Community Composting with Clytie Binder and Morag Gamble

In this second International Women's Series conversation, Clytie Binder joins Morag Gamble in discussing her Churchill Fellowship research on composting and the hyperlocal systems she has observed around the world. Tune in to learn about the importance in 'handmade' composting wherever you are and how it is being used to address the climate crisis.

Clare emphasises the need to prioritise household composting and avoid food waste as the first step in the waste hierarchy. She also explores innovations in composting, from institutional composting in zoos, schools, and prisons to house level systems.

Most of all, she highlights the need for a shift towards a circular economy - the importance of incorporating the social dimension into the life cycle of our foods and products.

To dive deeper into this exploration of community composting, read Clytie's Churchill Fellowship report.

Make sure you check out Clytie's latest project, the Local Community Compost Alliance, a national organisation in Australia supporting and advocating for community composting.

Transcript

Morag Gamble
Oh, thank you so much, Clytie for joining me on the podcast today. I've just been diving deeply into your Churchill Fellowship Report. And my gosh, what an adventure. How many places did you end up visiting? And it's like, how many countries and places? It was phenomenal.

Clytie (00:40.675)
Oh!

Clytie (00:44.057)
Yeah, like Canada, US, Cuba and Mexico. Yeah. So, and then places in between, in, you know, in amongst all those. Yeah.

Morag Gamble (00:53.602)
Yeah, yeah, and such a diversity of different places. So maybe in a nutshell, can you describe what this Churchill Fellowship was all about and what inspired you to head off on this journey?

Clytie (01:07.557)
Yeah, well my background is in permaculture. I did a permaculture course at Northy Street City Farm in Brisbane and I just kept sort of going on that trajectory really and then I sort of ended up in environmental education and working in schools and community organisations and then I ended up working in Brisbane City Council in waste and

I think once I sort of, I really caught the compost bug early on. I think that's one of the biggest health and safety risks of composting is that it's very addictive. And so, you know, I really, you know, composting, you never have learned enough about composting. Like, it's absolutely a lifelong learning experience. And so.

I kept going down that rabbit hole. And then in my work in Brisbane City Council in the waste area, you know, my role was very much about education and encouraging people to compost more, recycle more, you know, produce less waste and so on. And so I came across, in my sort of research, I came across the community composting program in New York City. And I was just blown out by

about it and you know how impressive and interesting it was in such a big metropolis that people were actively you know composting their scraps locally for community gardens.

Morag Gamble (02:46.454)
Which is fascinating, isn't it? And particularly because like, you know, here in Australia, we have backyards to compost and you think, oh, I can compost if I go to backyard, but they're all living in these, they're all apartment dwellers mostly, yeah.

Clytie (02:55.241)
rights? Yeah, mostly and it's very you know cheek to jowl and their green space is quite limited. So I really explored that and then you know I thought oh you know maybe we could do that here in Brisbane and so I

worked together with my team and council and we started this community compost hubs program here back in 2016 and it's still going strong with 26 hubs around the city where people can bring their scraps for local composting. And then I found out about this Churchill Fellowship program which is basically open to I think it's all of the Commonwealth countries so it's a pot of money that

If people want to find out about something that they can't just learn about here, they have to actually go overseas to find out about it and then come back and it will benefit Australia, then they can apply for this money for this grant to go and do that. So I applied to research community composting, you know, specifically thinking of New York City, but then, you know, thought, well, what else is nearby? And it really expanded it to.

take in those other things and put in that application and luckily it was successful. So that was back in 2019 I got it but then so 2020 I headed off and in March 2020 and got to San Francisco and I was there for about two weeks and then COVID had to come back. So then it was only last year 2023 that I finally had the opportunity to actually do the fellowship.

Morag Gamble (04:41.538)
Yeah, yeah, and as part of your fellowship, documenting the work is a big part of that to be able to contribute it back. So we'll make sure that we link in the show notes to your report. It's like 123 pages of amazing examples, full of photographs and descriptions of how all of these different systems work. So it's quite a diverse array that you were looking at from New York City to

Clytie (04:55.557)
Yeah.

Morag Gamble (05:08.494)
Toronto, Mexico, Cuba. And I wondered, just like as an overview, did you notice any kind of distinct differences between say a community composting system in the heart of Havana, Cuba, as opposed to a New York City? Like what was the attitudinal principle behind it? Or did you find there was actually in fact a lot of similarities in how the community composting happened?

Clytie (05:36.237)
Yeah, there's a lot of similarities in the sense that I was really taken by the joy, like the thrill that people get from turning other people's scraps into this amazing black gold. You know, it seems like such a nothing much thing to do, but...

people really get so much pleasure out of it. And the world over, I've seen that over and over again. And it's quite a big commitment to take other people's food scraps and deal with it. But they love it and they keep doing it and they want more. And that sort of really came out to me quite clearly. And then I guess the main differences.

