[00:00:10] Speaker A: Hello, and welcome to Uptown Chats, a podcast where we share stories about environmental justice by and for everyday people. I'm your co host, Jaren, and I'm.
[00:00:21] Speaker B: Your other co host, Lonnie. And we both work at we act for environmental justice.
[00:00:24] Speaker A: Hey, Lonnie, what's our mission?
[00:00:26] Speaker B: Glad you asked. Our mission is to build healthy communities by ensuring that people of color and or low income residents participate meaningfully in the creation of sound and fair environmental health and protection policies and practices.
[00:00:38] Speaker A: And we are so excited to have you on our first real episode of the podcast.
[00:00:44] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:00:44] Speaker A: Isn't that right, Lonnie?
[00:00:45] Speaker B: Yeah, it's exciting. New year, new podcast, new us.
[00:00:48] Speaker C: New me.
[00:00:49] Speaker B: Same us.
[00:00:49] Speaker A: Same us.
[00:00:49] Speaker B: Same us. Well, we haven't changed.
[00:00:51] Speaker A: Yes, we're the same. But we are bringing a new year. We're a little over halfway through January already. Years going by quickly. How is the year treating you so far, Lonnie?
[00:01:03] Speaker B: My year is treating me pretty good so far.
I'm off to a good start. Let's just say that waiting for it all to crash that burn, but I'm off to a good start.
[00:01:13] Speaker A: Well, way to jinx yourself already. We need the positive energy. I need the positive energy. Okay, sure. You'll be realistic, and I'll be the optimistic one, and we'll balance each other out.
[00:01:23] Speaker B: There you go. I'll be the pessimist and you be the.
[00:01:26] Speaker A: Yes, yes. Got a good balance going on here. I mean, one thing that's been great about this year so far is we found our new favorite movie, puss and boots, the last wish. Lonnie and I both saw it in theaters together three times.
[00:01:41] Speaker B: Yeah, three separate occasions. And we brought other people with us each time. That's how good the movie was. That we felt the need to see it in theaters three different times.
[00:01:50] Speaker A: Yes, it's great. I laughed, I cried.
I laughed some more. I cried some more. Some good action scenes. All the things I felt. So many mixes of emotions all at different times. And it's such a great story. Everyone should see it. We're not sponsored by the movie, but again, we wish we were. In other news, one thing that's exciting for me this year that I got to see as soon as I got home after visiting my family for the holidays was a nice orange new composting bin on the corner of my street. I was lugging my suitcase back to my apartment down the street from the subway, and I saw it sitting down in the corner, and I was like, what is this orange bin? And I walked over and it said compost on it, and I didn't hear anything about it. And no news, no nothing leading up to it.
But then a couple weeks later, one of our amazing staff members, Bailey, shared this article with us about these compost bins. And, lon, you heard about this too, right? What's the deal?
What is the deal with all these compost bins?
[00:02:52] Speaker B: Yes, sir. I also kind of stumbled upon them randomly and didn't know what was going on. And I also felt special and thought it was just going to be on that block that I saw it on near my house. And I was just like, oh, this is great. This is here for me now. But then we got that article, and the title of that article says, smart compost bins, 45 and all, have arrived in upper Manhattan. So Uptown has gotten quite a few of these smart compost bins. They're bright orange and they're smart compost bins. So there's an app, the app is called NYC Compost, and it can be downloaded Android and iOS. And you basically use that to open these bins to put your compost in. And they're all over. Once I've seen the first one, I keep seeing them all over uptown now. And so I think on my commute from my home to my work, I think that I passed, like, three of them.
[00:03:47] Speaker A: Yeah. So needless to say, we are not special. It's not just on our blocks. They didn't single us out individually and give us our own dedicated compost bins as much as we originally thought that, apparently, and as cool as that would have been, they are all over uptown, which is great, means composting is coming to uptown. And believe it or not, that was not the inspiration for this episode. What inspired us to want to talk about composting was for me thinking about the holidays.
Besides coming back to my apartment in New York City to find a nice new orange compost bin on my street corner, I also came back to a fridge full of mostly expired food because I'm an irresponsible adult and I did not eat all of it before I went home for the holidays and or did not check the expiration dates before I left. So there was a decent amount of expired food. And so, fortunately, I do have a compost bin in my apartment. And so instead of just throwing it in the trash to go in the landfill, I threw it into my compost bin. And then I was able to take it to compost. But what's your experience with composting, Lonnie? Have you compost before.
[00:04:57] Speaker B: I am not a composter, and the only reason why I haven't been a composter is because it was never seen convenient for me to do that. Also grew up in the midwest and in Ohio where you didn't learn anything about composting. I don't think I really understood what composting was fully until maybe like college, to be honest. When I moved here and there were more people who were more, a little more conscious about it. But with these new orange bins, though, they got me inspired to actually, since I passed three of them on my way to actually start this composting journey in my own home. But I think my earliest member memory of composting had to be sometime in elementary school. My grandmother had a neighbor who had food scraps somewhere on their property, and I didn't really quite understand what composting was at the time, but I can remember that visual and the smell that came from that particular outdoor kind of bin that they had. What about you?
[00:05:52] Speaker A: I'm sure at that time that was probably a really interesting thing to see because I don't remember ever seeing composting as a kid. I don't think I was ever introduced to it until I was an adult.
[00:06:02] Speaker B: Yes, as a child, I think that was the only memory that I actually have. But again, not knowing what it was or composting or what was being used for, I just know that they were putting apple cores and peels into this large container that was outdoors.
[00:06:19] Speaker A: Yeah. And did you know of the term compost at the time? Had you ever heard the word compost?
[00:06:24] Speaker B: No, I don't think I actually heard the word compost until, like, late high school, early college.
