So what exactly is composting all about?

I spend my afternoons knee-deep in rotting fruits and vegetables. I’m quite friendly with maggots, worms, and other creepy-crawlies that you’ve probably never even heard of. I chase off swarms of flies reminiscent of the Amityville Horror. It’s not that bad; I’d even go so far as to say that I have fun doing it.

…No, really.

I’m half of Washington College’s formidable composting duo. Every weekday afternoon, Donna and I head out to Buildings and Grounds to work on the compost pile. When we get there, there are two or three trash cans waiting for us in front of the compost pile. The bins are filled with food waste from the dining hall. We drag them over and dump them on top of the heap. Then, we use our shovels to break the food into smaller pieces so it will decompose faster. Doing this also helps mix the new waste into the compost. When we’re finished, we cover the pile with dead leaves and woodchips and rinse out the trash cans.

I’ve heard that a lot of students on campus aren’t even aware of the composting program. I’m going to give you updates on our progress about once a week so you can stay informed about the environmental efforts on campus. But first of all, what is compost, and why is it important?



Compost, once it is complete, is an excellent natural fertilizer. It’s brown, crumbly, and doesn’t seem all that different from fertile soil. Compost is easy to make at home. It’s largely food waste, with dry materials, such as leaves, added to improve the chemical ratio. It needs moisture and air to decompose properly. All kinds of creatures find compost piles to be lovely places to live. If you were to dig into our pile here, you would find maggots, worms, and all kinds of other bugs that help decompose the food and make the compost more fertile. The process eventually concludes with mature compost- the familiar soil-like substance you might use to fertilize your houseplants.

But why compost in the first place? Why deal with all the rotting food and bugs? Is it really worth it? The answer is yes. First of all, compost saves space in landfills. America is quickly running out of space for landfills, and with the amount of trash we produce, this is a pretty serious problem. While food is biodegradable, landfills are terrible places for decomposition. The conditions aren’t survivable for all the friendly critters that live in a backyard compost pile. Oxygen can’t get to the trash that sits in landfills. The minimal decomposition that does take place in landfills actually creates explosive methane gas- something that is far more undesirable than a few maggots.

A compost pile has access to oxygen and water, making it an ideal environment for the bugs that aid in decomposition. Mature compost is nutrient-rich and chemically balanced, making it an excellent fertilizer. Some scientists even believe that the heat produced by a compost pile could even one day be used to heat homes!

While it is clear that a compost pile is far superior to a landfill, don’t just throw all trash into a compost pile. There are very specific guidelines about what belongs in a compost pile and what doesn’t. Of course, anything that is non-biodegradable is out. No matter how hard you try, you won’t be able to turn a plastic bag into compost. Food waste and paper, however, make excellent additions to a compost pile. Avoid composting animal products, such as meat, eggs, and dairy, because they will attract rats and smell really bad. Also avoid things that have been treated with pesticides because they will harm the bugs in the compost pile, and eventually the plants that receive the compost as fertilizer.

Now that you know the basics of composting, you might be interested to learn more about the program here at Washington College. Check back for weekly progress updates!

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Food Inc

I love this town.

No, I really do. Whenever there is a need, the entire town comes together to support that need. And the need last night was to support Colchester Farm, CSA, the place where so many of us get our food from June to October. The evening started with a cocktail hour, featuring delicious local foods (I went back for the roasted pepper ravioli several times), most of it made by local chefs, including Kent County High School, and several of the Colchester Farm board members. This was followed by a showing of Food, Inc., which, if you haven’t seen yet, you should. Soon.

I wanted to start by praising our town though- we’ve kind of taken food on as our issue, for whatever reason. Possibly its just because we have access to so many wonderful local foods, grown by so many wonderful people who are such a part of the community. We’re proud of our food, proud of the fact that we’re a town in the so called middle of nowhere, which in reality is the middle of a cornucopia of delicious things to eat. And so fortunately we don’t constantly have to look the full brunt of the realities of the industrial food system right in the eye. We at least have other options.

So in some ways Food, Inc. didn’t have much to do with Chestertown. But in others, it hit a point very close to home. Most of the farming done on the Eastern Shore is in commodity crops- corn, grain, soybeans- and most of it goes to feed chickens down on the lower shore. Actually, there are plenty of chickens up this way too. If you sit out on 213 late, late at night you can watch the empty trucks go north toward Galena, and if you wait long enough, you can watch them come back again, full of chickens on their way to the slaughterhouse.