Morag Gamble (06:19.775)
I did.

Clytie (06:28.453)
were the context that it happens in, in terms of the level of support, or that sort of political part, the bits around it, and how that can thrive or not thrive. And also, for example, in Cuba, I mean, the big driving force there is survival.

because with the US embargo that's still going, the longest running embargo ever, it means that the people are always close to starvation. And so they have to continually keep growing very local food and the car ownership there is about 3%, I think. So hardly anyone drives. So everything has to be very local. And that means that...

food has to grow local and in order to grow food, especially if you don't have access to chemical pesticides and fertilizers, they've developed these incredible organic growing systems, which obviously includes feeding the soil with composting and worm farming. And that's the driving force. Whereas in a place like New York City, some parts, yes, it's to do with food security, but in others, it's to do with

mental health and social connection and those driving forces because people are cooped up in apartments, you know, quite lonely sometimes, not getting much physical exercise or sunlight or, you know, access to nature. And so in those cases, something like going out into a community garden and creating compost is very much about that kind of, that driving force, which is sort of different.

Morag Gamble (07:54.507)
Yes.

Morag Gamble (08:15.734)
My question started out as you were responding, being about, it sounded like in a way, the systems in Cuba were more self-generated because of the need and perhaps in New York, they were more sort of more structured in a sort of a supported through a government system or something else, but maybe they're actually self-generating there too. What is that?

Did you notice that thread of self-generation, like the community need unfolded and this was a way in which they could address that need, whether it be the mental health, the social isolation issues or the food security issues, wherever they were, that it's actually a community responding to itself through community composting and urban agriculture initiatives?

Clytie (09:03.493)
Yeah, yeah, and definitely. And that sort of also became quite clear on the other side, like, you know, in the US, it was quite interesting because when you look at it on the West Coast and the East Coast, the West Coast has traditionally been quite forward thinking in their approaches to tackling climate change and things like that. So California and the Seattle area, you know, Washington state, they were sort of fairly early adopters in bringing out

curbside collection of organics and really prioritizing composting from a sort of a policy driven approach. Whereas on the East Coast they're only just bringing that in now. So that's quite interesting because as a result that on the East Coast in New York City that's when that really incredible community composting program developed because there was no government doing anything about it.

Whereas on the other side, because the government was doing something about it, the community composting stuff has only started emerging more recently. But it's interesting that it's emerging at all because they do have curbside collection already. But what's happening is that communities are starting to say, well, actually, we want to keep those resources local. We want to feed our soils. We want to compost and we want to do it as a community. And so that's sort of really interesting.

Morag Gamble (10:11.938)
you

Clytie (10:32.821)
And then conversely, sadly, on the other side of the country in New York, with that incredible community composting, pretty much the whole reason I started my Churchill Fellowship thing has just lost 100% of its funding. The Council has cut 100% of its funding in favour of

Clytie (11:02.457)
approach especially comparing what's going on the other side of the country. Yes.

Morag Gamble (11:07.563)
I mean you can definitely see why curbside collection is important to try and gather more waste to turn it back, but it's missing all of those other multiple dimensions of the benefits of the community composting system in and of itself. And you know it's hard to measure that isn't it? That sort of the qualitative benefits of it as opposed to the sheer number of kilograms

Clytie (11:18.064)
Yes.

Morag Gamble (11:33.334)
waste into compost and I wonder if you could speak a bit to that quality because I noticed in your recommendations that you're really encouraging communities to start to articulate that.

Clytie (11:37.127)
Yeah.

Clytie (11:43.369)
Absolutely, yeah. So I think, you know, people that are in the business of creating compost, you know, big industrial composting plants, that's clearly, they measure what's coming in the gate, they weigh it all, you know, they have a really clear idea of all their inputs and they know exactly how much compost they're producing, they know how many greenhouse gas emissions they're avoiding.

And all of those sorts of things. And all those things are reportable to government and funders. And that's what government and funders want. But communities are also doing all those things, but it's not being measured. And even actually the quantities that they're producing, it's quite difficult to measure. I know in the Brisbane Community Compost Hubs, for example, because it's all self self-service in a way, people turn up, they bring their scraps, they

drop it in, put a few bit of carbon and then leave it. And then it's up to volunteers to then turn it into compost. But they're not skilled in data collection or all that stuff. They don't have the equipment or the means really either. So all that's going unmeasured. And so we can only make guesstimations on how much is being diverted from landfill. And the guesstimations look fairly low.