[00:06:30] Speaker A: Yeah. I don't think I even heard the word food waste. I mean, I guess I heard of waste or trash, but never the words food waste together, because I feel like the jump from food waste to compost is very. It happens quickly.
[00:06:41] Speaker B: You're right. Yeah, same here.
Those kind of words never were put together.
It was never food waste. It was just trash. It was all garbage to me. And one of the kind of things that, one of the main issues is that food waste goes into landfills and incinerators outside of the city to other communities. And those landfills and incinerators are often located in low income communities and communities of color. So this is kind of how this is an environmental justice issue. It's because all of that waste that we're creating here in the city goes somewhere else. And so the less waste that we create here in the city, the less it goes into these landfills and incinerators. And when there's no waste would go into landfills and incinerators, you can shut those facilities down and close those facilities.
[00:07:32] Speaker A: And that's the goal. And, I mean, one more thing, too, on that is when you think about things going places, things being transported, that requires, generally, vehicles and trucks to do that. So you can think about also communities that have to have all this waste transported out, also have all these big trucks that are probably dumping some air pollution into those communities. So if we are having a lot of food waste that's being trucked out of northern Manhattan, that could be composted instead, that's adding to our burden of air pollution that doesn't need to be there. We could just take that food waste, that compost and put it right back into the soil.
[00:08:11] Speaker B: Absolutely. And, yeah, I think we often forget about we have to actually transport it. And that's usually used with trucks. And we know that trucks, all the diesel and the emission from transportation sector. And then once the actual food waste gets to the landfill, it contributes to greener house gases and methane emissions. Once it's there.
[00:08:31] Speaker A: Boo.
[00:08:32] Speaker B: Yeah, we don't like that. We don't like those things. And organic waste in New York City basically makes up 34% of New York City's entire waste. So organic waste remains, like, the largest and still growing category of waste.
[00:08:46] Speaker A: Speaking of which, this is always a common misunderstanding of composting. And something I learned recently when it came to sorting my own compost is people often complain about it smelling bad.
And part of the reason for that, that I learned recently, is it's all about that balance of brown and green materials, right? And for most of us, like me, I'm just dumping all of my sweet potato cuttings, my vegetable cuttings, and banana peels, orange peels, eggshells, all that stuff. That's all the green materials, right? That's all the more wet stuff, more food stuff. But there's this whole other category of the brown materials that balances all that out, right?
The brown materials are things like wood chips and dry leaves or sawdusts and stuff like that.
Both of those things are needed to create, I think, a well balanced soil and compost. And often for us, when we're bringing our food scraps, it's mostly the green stuff. And so if you're at home and you got a bin, it's a little stinky, a little smelly, because you got all your greens, all your green food waste, then consider throwing in some brown materials, too. Some shredded paper, maybe some sawdust if you've got that. Got a little wood shop in your backyard or some dried leaves, stuff like that. Help balance out that mixture and it might not be so stinky.
[00:10:13] Speaker B: That's good tip. So when I start my journey on composting, I will make sure I have my greens and my browns.
[00:10:20] Speaker A: With that, we've got a great interview in store for you with a amazing community member of ours, Nando Rodriguez, who is the environmental coordinator at the Brotherhood sister soul. And you'll hear a little bit more about the work that he does in organizing youth and also in making sure that composting is an important thing that's happening uptown and in the city. We'll be back after the interview with a very special guest from our WeAg staff, Annie Carforro, who has done a lot of work around composting and zero waste in the city and also has visited brotherhood sister soul with us. So stay tuned and we will be back soon.
I guess we'll just start off with doing introductions. So if you want to go ahead and introduce yourself and your organization.
[00:11:16] Speaker C: My name is Nando Rodriguez. I'm the environmental coordinator for the Brotherhood and sister soul nonprofit organization in West Harlem.
[00:11:24] Speaker A: And for folks who are not as familiar with composting and the process and don't really know what composting is, could you give a little bit of a background, like what is composting?
Why do we do it? What value does it add and what benefit does it bring to a community specifically?
[00:11:41] Speaker C: Yeah, a lot of people will have different explanation of composting, but it's all the same. But there's just different ways of explaining it. I like to say that composting is a human creation to a natural process.
So decomposition is what happens naturally, and it's the same thing what happens in the composting bins. But composting is then the human interaction of helping decomposition happen. That would be my explanation of it.
[00:12:16] Speaker A: So that's a really amazing explanation. I've never heard it explained that way. I love that. Why do we do it? And what benefits does it offer a community? What's the value in it?
[00:12:27] Speaker C: Yeah. So I think the people who are currently separating their food scraps from their regular garbage and actually taking it to a composting or a drop off bin or actually taking to a community garden to compost, I think there is an environmental conscious in their heart or their spirit that's telling them this is important, this is valuable. This is the little that you can do to give back to our environmental space or nature.
And I think people are composting because of that, because they know that it's important in that way, but that they want to give back to the environment. The importance of composting goes really wide range. So there are many different good reasons for composting.
For me, I think a funny way that probably you haven't here heard from before, or maybe you have, is to create a beautiful environment for our insects, for our microorganisms and macroorganisms that we don't really think about. Composting is the utopia for them. And how you compost, in the different ways you compost, you're creating an environment of freedom, that all they do is eat, have babies, exercise, sweat, drink water, and it's like a beautiful resort for them. So in a weird sort of way, that is very important for our insects and our microorganism, microorganisms to continue to thrive and grow. And composting is important because of that. That's one funny, beautiful reason that I like to say, why is composting important? But I can get into the details later.
[00:14:25] Speaker A: Yeah, we all deserve that spot treatment, including the insects. Everyone gets that spa treatment.
[00:14:29] Speaker B: Such a poetic way to put it, too. I had this vision of insects and microbes having their own life and spa and massages and relaxing.
