Happy start of Earth Month! Dan was super awesome and put together this info graphic to show off the beautiful cover illustrated by talented artists, Rong and Vinh. Seriously, look how LOVELY:
I’m so excited to be able to hold a physical copy in my hands in just a few months, and can’t wait until you all can see what we created together.
I was inspired to start composting because of a new years resolution I made at the beginning of 2019. I had read a headline of an article about a girl, maybe about 11 or 12, who fit all her trash in a single year in a mason jar. I remember thinking to myself, “That’s impossible,” and sort of blowing it off, but for some reason the topic of the headline stuck with me throughout the day– it offended me somehow, bruised my ego as someone who considered themselves pretty eco-conscious. I was arrogant enough then to think, if I can’t do it then how can someone else? But as I thought more about the concept, it dawned on me that I was already considering it impossible without having ever tried.
I figured then that while I likely couldn’t fit everything in a mason jar right away, I could probably fit all my trash in one bin over the course of a year. And thus, the new years resolution: “Fit all my waste in one trash bin” was born.
This caused me to do a waste audit and investigate what I was throwing away. I found very quickly that about 75-85% of what I was throwing out weekly was food waste (banana peels, onion rinds, leftovers that gone bad, etc.). And so I knew if I was going to be honest about this resolution, I was going to have to learn to compost. I signed up for Solana Center’s Master Composter program quickly after that.
And the rest is history. =)
To say I loved learning and teaching others how to compost feels like an understatement. There’s something familiar and comforting about returning the resources the world offers you back to the land to nourish it for future generations. Like our very own return to roots, as our predecessors did similarly by burying their own waste back into the soil. A connection to our past for a better, healthier future. The compost process is methodical, meditative, patient– it’s observing nature and mimicking her in a way that shows our gratitude to where food comes from, by giving organics new life, right beneath our feet.
Organics, like food waste, that end up in a landfill are generally wrapped in plastic trash bags, likely never to touch earth in our lifetime, our kids’ lifetime, or our great-great-great-great-grandkids’ lifetimes either. It’s nuts to think that every single piece of plastic ever made since it was invented, is still here with us. You might hear that plastic can decompose in as little as 20 years now with some new technologies, but even those plastics never truly go away, they just get smaller and smaller and become microplastics, to be eaten by marine life and leading to malnutrition, fertility reduction, and mortality.
This is all to say– this is how I got started composting, from a completely different place (assuaging my ego), and honestly it doesn’t really matter why you decide to start composting. What matters is, you start.
Maybe next new years resolution is fitting everything in a mason jar, eh? Til next time.
Melody
Melody Sumaoang Plan 