However, I think that it's not being captured very well. But even then, even if it was fairly low, I think all of those other things that we talked about before, the loneliness epidemic, obesity epidemic, all these health issues, cancer, heart disease, and associated with sedentary lifestyles, mental health, crime epidemic, all of these things that are going on.

have been shown in the small amount of research that is available, really helped by things like urban agriculture and community composting and anything that forms community connections. And especially if it's linked to nature and also linked to tackling some of the big issues that face us all. Like when you think about it, climate change is obviously one of the biggest issues that we're all facing. But we all feel so powerless. Like, you know,

Clytie (14:09.645)
COP 28 and all that happened and nothing is decided or it's just meaningless and we just feel so frustrated and powerful because it's not in our hands to make those decisions. However, something like composting does make a huge difference in avoiding greenhouse gas emissions and so it is something we can do, like we can actually do something really powerful by composting and if we do it together and form connections it's even better. So I think

Morag Gamble (14:36.992)
Yeah.

Clytie (14:38.973)
how to measure that is tricky. How do you measure how many steps somebody took to go and empty their compost in a community compost hub instead of dumping it in the bin?

Morag Gamble (14:48.558)
and how many not truck miles did you use to not take it delivered to the curbside? You know, there's so many embedded things. It's so hard, isn't it? This is the, yeah. Yeah. This is the inherent problem, I think, with the need to measure things all the time, you know, in that way. You know, I understand, you know, you work in council, and I guess that's the metrics that are used.

Clytie (14:52.849)
That's right. Yeah. And people's mood, like how do you miss this mood improvement or something? You know.

Clytie (15:08.911)
Yeah.

Morag Gamble (15:19.551)
And when you work at scale, I suppose, Brisbane City Councils is one of the biggest municipalities in the world and that scale, it just makes it easier to manage, doesn't it? So what are you noticing in, you've been in council for a while now, like what have you noticed as being the acceptance of community composting? It's been something you've brought in and how is it?

Is it viewed as something they want to continue or how will they interact with it in a way to help make it more?

Clytie (15:52.901)
Yeah, I think that councils will, you know, around all around the country will struggle with really that walking that balance between what's easy to implement, like say curbside collection is relatively easy because it doesn't ask too much of the people. I mean, it's still it's still a big one like

they've found all over, all the councils that are bringing it in. Everybody struggles with contamination. Contamination is a big issue. So people, I mean, we already have contamination in recycling bins. And then when FOGO comes in and people don't know what FOGO is, it just means food, organics, garden organics. So it means putting food waste in a bin.

for composting, that goes off for industrial composting. But there is a lot of issue with contamination. So people put in packaging, a lot of plastic ends up in there, potentially chemicals as well. And that means that when it gets to the processing stage, they try and remove as much as they can. And they do have good systems in place for that, but not everything gets removed. And so...

often ends up with a lot of microplastics in the finished product, which means that a lot of the times it's not accepted for farm use because they don't want to put plastics into their soil. And so often, and this is in New York City, I know that they're not even composting their kerbside collection at all, they're just using it for anaerobic digestion to make electricity. And then I've

I'm not sure what they do with the sludge at the end of it, whether it, because if it's full of plastic, it's probably just being landfilled. So it's very much, it's not the best solution. It's a low hanging, well, it's not even a low hanging fruit. It's low on the waste hierarchy compared to community composting or some old backyard composting, that kind of thing. Cause...

Morag Gamble (17:55.958)
Oh gosh. No.

Morag Gamble (18:03.063)
Yeah.

Morag Gamble (18:08.638)
It feels like this vegan, like a one-dimensional decision-making framework is like, we need to get food waste to compost without really looking at all those things that you just mentioned. I mean, they actually unravel a lot of the benefit of actually doing it. And if, and it's this, this notion of scale, I think is, is really important, isn't it? Like when you have a relationship to your community composting system, you're far less likely to be

contaminating with plastics. But when you have a bin, it's just like, oh, yeah, I'll just toss it in there. Or someone else from the household who doesn't get it pops it in there. And it doesn't, it's like our food system. The further we are from the source of it, the less connected we feel. The further we are from a natural system, the less connected we feel. The further we are from that circular, the bigger the circle, the less we feel we're part of it.

Clytie (18:38.281)
So nice.

Clytie (18:56.513)
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I remember when I sort of grew my first lemon tree and I couldn't, like, it was not enough lemons, the one tree. And I, and I couldn't believe I made me think how much land we need to actually provide for one family, or not land, but you know, how many plants and like, cause we use a lot of lemons obviously, but I mean, you know what I mean? Like

Morag Gamble (19:24.308)
Yeah.

Clytie (19:24.665)
You don't realise that until you actually have that really close connection.

Morag Gamble (19:28.598)
No, and you know, this issue that you're talking about with the contamination of it, because before you mentioned the plastics, I was actually going to ask you about what you've investigated about the quality of the compost that comes out the other end. So the plastics is one, but the other is about the life in it. Like, you know, what have you noticed in terms of the difference between the community compost or the industrial compost? And I only...

Clytie (19:46.062)
Uh huh, yes.

Morag Gamble (19:56.134)
know from looking at say on the university campus here on the Sunshine Coast that it wasn't it wasn't compost it was something else it was smelt different it felt different it did different things in the garden and you actually had to then compost it before you could use it in the community gardens at the university.