[00:14:40] Speaker C: That's a good way to put that.
[00:14:41] Speaker A: I picture myself as a worm just getting in there and just getting a little steam treatment.
[00:14:50] Speaker C: When I tell the kids that this story of why composting systems, what are we doing in these systems? And I tell them that it's like a vision of a beautiful movie of bugs life type of thing. And being in that, some ways, I'd be like, sometimes I'm jealous of that. Imagine yourself as one of those insects. Like, which one do you want to be? And just imagine yourself on this type of utopia.
[00:15:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:15:16] Speaker B: For those who may not know bugs, life is a movie. Deep cut. Go see it. If you haven't seen it, find it.
[00:15:22] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. I love that movie.
[00:15:24] Speaker A: There's a generation of kids out there who have never seen Buck's life, and we're on a campaign to change that now. It's tragic.
[00:15:30] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:15:30] Speaker C: Go watch it.
[00:15:31] Speaker B: You have to watch be required viewing school. I have a question in terms of how does the composting and what you do now, how do they connect? What goes on at brotherhood, sister soul, when it comes to composting and the work that you guys do?
[00:15:44] Speaker C: Yeah. For me, right now, the way I take on composting is to be an example and a community pilot, a community example of. Imagine what we're doing at Brosis and Frank White Memorial Garden in this composting process being happening in every two or three blocks away. We're not composting at a wide scale. We're a small scale processing. Food processing site is what they call it in the composting world, food processing. And what I'm doing is I'm creating an opportunity where young people from the ages of eight to 22 are learning about this process of separating your food waste and creating resource from it. So they go through the whole process of chopping up all the food waste, mixing it with any of the browns that we can collect or that is brought into our garden, and they mix it, put it in the composting system, they do the whole process they take out. Once that process is gone, after two or three months, all of the food waste is all broken down. All of the microorganisms and macroorganisms have gone through all of it, and it's finished. We take it out with the young people and then we sift it. And in that finished compost, we have them put it into our raised beds, our trees in the street, guards on the street trees. They see that we're feeding our natural environment with stuff that people threw away.
So for me, it's like teaching these young people this process is a natural process that we're creating in this small facility. And everyone gets to learn how to do that so that when they get older, it's like not something new, it's something that they have engaged in. So when more and more of our human society or human population becomes to kind of realize that the environment is important, these kids who have gone through my program will know that composting is one of the key steps to giving back that composting is a resource created from nothing, from waste, to kind of help bring back our soil, bring back the plants, give more food, have more abundance of this natural, organic resources, rather than getting it from another state, another country that you have to buy at Home Depot or Lowe's or something.
So for me, composting with young people at our space is just an ideal pilot of an actual working solution that I wish could be done in many different communities.
[00:18:37] Speaker A: Speaking of that, I know that you have kind of come up with this innovative approach to composting. That's part of what Lonnie and I both saw when we went and visited brotherhood, sister soul, this hot box technique. And I think it's fascinating. It's such a cool idea. I've never seen it anywhere else, never heard it from anyone else. Could you give a broad overview of what that process is, why it's innovative and cool, and why more people should be doing composting in that way?
[00:19:06] Speaker C: Yeah. So the hot box was being started and created when I joined that organization in middle school in open road of New York. So they are the founders of the design. And I had jumped into when they were starting to practice different ways of creating this design. But anyway, the hot box was created because at the time of composting, at that time, we started to find out and get familiar that a lot of people was finding that the process of composting was strenuous, was very time consuming and labor intensive. So more and more people didn't want to do the process of composting, but they would be willing to drop off their food waste then who was going to do the process of composting? So when this design came up, I was, like, thinking about ways and I just kept on thinking, this system is made for the lazy composter. So that's, back then they used to call, this is perfect for everyone who wants to be composting, but they're lazy at it or lazy to it. So then we started thinking of different ways. So the compost design then started to evolve in different ways. So the hot box, the way, the perfect explanation of the hot box is every other composting system needs to be turned so that it doesn't become anaerobic. You want your compost to be aerobic. You need a special formula to help decomposition happen naturally at a faster rate, but also naturally and perfectly so that it kills off the bacteria that you don't want in there. But it thrives on all the bacteria you do want in there. So you need water, you need oxygen, you need carbon, and you need nitrogen. The water system is pretty simple. You could either, if it's too dry, just pour some water on it. And in most cases, if you have enough nitrogen and carbon perfect mix, sometimes you don't need the water because the moisture of the nitrogen helps the carbon. It helps dry it out if it's too moist. So that's that dry material, brown material that helps it. The oxygen is the part that the human's interaction to composting has to happen. So if you have a tumbler, you have to crank the tumbler almost every other day for like 20 minutes, 15 minutes, give or take. So it gets a nice mix. If you have a three bin system, you got to grab a pitchfork or a shovel and basically turn half of a cubic yard into another cubic yard. If it's wind robe, you got to take a section of the windrow. Windrow is like a pile, pile of dirt, pile of compost, and that's processed. You got to take this whole pile and turn it like a couple of inches or a couple of feet away and just turn the whole thing. So oxygen is a key ingredient, but it's the most labor intensive. The hot box design works where we created these different, I want to call them like air conditioning to the resort, right? To this ecosystem, we want to say it's oxygen vent, that when the heat rises, it pulls in more oxygen through these pvc pipes that have, like a quarter inch drills in them. And they're located in the hot box in the perfect location so that as heat rises, a lot of the oxygen is spread around through the whole cubic yard box. So keeping it going up, it pulls in this cool, nice, fresh air so that we don't have to turn it. So that step of turning it, which usually takes hours, depending on how scaled your composting is, has been taken out. So now this new system, or it's not new because it was created in 93, 94. 93. And it was patented in 96, but it's been around for so long. It's just that it is expensive because of the material we have, but it lasts forever. I have one that I built when I was in middle school that still to now is like 30 plus years and it still exists and still works.
