Author: Anna Lucas
We’re true believers that “we don’t need a handful of people doing zero-waste perfectly, we need millions of people doing it imperfectly” (quote by Anne-Marie Bonneau, the zero-waste chef).
Integrating compost into your sustainability journey doesn’t mean you have to turn your living habitat into a homestead farm and become some sort of hippie yourself. Compost is a practical and economical solution applied to waste management, rooted in a circular economy that helps our planet, our wallets and our health!
Here’s how you can support composting methods being available nationwide and in your area:
1. Support your local community garden
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so that they can keep organizing compost drop-off and other awareness campaigns and initiatives around composting and its benefits.
Find the closest community garden here.
2. Start ‘em young
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Composting can be part of a school curriculum, and implemented on school grounds with on-site or off-site composting options.
Here’s a great guide to get started.
3. Talk to your neighbors
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Get together to start setting up an infrastructure at the micro-level. Are other people in your neighborhood interested in getting those good nutrients for their own gardens? Find like-minded people and share the costs of a bigger composting bin, the benefits of variety in the compost layers, and the fruits of your efforts. This can be done for home composting, as well as setting up a schedule with waste handlers to redirect food waste and compostable items to industrial facilities.
4. Sign the petition to make bio-products a priority
Support the industry working hard to replace plastic items with sustainable alternatives by signing here.
Repurpose has replaced over 500 million of pieces of plastic in our ecosystem (and counting) but it is a whole industry that needs the support of consumers to move towards a plant-based life rooted in a circular economy.
5. Write to your local representatives (bonus!)
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Less than 5% of plastic is actually being recycled, so it is safe to say that we need a better alternative to recycling. Combining bioplastics as replacements to plastic and bigger scale commercial composting facilities to dispose of them is the future. It would allow for compostable disposable items to become the norm and enter a circular economy, along with food scraps.
This shift would also provide nourishing organic soil to our agriculture systems, replacing chemical fertilizers that are damaging to the earth and our health.
Copy and paste the template below to write a letter or an email to your elected representatives.
All these make a huge difference if we come together and support progress and change!
Template letter
[Your Name]
[address]
[city, state, zipcode]
[Insert Date]
The Honorable [Insert Representative’s Name]
[address]
[city, state, zipcode]
Dear Representative [Insert Last Name].
My name is [Insert Your Name] and I reside at [Insert Your Address] in [Insert Your City], [Insert].
I am writing to ask that you help make commercial and industrial composting infrastructures available in my area.
Developing these infrastructures would greatly contribute to:
- reducing methane emissions from landfills
- supporting the use of commercially compostable bioplastics items instead of plastic disposables
- moving towards eliminating plastics and microplastics from our oceans, river streams, and bodies.
- promoting a prolific soil ecosystem, thus allowing us to step away from the use of chemical fertilizers in agriculture.
[Add anything more personal here, if you’d like]
[If applicable and if you are writing about a specific Bill that is currently being discussed, include the Bill Number - for example, H. 5400 or. S. 2815]
I appreciate your help and ask that you please send me a response letting me know if you are able to pass a Bill that would make composting available to as many people as possible, moving towards significant change and improvements in our fight against climate change.
Thank you for your time and considering my request.
Sincerely,
[Insert Your Name + signature]
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