Clytie (20:10.63)
Yeah.

Clytie (20:20.177)
Oh, is that one of those dehydration ones? Or? Yeah.

Morag Gamble (20:23.65)
It was like a barrel system, but they put, I think they were still working at how to use it. Came out at very high pH and had probably way too much of all the cardboard cups and things and not enough food scraps. And yeah, the balance wasn't quite set, but they're still working on it. Yeah.

Clytie (20:33.029)
Right. Yeah, yeah.

Clytie (20:39.481)
Yeah, well, I mean, one thing that, you know, before going back to that, the similarities between all the different community composting things, one thing I really saw was that it's all, it's handmade, like, so it's a bit like the, you know, that's like handmade shoe versus a factory-made shoe, you know, like the difference is amazing and literally

Morag Gamble (20:54.082)
Yeah.

Morag Gamble (20:57.986)
Crafted compost.

Yeah, yeah.

Clytie (21:08.677)
And I know, because I'm involved in a community compost hub myself, we handpick the little fruit stickers out, you know, like every little imperfection comes out of there. And, you know, and we're smelling it. We're like literally hand creating this beautiful product. And so the output is incredible. It's really high quality. It's so full of life. And it's really a beautiful product. Yeah.

Morag Gamble (21:15.632)
Thank you.

Morag Gamble (21:33.995)
Yeah.

Morag Gamble (21:38.482)
Yeah, yeah, I think there's a, and then we haven't talked about household compost. So I wonder, like, where in your work as a, as in waste education and behavioral change, have you noticed that household, like how are people responding to the household compost, as opposed to the community compost people do both when they're involved? Like, what are you noticing in that space?

Clytie (21:46.96)
Mm.

Clytie (22:05.393)
Well, like when they look at the waste hierarchy, the most preferred thing is to do something in terms of food waste, whatever, is obviously to avoid food waste to start with. And that's in itself is a whole thing. Like they say that one in five shopping bags of food that people buy is wasted in Australia. And so...

That's a pretty shocking amount of food. And apparently, you know, this was a few years ago, but I'm sure it's probably hasn't changed that much. The amount that on a monetary level that Australians waste in food, if we put a monetary figure on, I think it's about twice the amount that we spend on overseas aid.

Morag Gamble (23:00.127)
Really?

Clytie (23:00.309)
Yeah, yeah. So, you know, when you think about it like that, like, it's things like, I mean, we have no trouble, again, it's like that lemon tree thing, because they don't have to go to any trouble really, apart from go to the shop to buy the stuff. And it is relatively cheap. We just buy too much, we don't eat it, it goes off in the fridge, we don't store it properly.

we don't preserve all those things. There's lots of reasons why food's wasted. And it's not just in the household. It's at the farm. It's in the transport. It's in the supermarket, blah, blah. But once you try and deal with that first, try not to waste any food at all, then the next thing is to try and give it its highest value. So obviously if there is anything to feed it to animals or whatever, and then we get into

composting. Composting is a type of recycling. So that's actually third down on the list. That's why people when they're talking about recycling they say, oh it's okay, it's recyclable. No, no, because that still uses a lot of energy and water and everything and the best thing to do is either not buy it to start with or if you must buy it, reuse it or remanufacture it or re whatever it before it gets to that recycling stage. So yeah, compost falls into that category as well.

Morag Gamble (24:18.848)
Yeah.

Clytie (24:24.641)
Sorry, I forgot where we were. We're down a bit of a rabbit hole.

Morag Gamble (24:26.03)
I know I was just gonna I was asking you about the relationship with household composting. And yeah.

Clytie (24:32.065)
Yes, yes, yes. So I guess in terms of that, like home, if you're going to break down the types of composting, home composting is considered the top priority because it's local, because you're not driving anywhere basically. But I think if you can walk to your compost, community compost hub, then that is absolutely on par. If you have to drive there, then that's...

drops it down in the hierarchy. But local is always the priority. And then once you get past community composting, then that is where the next priority would be to have something like a curbside collection. Because that still has to get trucked off somewhere. So it's still emissions, producing emissions. And then the next one down from that is creating energy from that.

Morag Gamble (25:09.537)
Yeah.

Morag Gamble (25:14.975)
Yeah.

Clytie (25:19.725)
like in what I talked about with what they're doing in New York, that's even less because at least with the compost that's like an improvement of the product that can be used for farming. Whereas once you get into creating energy from it, that's not so good use of it. And then the next level down is disposal. Yeah.

Morag Gamble (25:39.754)
Yeah, I love this hierarchy that you create because it really does help you to say like, the closer we bring it back home, the more that we create that the smaller circle before we get into those larger circles, then there's a lot more sort of waste that just emanates from that system. I wonder, I mean, do you happen to have any figures of how much food is wasted at those different stages? Like how much gets wasted in farm? How much is wasted in transportation or at the shop or home? Like,

Clytie (25:48.049)
Yeah.

Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

Clytie (26:05.765)
Yeah, I don't know, don't have them off-line, but I can send it to you. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Morag Gamble (26:07.114)
I've really been curious to know if there was any studies done on that.

Yeah, yeah, that'd be really interesting. Yeah. So, so I wanted to tap into some of your investigations and the inspirations of what you discovered while you're overseas, because I know you went to some, you know, quite a variety of different types of projects from community-based ones. I even thought I saw something in there about composting in prisons, restaurants. So, where have you, where have you seen some of those innovations? And I think, I think this is

Clytie (26:35.021)
Yeah, yeah, that was incredible. Yeah.

Morag Gamble (26:42.306)
You know, there's community compost down our street, but there's also institutional composting. I was chatting to my daughter who's now down at ANU at the University of Canberra and just sort of poking her and her friends the other day saying, how about you start, you know, exploring how you could get compost like this. All the campus accommodations, there's all the restaurants, there's all the everything, none of it is composted.

Clytie (27:05.753)
Yeah, yeah, I know. I know. Actually, I went, I saw a webinar the other day about, it's actually in Seattle, it's a zoo in Seattle, and they have, they compost all their, all the manure from the animals on site. And you know, like, there's no reason why all schools, all zoos, all...

shopping centres, everything, could have some form of composting on site. And then we wouldn't need to be trucking it out miles. I mean, there's some great things like there's a company in ACT called Go Terra, and they have black soldier fly larvae inside this shipping container. And it's all managed by AI that keeps it the right temperature and sort of humidity level and everything. And the food goes in one end, the food waste goes in one end.

black soldier fly larvae eat it and then they harvest it at a certain point and become pet food. So yeah, and that could fit in a car park of a shopping centre. You know, it's just the size of a shipping container.

Morag Gamble (28:11.566)
Amazing. Yay.

Well, actually, a while ago, one of the students of the Permaculture Educators Program took me to, they worked as a sustainability officer at IKEA in North Lake, just north of where you are. And they have these composting systems out the back. And as well as doing it for all of the IKEA kitchens, they're also offering it to the local shops in that part of that big complex too, which I thought was absolutely fantastic.

Clytie (28:32.477)
Fantastic.

Clytie (28:39.057)
Yeah, that's great.

I must go and have a look at that. I didn't know about that yet.

Morag Gamble (28:45.074)
It just shows how possible it is and that idea of that localizing rather than taking it from the whole city to a spot, actually having it, you know, so much space in and around areas where we can be doing this. So tell me about the prison one. I'd love to hear about that.

Clytie (28:56.525)
Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, well that was amazing. And that was a prison in Washington state, south of Seattle. And they started off a few years ago in a different prison, but it's just been moved. So it was sort of not as up and running as it previously had been, but it was still very impressive. And they, it's only about five

prisoners, plus one very inspired guard, prison guard, who managed this program. And the prisoners involved in it called compost technicians. They're not, so that's, you know, there's a fair amount of sort of authority and pride that comes with that. And these are people who, you know, some of them have committed fairly serious crimes and some of them are in for a really, really long time.

And I actually saw a Ted talk about one person, this was a few years ago, involved in it. And he was in for life, and I believe that meant he was never getting out. And so he didn't have any meaning in his life, none at all. He just lived to be in prison until the day he would die. And there was, he couldn't even kill himself if he wanted to, because they stop you from doing that too. So it's hard to imagine living like that with no function, no reason, no...

You know, you're just being kept alive, basically. And then they started this composting program and they started using worm farms to process all the waste from the prison. And then he became aware of the impact that had on reducing climate change. And then they started to build little worm farms and donate them with worms to schools, to local schools. And suddenly he had a function in society. Like he knew he was doing

something really good for the world. And that's so restorative for people. Actually, do you mind if I read you a quote from a prisoner who, this is one of the people that I met.

Morag Gamble (31:05.142)
Oh, please.

Clytie (31:16.822)
I think he had, you know, and most prisoners have a difficult early life, as did he. Sorry, I just gotta find it.

Clytie (31:33.611)
Um, he said.

At one point in my life, society was ready to throw me away for good, but something beautiful and unintended happened. The way in which people responsibly get rid of food waste has not only showed me how to save the world, it has returned my humanity and self-worth and given me a clear path for a career upon release. And it has definitely repurposed me as a human being and given me a way to redemption.

Morag Gamble (32:03.338)
Wow, that gives me goosebumps hearing that.