And it keep working the same exact way as I started it back in the lot of other systems, they break down. They're too thin. They fall apart. They're made out of wood. So wood rots and dissolves. But these system, less intensive labor and more volume, more food waste, more compost, more volume into it, less timing, less process. And I'm able to process more food waste than a lot of other systems out there.
[00:24:05] Speaker A: Do you see these hot boxes? Something that could exist in other places, like in other parts of the city? What would be one of the challenges of doing that and trying to get it in more of these places?
[00:24:16] Speaker C: I think the major and number one challenge is really just finance.
Once people start to use the hot box and start to start to work with it and deal with it, they're going to see that it's so much easier to have in your garden, in your backyard, in your church, in your schoolyard. It can go anywhere. The other part of the hot box is that it's not bad looking. It's actually really nice to look at. A lot of other composting systems. Looks like a pile of garbage, in the lack of a better word. But this system is covered, and you can have it anywhere. And I can see it anywhere. To be honest, I don't see where it cannot be like, I've installed some in rooftops, installed some in schoolyards, mostly in gardens. I don't think we've done a church yet, but I'm sure it can go there. And then I have this new idea that I would like to implement. It's a custom design, so you don't need it. But if you wanted to make it even more appealing to your community, all around, the hot box is stationary. So the edges, the sides of the hot box on the outside can become a collective, creative canvas, in a sense. Right. So you can make art, you can create art and maybe have it seasonal where you could change the panel so you have something creative that you can do with your community group with the hot box. Or we can have some games, tictactoe, or connect four and put it on the sides. And while the parents are doing the processing and chopping and putting food waste into the composting bin, the kids that don't want to do it can be playing games right next to you and imagine that what other bin is actually a toy?
[00:26:13] Speaker A: I mean, never cease to be surprised by kids in their imagination. If you just give them a box and they will turn it into a toy. So, yeah, you have a big composting box and you give it to kids, they will decorate it or turn it into a game.
[00:26:25] Speaker C: Right.
[00:26:25] Speaker A: So I love that.
[00:26:27] Speaker B: It seems very urban friendly in terms of being able to scale in an urban space. Is that something that you think about when it comes to design and possibly scaling that system up?
[00:26:39] Speaker C: Yeah, we've tried taking that same design and making it one big piece, and that doesn't work because of the urban. When you come to urban friendly designs, it's portable, movable, so you want to have that. So if you have something in New York that you can't really move, think about, like, New York City's small apartments. You get tired of how the apartment is after a little while, so you want to move it around. It's still the same size, it's all the same furniture. But by moving it around, you feel like you're in a whole different place. So these composting bins can't do that as well. You empty out the whole thing. We can slide and move this whole box everywhere, and then it could be a whole new place in the garden. We did that in Pleasantville garden in the east Harlem. They were losing portion of their garden because of industrialization is happening. And obviously they took a portion of their garden, which is where they housed their composting system. And we had to move that system to a whole nother system. And a lot of fear about the system is that sometimes you move a certain system and they'll break apart and they start falling apart. But these are so durable and so tightly designed that we were able to move both of them, nice and simple, and put it in a whole new space. And it looks like it was there for years. So making this an urban friendly design was a key factor. It had to be something that when you walk by it, you probably don't know what it is, but it's curiosity. Like, you think about it, let me see. Let me see how it is. It'll attract your attention, and then you start to realize what it is. And it's like, you know what? This is a really cool design.
[00:28:21] Speaker B: Yeah, I love hearing about that.
When you talk about composting in these systems and you talked a little bit about certain neighborhoods or areas losing certain space because of growth, development, how do you see composting as like an environmental justice issue, or how do you frame it in your mind of how those two things relate to each other?
[00:28:43] Speaker C: Yeah.
When I was thinking about that, when I looked at that question was asking me before, and I looked at the questions, too, that was the one question I was like, damn. How do you explain, because there's so many different ways of explaining how the compost system is an environmental justice movement and just talking a bit, a little bit about what I've told about the bug life and how it's a justice for them, I think it also becomes an environmental justice for our economic system.
When you think about how much money we spend taking away all our trash out of the state and paying another state to take our trash, and 34% or 35%, 36%, wherever the numbers are now, is most of that is food waste. Most of that can be processed locally within our communities, within our city, within our own state, where that resource is not financially, but it becomes valuable. It's like for a long time you hear composting being black gold. That's what they mean, is that the benefits of using compost to revitalize your soil, to bring up your plants stronger. Whatever food crops you have is valuable, and it's made from what we throw away. So that is gold in a sense. So that alone, when it comes to that scenario, that, to me is another environmental justice economically. Like not spending money, taking away our resources, rather than changing how we use that money and build infrastructure that's sustainable for our community. Building all of these composting systems throughout all of the city will help benefit our community with that resource. But then that money goes towards creating these infrastructure, which then creates more possible jobs in the future. So imagine all of these compost systems within our community. Now, the possibility of creating micro haulers is even greater. Right now you have a couple of microhaurs, one in Brooklyn, the lower east side, maybe some happening in the Bronx already. And they're small because they're microhaulers. They work in their own community. But think about instead of having McDonald's all over in every corner, you can have a micro hauling company in every community. And each and every micro hauling community will create jobs for residents in the community. We'll create money that can equity, that can live within the same community and start to help build that community. So now you're giving jobs to communities. You're giving job opportunities for business owners who want to be micro haulers. Then you're giving resources to our natural environment. You're creating these resorts for these bugs. And at the same time, there is opportunity to teach our community how to give back. And then I also see another piece of it is the city has these summer youth employment opportunities, right? That has been always been great. And I was a part of that product when I was a teenager and working for a daycare or working for an organization. Earning my at the time was, I think it was $8 an hour, but it was good money for six weeks. For a teenager who has no bills, it's great. But these micro hauling companies and these composting sites can now host young people. And then you're creating a new generation of environmentally sound people who will later think about the same way. What I'm doing with my kids will always have that experience of giving back to the environment, which will then maybe awaken their inner Gaia, their environmentally conscious person being like, don't throw that trash on the street. There's a garbage can. Throw it in there. Don't pour all your food waste in your garbage at home. Separate it. Something tells them because they've experienced it and they know the benefits of it, and they worked on it. So you build this future of a sustainable system within the system.