The movie isn’t for the faint of heart. If you don’t want to see the inside of a chicken house (and I have to say, this was a pretty decent chicken house, as far as they go- there were no cages and it actually had windows), don’t watch this movie. If you want to continue to eat industrial food completely unawares of what you’re putting in your body, of the horrors you’re supporting by eating that cheap chicken, don’t watch this movie. But if you’re interested in what plagues our food system- what plagues us, right here, on the Eastern Shore, then watch this movie.

I’ve talked so much about what’s wrong with the food system on this blog that I don’t currently feel the need to reiterate. The movie didn’t reveal anything to me that I didn’t know- but I’ve also made it my life’s work to take on the industrial food system, so I’d be curious to hear the reaction of someone who actually (for some reason?) still eats fast food. But the movie made a good point- not only do most people not know what’s going on behind the scenes in the places their food comes from, they’re not allowed to know.

If you want to trace your food back to the source, good luck to you. I hope you have a lot of time and a lot of money. We aren’t allowed to see inside those chicken houses- we definitely aren’t allowed to see inside the slaughterhouses. If we were- as sustainable farmer Joel Salatin says in the movie- our food system would be something rather different. That’s why he slaughters his chickens in an open sided shed, and invites all the people who buy food from his farm to come and watch and participate.

There was also a strong theme of better regulations for food in the movie. But at the same time, a lot of us are struggling locally to be able to get access to local meats and dairy because of the overbearing regulations of the state of MD. The contradiction came up during the Q&A, but I personally don’t think it’s a contradiction at all. I believe they even said, in the movie, that when you’re selling to a place like WalMart you need those regulations, you need to have had your food inspected and carefully labeled and have the assurance that it doesn’t contain E. coli, because the consumer has no other way of knowing. The shopper at WalMart can’t go out to the farm and meet the farmer and take a look around, because likely the farm is on the other side of the world- and likely the process that food item took to get from that farm to the WalMart would be more than enough to stop the consumer buying the item, anyway.

But in the case of local foods, you have the option of seeing what you’re buying produced first hand. Not everyone wants to watch their chickens get slaughtered- but when I talked to the guy who I plan to get chicken from last night, he invited me right on out to the farm to meet the chickens, allowing me to feel a little bit better about consuming meat. Locally, it really is a case of buyer beware- if you choose to buy locally, you are responsible for checking out the person you are buying from, not USDA. A farmer last night pointed out that this is a big risk for farmers- they could easily get sued- but I’ve heard a great suggestion that would solve that problem all around. What if we were allowed to opt out of the conventional food system? What if, as we do in so many other areas of our life, we were allowed to sign a waiver that said, we don’t want to participate in the conventional food system, thanks so much, and we hereby take responsibility for our food choices upon ourselves, swearing never to sue our local farmers, because we’re part of a community, and its our responsibility as well as theirs to double check on the process and make sure our food is safe?

Can you imagine what WalMart would say to that?

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The End of the Long Summer

So last night the environmental author Dianne Dumanoski gave a talk at the college. If you missed it, and I bet you did, then you missed quite a discussion. You can read all about her book, The End of the Long Summer, over at her website, www.diannedumanoski.com.

Dumanoski started by pointing out a fundamental flaw of the environmental movement, and one I’ve pointed out several times on this blog. We aren’t particularly honest with ourselves when we discuss our goals, if we discuss them at all. We talk about saving the planet, but this is an act of pure hubris- the planet will get on just fine if there’s climate change. There has been climate change many times in the past, and species have died back and rebounded in new and astounding ways.

What we’re really doing is saving the planet so we can still live on it. We can talk about saving whales and trees and rare species of butterfly, but let’s face it, we’re really talking about saving ourselves. There’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing immoral about wanting to preserve your own species so your potential grandchildren can keep on trucking. Well, metaphorically- trucks may be extinct by then. But you get the idea.

In her book, and in her talk, she attempts to look beyond the symptoms of “planetary distress” to the actual cause. It was a refreshing talk in that she didn’t just ramble on about climate change- a frequent topic, among lecturers, and one she certainly brought up- but addressed the likelihood that we are in fact actually past the point of no return. Climate change, according to most research, is now inevitable. There’s no going back. We can mitigate the effects of climate change, certainly, and so there’s no reason to throw our hands up in despair and stop pursuing cleaner energy sources and things of that nature. But we also have to think beyond those mitigating efforts. If climate change is indeed upon (and it seems that it is- it is only the when and where and to what extent that are up for debate), our planning should be for how we handle the changes that will occur.