Clytie (32:03.817)
It's beautiful. I know. Yeah. And these guys that I met, they were so lovely. You know, they were, they called themselves environmentalists because they knew that's what they were doing. And it was really interesting because they were talking about how the other prisoners have accepted or not accepted what they're doing. And so they actually take all the waste from the chow hall, which is where the prisoners eat together.

and they use the Bukashi system and then it goes into the worm farms for further processing. A lot of the prisoners refused to add their scraps to the system and then when they sort of drilled down into it they found out that the prisoners realised that they were actually saving the prison money because they were reducing their waste cost to the prison and they thought

I don't want to save the prison money. They're keeping me here. Why should I do that? So then it took a bit of a campaign from these compost technicians to talk to them and say, hey, you're making the world better for your kids. You know, you're reducing climate change, blah, blah. And they really explained about the good part of it and what they're doing. And then that changed the whole thing.

Morag Gamble (33:03.418)
Oh.

Clytie (33:27.057)
So that was really interesting. And I thought that was quite interesting, even just from a council point of view too, because I know that a lot of people don't trust council and a lot of people don't believe that council recycles. You know, there's this myth that goes around constantly that it all just ends up in landfill anyway. And it isn't true, like it is recycled. And because people don't trust council.

That's why they just throw any old thing in any old bin. And that's how we end up with a lot of contamination in bins and things not getting recycled that could have been recycled and so on and so forth. And so council struggles with that trust issue all the time. And that's why, again, I feel that community composting really has a part to play in that, because it's not council, it's just people, real people doing that real thing.

Morag Gamble (33:56.513)
Yeah.

Morag Gamble (34:02.705)
Mm.

Morag Gamble (34:10.571)
you

Morag Gamble (34:15.478)
your neighbors. Yep. Yeah. And I think there's something that sort of come out of what you've just said too is this, there's kind of this need for champions. You know, people who will step forward with a little bit of courage just to activate something and it's that, that which hold us. Doesn't matter whether it's in a prison or in a community composting system having a champion or a group of champions who can hold that. And then...

find a way to explain it in a local way that makes sense. It's like, it makes sense in different places for different reasons. And so that education piece, I think is really important. You probably saw lots of different community education. I wonder whether there was some really inspiring other community education in composting that you saw on your expedition.

Clytie (34:52.197)
Yeah, that's right.

Yes, exactly. Yeah.

Clytie (35:10.885)
Yeah, well, I mean, another one, which was also in Seattle, was this beautiful community garden called Danny Wu Community Garden, which was like a very, it's honestly like walking into a community garden in China or something. It was just incredible. It's on very steep hill and all these structures made of bamboo, but anything that they could find bed heads and string from

some packaging or you know some wire from something really creatively put together and it was like it was a very interesting space to walk around and it was the gardeners there are elder Asian immigrants mostly and so just growing culturally appropriate food for their diets and a lot of them haven't got English or very little English but these

young people that I met have this, they've started this little thing called Restaurant to Garden. So they're just collecting the scraps from a few local restaurants and then using a pukashi system and a compost system, turning it into compost for the for the gardeners to use in the community garden. And it's just a small little group of people but they're so dedicated and so passionate about it.

And so these three women actually, three young women, professional women, they've all got full on careers and highly educated people spend every Saturday turning this compost and giving it to their elders and to grow food. And they get local, sorry, they encourage young students from the local university to come and help. And so they actually engage

students to come and they usually come for a few weeks and then a new lot will come through. But the kind of education that they're providing is not what anyone would recognise as education because it's just good fun. Like they're just having a laugh, telling jokes, you know, learning how to create compost and not only how to but why and seeing that intergenerational connection and that intercultural connection.

Morag Gamble (37:32.193)
Yeah.

Clytie (37:37.893)
And then the restaurants that they collect the food from gives them a beautiful lunch for them to eat, you know, for free. And so it's a real social thing.

Morag Gamble (37:45.578)
Yeah, yeah. And you know, they're learning way more than learning how to compost. That's for sure. You know, how to activate communities and create that. Yeah. Like you were saying that people care dimension of permaculture, which I think is, is so incredibly valuable that on a technical point of how this system works. And because I think it's probably something that's really important for a lot of communities. What is, what is the way that communities get a restaurant to collect their waste? How do they collect?

Clytie (37:50.265)
Yeah.

Clytie (37:56.089)
Yeah, yeah, it's so cool. Yeah.

Morag Gamble (38:14.03)
waste? Is it like in a bucket? Do they do, you know, how do they get them to separate? You know, like is there an education on the restaurant side?

Clytie (38:16.077)
Yeah, and it's really...

Clytie (38:21.641)
Oh yeah, I think there is and they probably because they it's again it's that hand handmade part of it. So they and it's very inefficient the whole thing's very inefficient like incredible but they just take these buckets like in a little army just walk down to the restaurants I guess they swap them out and then bring it back but then they've got that opportunity to talk to them maybe they can say oh last time you

accidentally put in the whatever. Can you not do that again? You know, because they've got that relationship. So it's very personalised, very one on one.

Morag Gamble (38:56.534)
Yeah.

This is really interesting though what you're saying. It's not very efficient and I think somehow...