[00:32:59] Speaker A: For folks who are not familiar with what microhauling is. Could you unpack that and explain that a little bit as well.
[00:33:04] Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. I forget sometimes the languages microhauuler. So in the composting world, there's two existing pieces to it.
Three, the processing sites that I mentioned are gardens or places that have composting systems. And they're not collecting food waste from anyone. They're just composting the food waste that comes to them. So those sites are called processing sites. Then you have the food waste drop offs, which are bins that are placed by different agencies that I highly respect. And the city have been funding them. And I continue to push and support that. That continues to happen. Lori psychology center, earth matters grownyc and I think those are the three major ones that are doing drop off sites. So that's a place where residents can come and who are separating their food and they can't get to a garden. They can go to a drop off site and drop off their food waste. So that's a drop off site. Micro haulers are the agencies that are connecting with local businesses, connecting with local residents, and with a fee, they're going to these locations and collecting their food waste, their food scraps. So the residents will pay a monthly fee, the businesses will pay monthly fee or weekly fee, depending on what micro hauler you're working with. And they'll come by with their bins. They'll replace clean new bins to the agency, the resident, and then take these full bins and take it to a composting processing site, or they'll take it to farmers who are doing composting. So microhauulers have their connections in different ways, but what would benefit microhauulers more is if they had a lot of local community processing sites. So when one garden is full, they can go not too far away and start filling another garden and help these processing sites continue to have food waste. But also it helps the micro haulers spread around all of this food waste that they have. And then it helps these agencies that are picking up the food scraps and the drop off zones so that they don't have to take so much.
If they're taking, even if their volume is packed, people start filling it more, then they're not filling it to the max. You have these different agencies working together in cohesion to help process almost, if not all of our food waste in some sort of way.
[00:35:55] Speaker A: Yeah. I really appreciate you breaking all this down. I feel like it's really helpful to get this whole picture because, like myself at one point, I feel like most people assume that once the compost leaves our door and is in the drop off bin or it gets picked up, it's like that's it. It's gone. It ceases to exist. It somehow gets through the process. But being able to actually hear through your eyes what the process actually looks like, I think is really helpful to understand what the point is. Why even do the composting? Because it ends up in your community garden or wherever else. And I like the idea of keeping things local. I feel like composting should be a part of that as well. Should be no different, right?
[00:36:32] Speaker C: Yeah. No, I think the key for a community to thrive is when the community is working together, when we all know that we are a factor of each other's business to thrive. So the individual who just wants to drop off food waste, that's important. You need to have a place where you can drop off your food waste easily so that it encourages you more to do more. And then people seeing you doing that encourages other people to do more. And then you're just giving that processing site or that drop off agency more resources for them to thrive. Because then they go around and once they have the finished compost, they spread it around.
I think that's the mentality I feel like would change a city when they start to think of communities and helping communities to build this local infrastructure of sustainability, equity, education in some sort of way. I'm not saying stay that way, but try thinking in your city planning to help that process grow. And who know, you'll see communities. I think communities will start to thrive better in that way.
[00:37:40] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:37:41] Speaker B: You talk a lot about kind of cultural shifts and changing in our mindsets.
Where do you put youth in that? And why is youth important?
[00:37:51] Speaker C: Yeah, I mean, youth, I think, is the key to making the cultural shift long term and sustainable. If you're not engaging your young people in your cultural design or your cultural shift of it, then it's not going to be sustainable because at a certain point, those who designed it will not be able to do it anymore. And if you're not teaching the next generation how to continue that, then you're going to lose that idea. So having young people at different stages of their age be a part of it is a key important of keeping something alive for a very long time. And I think that for me, it's always important to have moments of awareness, moments of interactions, moments of engagement, where the eight year old is being heard by the 30 year old on something that you may think that's simple, that's a child idea, but reality. That child will be more entertained if you follow and listen to what they have to offer. And then you engage that into your designs because they will be there because you put a part of their ideas into it. It's a prideful thing for them. It's an empowering thing for them.
For a kid to see their designs or their picture or their drawing on anything makes them more engaged in it, makes them want to do more, makes them want to be a part of it more. So when we're designing a cultural shift and you're not implementing the young people, then it's not going to last a long time.
[00:39:32] Speaker A: I like that answer. And it also makes me think of what you were saying earlier about making the boxes more appealing and having stuff like kids doing the art or the design of the boxes. Something as simple as just making it more aesthetically pleasing and having the youth involved in that process.
One more question that we have, I think we're getting towards the end of our questions here, is how can people be involved in helping to move this work forward? So, obviously, we talked about some of the reasons why compost should be in more places and what some of the opportunities for growth are. How can people who are members of we act or just members of the community help to advance that work and push it forward?
[00:40:13] Speaker C: So there's a campaign that I'm pushing.
So I brought open road back. I mean, it's always been around, but I just haven't been involved with them. So I brought open road of New York back, ended last year into this new year to partner up with the Brotherhood of Sister Soul. And there's a campaign that I personally am trying to push and have been pushing it at a slow pace, at a word to word or mouth to mouth type of conversation. Where the campaign is a thousand composting systems in New York City. And what that means is for the city, for organizations, for individuals to help support, create or remodel or rebuild a thousand composting sites in each borough of New York City. So remember the idea of like a million trees? We're thinking about a thousand composting sites. Hopefully. What I envision is by having new sites in different gardens and rebuilding composting sites that probably aren't being used anymore or having some maintenance struggles to help fund to rebuild those will give more access for people, residents to kind of bring their food waste to those locations.
