My composting journey started many years ago . . . and it finally “started” a month ago.

Growing up my next door neighbor, John, had his own garden and maintained his own compost. At the time, I didn’t really understand much about it. He had a large horizontal, cylindrical tub that he would add food and yard scraps to, turn every so often, and in time, I understood, he would be able to use it on his garden to help his vegetables grow. Beyond that, I didn’t know how it worked. But I do remember it smelling very stinky at times during the hottest days of summer. 

Years later, as I started to learn more about sustainability, I learned that compost was AMAZING for soil, that it would add tons of nutrients to your plants, and it was a way to reduce food waste. In 2012, When I was on an immersion trip to Immokalee, Florida, our hosts had a small bin on their countertop for food scraps. This seemed like such a revolutionary concept to me. My family recycled and aimed not to waste food, but we never went further than that.

I think that this is around the time I latched on to the idea that I should start my own compost one day.

Getting Closer to Getting Started

Fast forward to my wedding registry. I added a tabletop compost can to our list (because might as well make it cute) and then once we moved into our house I jumped into trying to compost! 

But, the early years of my sustainability journey had one very big flaw.

I didn’t research anything. 

When I started out, a lot of sustainability options were suggested to me by a friend I trusted. But then as I looked online, I would take the first suggestion I saw and run with it. I never took the time to understand the concept of sustainability on a slightly deeper level. I never questioned whether this made the most sense for my life. I was impulsive to purchase the items that I thought I “needed” to make myself a more eco-friendly person. And I tried to start new processes without taking even 5 minutes to figure out the logistics. 

My early sustainability journey was well-intentioned, but unfortunately it was sustainability influenced by consumerism. 

Remember my counter-top food scrap container? It was easy to start adding food scraps to it. But I didn’t have a plan beyond that. I never researched how to start composting at home. I didn’t have any materials. Truthfully, I am not sure what I was thinking. All that happened is the scrap container got filled, then sat under our sink until the food rotted, black ick leaked out, and then I put it away until I had a plan for the food scraps. 

And I didn’t try composting for 5 more years. 

Fortunately, I have learned a lot about sustainability since then, and I approach the process much differently. 

So, how did I start composting finally? 

Despite my previously, less than stellar attempt at composting, the interest in starting a compost never left me. In the past year or so I have started taking my sustainability journey more seriously again. I was a bit lackluster in the interim while I maneuvered being newly married, owning my home for the first time and living on my own (with my husband obviously), having our first child, working on my career, and just discovering A LOT about myself. 

A few months ago I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, Clotheshorse (I have talked about them here on the blog before), and in an episode the host was talking about shopping for a new compost bin. About the same time, I talked to my friend, Hilary, who gardens regularly and loves sustainability as much as I do. She who shared that she participates in a local composting program with Cleveland-Based Small Business, Rust Belt Riders.

These two interactions finally pushed me to take the time (it seriously took 10 minutes) to do some research and figure out how to make composting a reality at my home.

My Research Journey 

Option A: Rust Belt Riders

Borrowing from their website (because I can’t say it better than they do), “Since 2014, Rust Belt Riders has been working with people and organizations across Northeast Ohio to provide them with a clean and timely alternative to landfills for their food scraps.” 

“We [Rust Belt Riders] are a worker-owned cooperative dedicated to climate resilience, food autonomy, and workplace democracy. Our mission is to “Feed People, Not Landfills.”

The Problem With Landfills

Awhile ago I contributed to a post on another blog, that talked about landfills and composting. By biggest learning moment from that collaboration is that landfills are essentially a scam. I don’t doubt that landfills initially began with good intentions, and the belief that they were solving an actual problem. But, there was not enough foresight into landfills as a solution to our waste (or, that foresight was ignored) and now landfills result in two huge issues: 1) waste being dumped in areas taking away land and contaminating resources for wildlife and for humans who live in those areas; 2) landfills prevent even the most organic of materials from actually decomposing, defeating the whole purpose. 

Without doing a deep dive, the take away is that landfills are not good and we need to be diverting as much waste from them as possible. And yes, individual contributions matter just as much as corporate ones. 

I was already familiar with Rust Belt Riders. As I mentioned earlier, they are Cleveland-based, located not far from where I live, and I have been using their soil, Tilth Soil, for my plants. So, I was already sold on their mission. 

Rust Belt Riders Composting Program

For a monthly fee, you collect your food scraps, and then you can either drop it off at one of their drop off locations, or you can schedule a pick-up. They utilize an app where you can track how much you have donated, check if a particular food item can be included in the compost, and you also get a discount on purchasing their soil. 

My initial reluctance with joining their program stemmed from two parts: 1) although the monthly fee was small, I hadn’t wrapped my head around paying a fee to donate my food scraps to them to use in their soil, when I could do it for free at home, 2) I had always imagined doing compost at home and then using it in my own garden. 

So, I put the pause on Rust Belt Riders, so that I could do more research on Option B. 

Option B: Home Composting 

I already knew a little bit about composting, from information gathered over the years. I knew that I did not want an expensive machine, I knew that I did not want to use worm-based composting. (I know, worms are essential to our ecosystem, and I applaud them for that. Unfortunately, I have a phobia that started in early childhood that I have never been able to get past, so this just would not be an option). I also knew that I would want it to be a more DIY situation – I didn’t need it to be glamorous. 

But, as I researched, I realized that it was a bigger undertaking than I realized. Getting past different approaches, I realized that I would need to do a lot of research to determine what kind of food scraps would be appropriate to include. I also needed to learn a little bit about the science behind the process, and this would definitely involve a learning curve. Nodding to my earlier comment about landfills, if you have the wrong ratio of materials, it can prevent the materials from breaking down in the way that you need to make successful compost. You also need to be rotating the compost and, most threads that I saw said that it could take several weeks or even months before it was ready. 

I don’t consider any of these factors as negatives. But, I work full time, I am about to have two children, and I am balancing running a household with my own hobbies and interests, while trying to improve my sustainability journey (on top of other life improvements). My immediate emotion from my research was OVERWHELM. 

I quickly realized that doing the entire composting process myself was not something that I was ready to commit to at this time. And, the anxiety of thinking about it just affirmed that. While there are so many different ways we can be more eco-friendly, if it causes this type of reaction in you then it is not for you, and there is no shame in that. Being more sustainable should challenge you as a person, but it should not make you miserable. 

The Next Step of My Composting Journey

So, with that information, I signed up with Rust Belt Riders! 

If it isn’t already obvious, I want to walk through why this decision ended up being the best choice for me: 

1. It allows me to participate in composting and decreasing food waste, without the stress and time of trying to do the process myself; 
2. It requires less effort, and is easier to get my family on board; 
3. I am paying for a service to buy back time in my life, and it aligns with a mission that I fully support; 
4. I didn’t need to buy anything (other than the membership) to get started. I could use buckets that I already have at home and start collecting food scraps immediately; 
5. I don’t have to do the research. Thanks to the app, I can easily figure out if a food can be included in less than a minute, and I don’t have to try to memorize every item either. 

Composting or Not? What is Your Journey? 

If you are just starting your composting journey, or have only considered one, I would encourage you to take some time (as you saw from my experience, it does not have to be hours of research) to see what types of composting options are accessible in your area, and what would align the best with your current life goals. 

I do encourage you to try to find ways to donate food scraps, whether that is through a composting program, a DIY at-home compost, or giving them to a friend who composts, so that we can keep decreasing the amount of waste that ends up in landfills. 

Yes, the environment is a mess, on many levels, but there is still a lot that we can do, in small actions, that can impact the overall condition. Let’s try to make that change!