The efficiency factor that we put onto everything has actually thwarted a lot of our possibilities for creating really rich weave of solutions that are gonna help us to address the climate crisis. We kind of look for the most efficient silver bullet solution, which then misses all the rich tapestry of everything else, which actually makes it land and work in so many different ways and make it be something that everyone wants to be part of.

Clytie (39:18.546)
Yeah.

Clytie (39:21.842)
Yes.

Clytie (39:27.269)
is important.

Clytie (39:32.441)
Yeah, totally. Yeah, I totally agree. Yeah. But but on the on the point of efficiency, though, I did see one, which was amazing, although I didn't see it in action. But I went to the site. It's a place in New York called Red Hook Community Garden. Well, and they have a compost site next to it, which and I can send you the link as well. There's this incredible video that a previous member of that.

who actually set up the compost hub. He was honestly, it was choreography. And he's created this video called How to Walk Turn a Windrow. And he talks a lot about the benefit of community composting. And he's in the video, he said, people say to me, how many people does it take you to run this community composting? And he says, oh, quite a lot, maybe 20. And they go, oh, that's terrible.

And he says, no, it's wonderful. You know, but he's got this incredible choreo, like the way that they turn the compost in such a way that nobody walks into each other, nobody double, you know, this person speaks that, well, that speaks that, and it's incredible. Yeah, so I'll send you that video. Yeah.

Morag Gamble (40:45.154)
dance. It's so nice.

Morag Gamble (40:50.11)
Yeah, that would be fantastic. That's wonderful. And they're just like into a completely different zone, which is something that's quite iconic in anyone who's ever learned anything about permaculture is the chinampas. And so you went down there in Mexico. Yeah, can you talk about your experience down in that part of the world and what's going on with community composting in Mexico?

Clytie (41:05.896)
Yeah.

Clytie (41:13.509)
Yeah, well, this part, it's actually pretty much just on the outskirts of Mexico City. And it's because the whole of Mexico City used to be a big lake that was sort of managed by the very ancient Aztec cultures to for farming. And so they actually created these wetlands, sort of constructed wetlands out of the

organic matter that they produced and then the silt from the bottom of the lake. Really fertile, rich growing medium and that fed them all very handsomely. But then I think when the Spanish took over they ended up filling in the whole lake and just and kind of destroyed most of those chinampas which were the that's the name of that type of

And, but there are still some there. And it's really interesting because that ancient farming method is still going in some cases. A lot of them are getting ruined or whatever, but there is, it has been made a UNESCO World Heritage Site with the hope that it might be sort of looked after and expanded. But there's a community garden compost hub

very alternative site in the centre of Mexico City that collects scraps, food scraps from people and then takes it to Xochimilco, is the name of the area, for turning back into the soil for this ancient technique.

Morag Gamble (43:01.23)
So it's a really interesting dilemma, really, isn't it? The cities like Mexico City and a lot of cities in the South and rapidly expanding informal city edges, how waste is managed and particularly how waste food. And so did you hear or see much of that kind of, maybe hyper-local,

circular systems of creating gardens and what did you notice there? Because I think what we see in those places can be so beneficial in so many different cities.

Clytie (43:35.002)
Yeah.

Clytie (43:41.497)
Yeah, it's interesting. Well, one thing I noticed, and this is the same in Cuba too, that because, you know, there's still a lot, things aren't so automated. So there's a lot of hand sweeping of footpaths and different things like that. And a lot of, and I have very broken Spanish, I tried to get as much as I could, but it was a bit limited. But I did speak to a few,

local street organic based collection people getting around in either with little hand trolleys or small trucks. So they're because you know there's lots of big old trees in Mexico City dropping leaves all the time so they're constantly going around sweeping up the leaves and taking it off and they tell me it's going somewhere for composting. And again because that's done all by hand they're picking up the plastic so that plastic's not ending up

in that mix. You know so again that's sort of I feel like we always throw the baby out with the bath water unless we unless our street sweepers have a way to somehow divert the plastic out of it I don't know maybe we do. You know it ends up a waste product rather than a resource.

Morag Gamble (44:59.669)
Yeah.

Morag Gamble (45:03.258)
Yeah, yeah, that's come through really strongly in our conversation. And I wonder, therefore, what are some of the key recommendations that you've come back, like you synthesized all of this and, you know, been exposed to so many different examples and contexts in your adventures. Coming back home here to Australia and coming home back, particularly to this.

part of the world, we're sort of not far from each other, we're only a couple of hours away from each other. What are the kind of recommendations that you're making to council or to other levels of government for that matter about the kinds of shifts and changes that you feel are going to actually address climate change? All the different things that we're talking about through our addressing food waste.

Clytie (45:53.273)
Yeah, well I think governments generally in Australia are rapidly trying to move towards circular economy, transitioning to a circular economy. But it's, I think my recommendation is to not try and squeeze business as usual into the circular economy. And it really is quite a radical shift.