So that campaign could be more out there if more people talked about it. We should have more access to processing compost processing sites. We should have more access to food drop off locations, we should have more microhaulers. And I think building more composting sites throughout the city and thinking about starting with 1000 in each borough will help these other ones kind of grow and develop. And if more people went to their local representatives and said, you should fund more composting sites in our community, in your district, you should go to maybe your local organization that raised or got millions of dollars in their hands to do environmental infrastructure, to sponsor some gardens, to have them have a composting bin. Because I think a lot of times, a lot of our gardens don't have a lot of money and budget.
Most of those gardens are still thriving solely on volunteer work. And when you think of how are they going to put in that labor that we talked about is very labor intensive of composting.
It's going to be hard. So if they want a composting bin, they're going to want an easier one. But then the one if they want my composting bin is expensive. Not because I want it to be expensive, just because of the materials, but if they had it, they will be less labor intensive and they will have it for a long term of that process. So having more composting bins doesn't have to be the hot box. It could be any bin, but just starting to bring that into our communities and people talking about it, people sharing about it, people pushing their leaders, their community leaders, their community agencies and organizations to put money towards that. Or even then look for a GoFundMe, for a composting system in your local garden and put some money towards that. I think that will help this new cultural shift that you guys talked about, or that I like to express, too, of composting being a solution.
One of the solutions, small one, for New York City, but it's a solution to climate change and global warming. And if you think about if it worked in New York City, it can work in any city.
[00:44:18] Speaker A: Very true. And just for folks who want to learn more about the thousand composting site initiative, where could people look to find more information? Is there a specific website or place that they can look?
[00:44:30] Speaker C: Well, the only place that I have it right now is on my Instagram, unfortunately, just shay throw. But hot box composting on Instagram is where I'm starting to promote the hot box, but also promote the thousand composting looking. So Brosys and open Road are becoming partners to look for funding, raise some money to give free composting bins to northern Manhattan. So we're looking to go from one 10th, 110th street or 96 on the east side and all the way up to Inwood. And what we're trying to do is look for funding, get some money so that we can build specifically hot boxes and then donate it to community gardens that want them. And then hopefully other communities will start doing the same.
They could partner up with open road, and then we can start doing the data, doing the mapping, searching for gardens, searching for churches, schools that would be interested in having composting and then finding funding to develop and design and create these hot boxes for those spaces.
So hot box composting is where you can find me.
[00:45:46] Speaker A: Other thoughts?
[00:45:47] Speaker C: Questions?
[00:45:47] Speaker A: Anything else that you want to get out there that you feel like you didn't have a chance to say, no.
[00:45:54] Speaker C: I'm not the only one out there. I definitely want to just give a shout out to all of the different microhauulers and agencies that are working to keep compost alive. I think Adams, for a short moment of time, wanted to take it out of the map, and hopefully he doesn't. And I think he hasn't. And Sandy Nurse is pushing the effort. I'm trying to see if I could sit with her and have a meeting with her. I would love for her to be the face of this 1000 composting system out there and for her to kind of push the campaign. She's the founder of BK Rot, which is a micro holding company in Brooklyn. And I've always respected her and loved the idea. And I think, yeah, just a shout out to all of those other people out there doing composting and keeping it alive.
[00:46:57] Speaker A: So we are joined by the Amazing Annie Carfaro, who is our climate. What are you.
[00:47:07] Speaker D: One of those titles? I am the climate justice campaign coordinator.
[00:47:11] Speaker A: Thank you, Annie. And we're just going to talk a little bit about what we heard from Nando in our conversation about composting. Lots of words of wisdom in there for us to unpack. Annie, what stood out to you the most? Listening to all of that.
[00:47:28] Speaker D: I mean, I think the fact that composting is so accessible, it's something that's hands on, I think that is really important in today's world. Increasingly, everyone is living behind a screen, and composting is something you can go out, you can do with your hands, you can create something at the end of it. And it's kind of closing the loop on this cycle of trash, creating a circular economy kind of with the waste that we produce. And I think what Nando's done so incredibly well in northern Manhattan is harness the beauty of that and create opportunities to educate people, to engage people, to engage children, to engage youth, and to make it accessible. I think that's really kind of cool. And we've seen some of the work that he's doing.
It's really awesome to see a bunch of high schoolers come back and break down heaps of garbage. When I say garbage, food waste. Heaps of food waste.
You don't see that often in New York City. It's kind of fun to see them get their hands dirty.
[00:48:37] Speaker A: Yeah. And, I mean, we got to witness it firsthand. So Annie, Lonnie, and I all got to go to brotherhood, sister soul, and do a tour of the composting facility, the garden that Nando mentioned. And we did the whole process. We got to chop up the awesome trash, toss some trash. Yes. The technical term for it. And it was super fun. Lonnie, what did you think of going there and doing all that?
[00:49:03] Speaker B: As someone who's not your typical outdoorsy kind of person who kind of gets their hand dirty in that way, I was actually pleasantly surprised at how fun it was to actually do it, the process, and actually get in there. And also, shockingly, not as smelly as I thought it was going to be. It didn't really stink that much. So, I mean, kind of get the initial whiff of something and it catches you off guard, but after a few minutes, you're like, oh, you don't really smell it the same way. But I had a great time, and I thought the system was kind of cool, and it was just great to really learn about it and also just kind of in inspires me to actually compost, because I don't currently compost right now. But now we talked about a little earlier about the bins that are out there for collection. They're a little more accessible for me now. So I'm definitely going to look into composting and also getting involved a little bit more in the community gardens.