This isn’t a momentous idea. Most people, with only a cursory knowledge of human history, will agree that things change. Things aren’t the same now as they were 100 years ago. And yet we tend to act as if things are never going to change. Our economy is based on this notion of exponential growth, without taking into account that at some point there will be no more possibility of growth- we live in a limited environment (presuming we don’t expand into space, and the very thought makes me roll my eyes). Our food system is based on fossil fuels. Our communications (and most of our economy) are all based on a very fragile system that could fall apart with a few well placed keystrokes. And our heating and cooling is all based on electricity, as is our access to water. If these things are taken away- if something were to happen to disrupt public water systems, for example- would any of us know what to do?

These things are rarely taken into account. Dumanoski argues that we’re asking the wrong questions. We’re trying to “green the status quo”, a phrase that I love, because it so accurately describes efforts to find a technological fix for everything. On one of the green blogs I subscribe to, I am daily barraged with tips on “greening” everything from hair dryers to toothpicks to vacations to gym memberships. But there the question of whether we should continue to pursue all these avenues is never, not a once, brought into light.

The common law among environmentalists is that we can never, EVER, mention the dirty words “maybe we should just give that up.” No, we cannot question consumption. We can never, god forbid, question the mandate of constant economic growth, or the desire of people to own private jets. People will never subscribe to environmentalism if we’re so negative.

But Dumanoski’s call to action is not for us all to go around crying that the sky is falling. Rather, she simply suggests we be honest with ourselves, that we in fact must be honest with ourselves, if we hope to survive as a species. If we don’t prepare for climate change, how can we possibly face it? Wouldn’t the worst catastrophe be if climate change occurred, and very abruptly as scientists are predicting, and we all just stood there with a big “oh [insert four letter word here]” sketched on our faces?

She pointed out that the answers are in fact just in front of our faces. The planet organizes things in such a way as to be resilient to catastrophe. There are multiple species doing the same job, or similar, so that if one is killed off there are others to take their place. The college does this as an emergency planning measure- if one person is out, we are all required to have a second and third person trained to do our jobs so things don’t come to a grinding halt. Ecosystems are also modular- connected, somewhat, but not to the point where if one collapsed there would necessarily be a chain reaction wiping out all the others. But we in our global society are all very specialized- and all very connected- so that if oil reserves run out, for example, pretty much all of us are screwed. But that’s a topic I intend to write more about later.

During the Q&A the topic of hope came up- what is there to give us hope that we can face the momentous task of preparing for climate change, when we neither know when it’s going to occur or what form it’s going to take? Dumanoski responded that we can’t have hope unless it’s honest- unless we are willing to face the facts about what lies ahead, and realize that the “long summer” we’ve enjoyed will not and cannot last forever. She suggests large scale social reorganization as one of the only ways of becoming more adaptable to change- which is of course one of the things our society is most resistant to. She also pointed out that we’re currently educating for a future that doesn’t exist, and this is key. Even here at the college we’re still educating under the assumption that things will be more or less the same down the line when our students are facing the real world.

I think she’s partially right about the honesty- we absolutely have to be honest about what’s ahead. There is far too much unfounded optimism running around where “saving the environment” is concerned- and far too much despair. But I think we have something to be optimistic about. From what I’ve seen, when faced with the honest truth, most humans are able to step up to the challenge. When given a problem and asked to solve it, we have the creative capacity to find solutions- if only we are taught that we do have that capacity within ourselves, if only we are educated to approach problems with enthusiasm and an eye for the experimental, the untried path, the unconventional- and that it doesn’t take experts to save the planet for people, but people with the passion and dedication to be entirely honest with themselves and each other, and jump off that ledge into an unknown future armed with just their wits and one another.

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Local Food Week!

In ye old Dining Barn. Oops, I mean, the Dining Pavilion.

This week Dining Services does a toast to local foods, so many of the things on the menu will be brought to you straight from Kent County farms. At the moment the dining hall doesn't seem to be labeling the things that are local to distinguish them from those that are not, but trust me, they are there.

Have you noticed the quality of the food seems to be going up, as well? There were actually three things I could eat when I popped in for lunch last week and they were all delicious. The Dining Hall has not had a good history in making food for vegetarians, but that was a pleasant surprise. Today we were back to slightly above normal, however.

In other news, we are now over on facebook as well, so if you are a mysterious reader of George Goes Green and are somehow not friends with me on facebook, get yourself on over there and become a fan.

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Linkage

Some links to tide you over until the wave of busy-ness ends and I can write proper posts again.

Verizon Sponsors Anti-Energy Bill Event

Man Builds Beautiful Houses Out of Trash

France Introduces Carbon Tax

iPhone Apps that help you save the environment

Top Ten Eco-Friendly Things to Bring to College

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