And so it does mean viewing things quite differently. And part of circular economy includes the social element. And so it's not just products. And I think people often only look at circular economy in terms of the product, but incorporating things like...

Morag Gamble (46:24.406)
Here it is.

Clytie (46:44.089)
social good, social wellbeing, and all of that is just as crucial. Because like you said, if it's not something that people want to know about or want to participate in, it's not going to work. So you know, I think that is a really important way to look at it. And that really comes down to, and it's quite a simple thing when you look at it in terms of organics.

We're at a bit of a crossroad really because you know FOGO's coming in around the country in a big way but it's not necessarily suitable in all places especially regional places, remote places and even cities to a degree but we'll see what happens in that space I suppose.

Morag Gamble (47:31.019)
Yeah.

Clytie (47:33.125)
But yeah, I guess to not throw the baby out with the bathwater and not forget that even though communities is kind of messy, it is. Of course it is. But that's just the way it is. And we have to work out a way to measure, to quantify and to value those aspects of waste management.

Morag Gamble (47:56.01)
Yeah, yeah. So you're organising a new network around this. Do you wanna tell us a bit about that and how people can find out more?

Clytie (48:06.489)
Yes, yes, so very exciting. I met up with some like-minded people and who are also crazy about the possibility that community composting offers to Australia. And together we've established a new national organisation to represent community composting. And it's called Local, L-O-C-C-A-L. That stands for Local Community Compost Alliance. So...

Morag Gamble (48:34.858)
Right, fantastic, love it.

Clytie (48:36.077)
Yeah, the idea is to bring community composters from all over Australia together to learn from each other, to advocate, to build on what each of us are already doing and to be able to speak to government, to be able to participate in managing organic waste as a significant sector.

And community composting includes, it's not just community compost hubs, it includes anyone involved in school gardening, any sort of on-site composting, basically just localised composting. Even businesses that do that on a local level, even somebody who just composts their neighbour's waste, even if they just take one other person, that's community composting.

Morag Gamble (49:27.64)
Yeah.

Clytie (49:28.301)
Even backyard composting really is community composting because you're local, you're keeping it local, you're keeping all those resources local. So we're really keen to hear from everybody and we've set up a survey and the idea is that we're asking people to tell us what they're doing so we can sort of form a bit of an understanding or a bit of a mapping of what's going on. And...

what they need, like how could an organisation help them? What would be, what would such an organisation be of use to them? So that's, we really wanna hear back from as many people as possible.

Morag Gamble (50:07.478)
Right, excellent. So we're gonna put the link to that organisation and survey in the show notes. So if anyone is doing that or interesting in getting involved, find that link and get back to Clytie with that. That would be amazing.

Clytie (50:17.989)
Yeah, that would be great.

It's yeah loccal.org, local.org. Just remember the double C, a community compost. Yeah.

Morag Gamble (50:25.486)
Great.

The double C, yeah, that's fantastic. Yeah, I think that's so important, isn't it? It's about finding ways that we can support each other to do it because, you know, often you can feel isolated in your local hyper-local projects, but when you go, oh, actually, it is actually something much larger than myself, it's not just something that's happening in my place, it's happening across the city, it's happening across the country. Oh, in fact, it's actually happening across the world as well and really understanding and seeing.

Clytie (50:53.401)
Yeah. And there's so many good ideas out there too. You know?

Morag Gamble (50:57.61)
Yeah, and you know the things that happen because of that when you come together with people who are caring about that aspect and you find allies to do other things, you know, a crop swap or a seed exchange or a you know whatever it might be and you start to have you build a relationship so that you know and I think we saw this a lot too during the pandemic when there was more conversation happening locally that

Clytie (51:03.378)
Yeah.

Clytie (51:09.09)
Yeah. Well, that's it.

Yes.

Morag Gamble (51:23.914)
people sort of stepped up to support each other, became more resilient and robust in their local communities. And this, I think, community composting is ticking so many boxes in terms of, it's ecological, it's social, it's economic, all of those things, gosh, when you say those three things, it just feels like it diminishes it so much. It's this rich, rich tapestry of things that happen when you get together.

Clytie (51:41.555)
Hmm.

Clytie (51:52.985)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Morag Gamble (51:53.07)
to do something really meaningful. Well thank you. And I highly recommend everyone who's listening to download the report and check out all the amazing places for inspiration of what you could possibly do, whether it be in your organization or your school or your local community neighborhood. There's so much inspiration there. Thank you so much for coming on the show today, Clytie and sharing your inspiration. So, you know,

I think the call to action is really just get out and get involved in this in some way or other, support. Yeah. Is there anything else in particular like... Do the survey. Yes, do the survey. All right. Well, thank you so much and I wish you all the best with local and yeah, love to stay in touch with that. Yeah. Thank you.

Clytie (52:28.857)
Yeah. And sign up for this, do the survey.

Clytie (52:41.385)
Thank you.