[00:49:52] Speaker D: Yeah. The composting bins are hot. Remember how hot it was?
[00:49:57] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:49:58] Speaker D: It was like 85 degrees outside. And then we went into the greenhouse where the hot box was, and it was like 110 degrees. It was brutal, but it was working. That was the key piece.
[00:50:09] Speaker A: It was doing that magic, that composting.
[00:50:11] Speaker D: Magic, the sauna for the bugs.
[00:50:13] Speaker A: Yeah. And it was cool because you could see, and just to clarify here, this is something that I mentioned. A whole bunch is the bugs did not see any cockroaches or any other big, nasty bugs. They're just like these little bugs. These little cute little bugs. Little rolly poly bugs that are in there. Little worms.
[00:50:28] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:50:28] Speaker A: All those fun bugs, the ones that kids love to play with, and they're in there doing their thing. And it's funny because I fully expected a bunch of people to be super grossed out and kind of turned off by all the little crawlers that are in there. But everyone kind of got into it because once you realize that they're not going to do anything to you, they're just there having a spa day. People would put their hand in the bin and kind of let some of them crawl in their hand, especially the kids. The kids were super into. All the young people were like, yeah, look it. I got an arm full of bugs.
[00:50:59] Speaker D: I'm not there yet.
[00:51:01] Speaker A: Yeah, we're all in different places in the composting.
[00:51:03] Speaker D: I like chopping up all the food waste, like pasta salad with the orange peels. Just disgusting, but fun.
[00:51:11] Speaker B: Also interesting to see what people throw out and what you can actually throw out. I was actually shocked that you could put certain things into composting.
I was like, oh, I didn't know you could actually put cooked food. I always thought it was just produce that was like leftover, like apple cords or when you're chopping vegetables, like the stalks and pieces that you don't use. But I didn't realize it was much more that you could actually compost.
[00:51:32] Speaker D: Right. Well, that's the beauty of the hot box composting, because for small backyard systems, you can't really compost like meat or bones or cooked food. But for systems like that, where it is a little bit bigger and the temperature gets higher, it's pretty incredible how much waste you can divert from your garbage into one of these bins.
[00:51:51] Speaker A: Yeah. And just for folks who don't have a concept for what a square yard of compost is, it's like a small pool. You could swim in these buckets. Would you want to maybe not. Maybe get, like, a little mud bath going on. But they're pretty big sized.
[00:52:06] Speaker D: Yeah. Like one of those mini pools you buy at the dollar tree.
[00:52:09] Speaker A: Yes. It's one of those backyard.
[00:52:10] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:52:11] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:52:11] Speaker B: To be clear, we do not endorse anyone getting inside of a pool of compost, but different type of mud, buddy.
[00:52:19] Speaker A: Yeah. So I think both myself, Lonnie, and Annie, we all took some notes. What are some of the things that you wrote down that you wanted to talk about more that nano said?
[00:52:29] Speaker B: I think overall, just a general comment of how he describes composting in the process and how he connects it to community.
It was really pleasant to kind of think of about composting as a way to give back not just to nature or to divert its food waste, but also just the community aspect to everything. I thought was really beautiful in kind of the way he frames everything. And I think that kind of stuck with me a lot. So that's what even makes me even more excited about actually getting a part of composting, is to feel like I'm doing something relatively small but has a huge benefit in many different ways.
[00:53:12] Speaker A: And, I mean, there was a reason that we were there in the first place, right, for that visit. It was part of the Climate justice working group. Right. So how does that trip to brotherhood, sister soul, to this composting site fit into the work that we're doing with the climate justice working group? Why were we there?
[00:53:27] Speaker D: Yeah, totally. I was thinking that when LJ was speaking like, the Climate justice working group is one of the ways you can get a little bit more deeply involved in wex. Work focused on climate justice and waste has been a topic that our members have brought to us over and over and over again. And so that's why we kind of have, no pun intended, dug a little bit into this work.
[00:53:46] Speaker B: Nice.
[00:53:51] Speaker D: Okay.
And something that our members have brought to us when we were trying to create a mission statement for our group is that in the climate justice working group, we believe for everything, for climate change, for resiliency, for emergency preparedness, for electrification. We believe in community led solutions and trying to really strengthen ourselves in the process of transitioning off of fossil fuels and preparing for hotter summers and wetter summers, et cetera. And so I like the fact that composting is a whole local economy. Like, there's jobs in there and there's jobs that, like I said, are not just sitting behind a computer and looking at a screen for eight to 10 hours a day. It's like being out there. It's making connections with your neighbors. It's creating something. But then it's also strengthening the community by creating very rich soil that can support street trees, can support gardens, can support green spaces. But I just think that there's something there in the fact that there's so much room for growth. Like, New York does not compost compared to other cities in the United States. And there's jobs. There is really opportunities to engage people, underemployed folks in a way that could speak to them more than what standard employment might look like in today's economy.
[00:55:17] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. And speaking of trying to scale up this work around compost and waste issues, part of the climate justice working group is, like, tying into policies, right? And what are some specific policies in addition to kind of what Nando was laying out with the thousand compost sites that seem to be like something that could move the workforward, what are some other big policy pieces of this equation that would really impact the city's progress in being a more smart resource in managing their waste, specifically their food waste?
[00:55:51] Speaker D: Well, at the city level, and it's interesting because working in city and state politics, there's, like, certain issues that are state level issues, like a lot of housing stuff, energy stuff. But then there's, like, city level issues. And a big one is waste. A good mayor keeps the streets clean, picks up the garbage. At the city level, there's a bill package called the zero waste bill package. That is five bills. They're expanding recycling centers, expanding compost drop off sites, creating a zero x 30 plan that is mandated so that the city actually follows through with that commitment. The big one that we act members like is expanding curbside composting. So composting in your building to every building in the city right now, there are a couple of pilots at different community boards. Typically wealthier, whiter community boards have these pilots where residents can, when they put out their garbage, they have a little brown bin, and they can put out their compost, and it's picked up by the city.
