that's expensive. I mean, waste incinerators are like, and Minnesota has its fair share of those, you know, is one of, is the most expensive way to handle our waste. You know, you need bonds on, on Wall Street issued, and then you got to pay back those bonds, you know, over a 30 year period. And landfills are expensive too. And so the main thing,

50:28
And that comes back to us as taxpayers. So talking about the job creation, saving money is always gonna be important. And on the jobs, I'll just say we've done tons of research over many years. So for like 10,000 tons flowing to a landfill, maybe one job, but if you take that 10,000 tons and you send it to a recycling facility, just for sorting the materials,

50:58
just so it's ready to go to remanufacturing plants. That's 10 times the number of jobs. And once you make new products from the old, like you have a reused paper mill, that's gonna be like a hundred times the jobs per ton than even sorting, let alone landfilling. And composting is the same way. I mean, if you have a distributed kind of more hub and spoke,

51:28
infrastructure for composting like at schools or farms or smaller sites, you're going to create more jobs per ton because you've got it distributed now or diverse or decentralized rather than one industrial site. So there's many ways I think to make the case and reach people where they are. I think it was in Malcolm Gladwell's book, The Tipping Point, where he talks about the things that are needed for things to tip on and

51:57
catch on like wildfire. And he says, we need the early adopters. I mean, he didn't come up with this, of course, the notion of early adopters and the majority has been around for a long time, but, um, the early adopters, you know, willing to take risk, whereas the majority early majority, late majority, at very risk, adverse has to be proven first cost effective first. And then, so you need the early adopters, but you need the translators who translate the experience, tell the story. Right.

52:26
of the early adopters and their success to the early majority so that things can tip and catch on. And so all of these, you know, you need the models. Some people won't do it unless it's proven. So you got to prove it. You got to tell the story in a compelling way. You got to get things to tip. You need the mavens to tell the story. So you're a maven, Mary. All right. You're telling the story. You're getting it out there, getting things to tip. Go girl.

52:54
I'm not telling the story. I'm giving people a place to tell the stories. Yes. The Tipping Point is a fabulous book. Anybody who loves to read, read it. I read it years ago. I loved it. It was so interesting to me how that works. So yeah. And the point I was gonna make, I almost forgot, was that one of the things he said for things to tip, it's gotta have this thread that connects to a lot of issues that people care about. So if your issue is climate,

53:22
you sell on that. If your issue is jobs or economic development, you sell on that. If you're like in Baltimore, I mentioned earlier, a lot of the abandoned buildings or row houses that

53:36
you know, have been taken down, they become places and drug dealers to hang out and rats. And so, you know, if you're now creating green spaces and gardens that have compost as an accessory activity, then you're, you're, you know, the people in that community are like, oh, you're doing youth engagement. You're, you know, I'm in a food insecure neighborhood. Now you're producing food. So that's why they are interested in composting food scraps. You know, if you just gave them a bin and it went to some industrial facility far away, they wouldn't be, you know, so inspired to participate.

54:06
You need to make these connections in all the areas in which different people care about in order for things to tip. Yes, and everyone needs to eat. So yes, so food is the thing. And good food, healthy food is the thing that we all want. And so I'm going somewhere with this. If we teach people how to be invested in

54:34
how their food is grown and where it comes from. That's the tipping point, I think. Yeah, and affordable food. And that's why the dollar stores are so popular, even though there's so, you know, it's because it's viewed as, this is what I can afford. Yes. And the other thing that's really frustrating with all of this is that money is the underlying thing for everybody. And

55:04
I hate that. And I understand there are buy nothing sites, there are sharing sites, there are thrift stores where things that are really expensive, you might be able to find them for less, blah, blah, blah. There are ways to not spend so much on money. But money is the root of all evil, as we all know, and hurt our entire lives. And so when we talk about the dollar stores,

55:31
I have read so many things about people saying that the only place they can get to get food is a dollar store in their city because they have to take public transport or they just don't have the resources to be able to go somewhere else. And I really wish, and again, this sounds really idealistic and I hate to sound like Pollyanna but I'm going to do it anyway. I wish that every

56:00
Small town would have a big community garden that is central to the whole town so that people could go and grow their own. I wish that if it's a big humongous city like New York City that they would do that for the boroughs, I guess is what it's called, where there's different little communities in a big city. Because then maybe dollar stores would be

56:30
I wish that that would be a thing.

56:34
Yeah, I'll just say another word about dollar stores and it's not the initiative that I focus on, but they are data showing, our data and others, that they're actually the cause of decline and poverty in the areas in which they go in. So they're creating and exasperating food deserts.

57:00
They create fewer jobs and pay lower wages than independent grocery stores. They have very poor labor practices. They extract wealth from the community. You know, you're just lining, as I said before, the pockets of just a handful of companies. And they provide really poor value to customers. They are targeting black and brown neighborhoods.

57:29
There's just so many problems with the proliferation of dollar stores at this point. So, yeah, I mean, I could just go on and on about them, but I know we're running out of time at this point. Yeah. And I could talk to you all day. This has been fantastic. So really what it all comes down to is compost is wonderful, which is what we were supposed to be talking about in the first place. And if you have...

57:58
If you have a small yard, you can get like three or four chickens if your city allows you to. You can have some kind of compost bin and you can put some of your food waste into the compost bin and chickens love strawberry hulls. They love apple peels. They love all kinds of things. So whatever you're not going to throw in the compost bin can get to your chickens and you'd have your own little yard full of things that are good for you.

58:25
And also another option for small yards is worm composting, vermicomposting. So, you know, keep that in mind people. Yep. There's all kinds of things. And if you're curious, go look up composting on YouTube or the internet or wherever, because you will find all kinds of ideas to do composting. There you go. There's a lot of misinformation on the internet, so do check out our website. Um, yes, yes, of course. Thanks to some good. Yeah. But, um,

58:53
Yeah, not all compost is created equal. So. Yep. All right, Brenda, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. Oh, pleasure to be here. Take care. Have a great day.