That's a game changer. That makes composting so accessible. I compost at home. I have a little tumbler in some outdoor space that I have. You put the compost in the freezer. It's very easy to do. You get used to it really quickly. If I could just bring that compost out. When I bring my recycling out, that makes it a lot more accessible, and I think it makes it a lot easier to convince people to do that. So we really want to see the mandatory curbside composting for everybody in the city, because that then kind of puts the roots in the ground for us in the climate justice working group to go out and educate our neighbors about the benefits of composting, how to do it in a small apartment, how to get involved in some of these more, like local economy, local jobs, local gardens. So we are really hoping to see that bill pass. And I think it's worth mentioning that at this point in time, every single bill in the bill package has supermajority votes, which means that they have enough support in city council that they would not only pass, they would override a veto. If the mayor wished to do that. What's stalling them right now is that the speaker of the council, they're kind of the voted in leader of the city council, Speaker Adrienne Adams, she has the power to bring bills to the floor for a vote. And so until she brings these bills to the floor for a vote, they're just going to sit there with all this support and not do anything.
[00:58:16] Speaker A: What would motivate that to happen? If folks are passionate about this and want to help move that needle, is there anything that they can do to put more pressure on that situation?
[00:58:29] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, we actually even have, we've done an action network campaign where you fill out a form and basically send a letter to Speaker Adrian Adams to basically just asking and urging to bring that bill package to the floor for the vote. I think reaching out to your local council members saying that you need this or that you want this for your communities, that we need this for New York City. And kind of keep pushing the elected officials to do this is one way you can do that in other actions through social media and pushing the elected officials to move it forward.
[00:59:06] Speaker D: And elected officials really, Speaker Adrienne Adams, she right now is the person holding this up. I think that. I don't want to be too. I'll be hard on her. I think that the mayor's administration is know telling, know, we don't want to pay for that, so don't do that.
There's probably some pressure from the department of sanitation at the direction of Mayor Adams. Mayor Eric Adams. I know it's confusing, but I think that the more public pressure on the speaker, the less she can ignore this issue. And the support for this is there. It's just that if people are talking in their individual groups and there's not really an organized effort to really put that pressure campaign on her, that's what we're missing right now. And I think that's what could get this over the finish line. And it would be really fantastic to see.
[00:59:57] Speaker A: All right, so we're near the end of our time. Any closing thoughts about composting or our work in general around the issue of waste at weact?
[01:00:07] Speaker D: Waste is part of Weact's founding story. It's something that environmental justice communities have had to endure for decades. And I think composting is this beautiful, organic way to really cut back on the amount of waste that we are dumping into communities and instead turn that trash into gold. And I just want to shout out, composting is easy. Put it in your freezer. Go find one of those orange bins. Dump it once a week. You're going to find yourself doing it for everything.
[01:00:39] Speaker A: It's very exciting, and it will also reduce the amount of times that you have to take out your regular trash. And it'll make sure that your trash doesn't smell quite so bad, which is an added bonus, I will say.
[01:00:49] Speaker D: And the rats. We didn't talk about the rats.
[01:00:52] Speaker B: We could talk about the rats now.
[01:00:54] Speaker D: I mean, just quickly think about all the rats going through your garbage when you leave it on the side of the curb. If there's no more food waste in that garbage, it's a lot less appealing to the pests that have invaded New York City and are currently winning the war against the humans. So rat mitigation plus.
[01:01:15] Speaker C: Yes.
[01:01:15] Speaker A: What about all the people who are worried that having a compost bin in their garden will bring rats? I mean, I think we didn't really talk about that with Nando, but I think that from what we saw with the bins, they are sealed. And I remember asking specifically about that Nando when we were there in person, and he said that the bins have never created issues for cockroaches. For just. I think it's a bit of a misconception around the composting that if you bring the waste to these sites, you will also bring the rats. And I don't think that has been the case.
[01:01:45] Speaker D: That's a great point that you make. And actually, we talked about this with Nando, and part of the reason that his bins are a little bit more expensive than other bins are because of all the benefits he mentioned. But they're also rat proof. Rats can't chew through them. And he's had a bin for 30 plus years. It's never been infiltrated by rats. So that's a testament that his statements are true.
[01:02:07] Speaker A: That is the only square yard of New York City that has not been infiltrated by rats to this day. Thank you, Nando.
[01:02:13] Speaker D: The steel.
[01:02:16] Speaker B: We need more for this.
[01:02:18] Speaker A: More rat free square yardage of New York.
Well, thank you so much for joining us, Annie. We're going to go ahead and wrap up. We'll make sure to have you on the show again real soon. I'm sure all the fans will love you.
[01:02:29] Speaker D: I'm happy to kick you guys off. Congratulations.
[01:02:32] Speaker C: Yay.
[01:02:34] Speaker B: Thanks, Annie.
[01:02:35] Speaker D: Thank you.
[01:02:36] Speaker A: All right, folks, thanks so much for listening. If you made it this far in the show, that means you probably enjoyed what you heard. So tune in on the last Monday of every month for new episodes. Lonnie, how can the folks find us?
[01:02:49] Speaker B: You can check out weact on Facebook at Weactford. That's weactforeJ. And also on Instagram, Twitter and YouTube at weactfordJ. That's W-E-A-C-T number four, EJ. And check out our
[email protected], for more information about environmental justice. Until next time, don't be trash. Be compost.
[01:03:13] Speaker A: Okay, bye.
