[00:00:00] Crystal: I am Crystal DiMiceli and welcome to the Forces for Nature Show. Do you find yourself overwhelmed with all the doom and gloom you hero of these days? Do you feel like you as just one person, can’t really make a difference? Forces for nature cuts through that negativity? In each episode, I speak to someone doing great things in sustainability, conservation, or animal related issues.

We talk through the problem, they’re addressing the solution They have found how. To you and we leave you with practical action tips so that you too can become a force for nature.

Today’s guests are Michelle and Java Bradley, the founders of Java’s Compost. I’ve been wanting to do an episode on composting for a while now because what we do with our food has some of the biggest impacts in our fight against climate. But composting can be a little intimidating and confusing on how to start.

Michelle and Java offer some great insights as to why this is so important and how it can be a lot easier than you would assume, even for those who live in apartments.

Hi, Michelle and Java. Thank you so much for joining me on Forces for Nature. It’s so great to have you.

[00:01:22] Michelle: Thank you for having us. Thank. So

[00:01:25] Crystal: to start, can you tell me what is compos.

[00:01:29] Java: Put it simply, it’s decomposed organic material. But I think the thing that distinguishes compost is the bacterial content as well.

Normally, like soil has percentages of minerals and oxygen and moisture, but very little organic matter. But compost is mostly organic matter. It holds. Moisture exceptionally well. It changes soil structure in a positive way. It also adds diversity in life to whole ecosystem. When you add it to soil, it also can suppress weeds.

It’s got a variety of positive qualities to it. There’s a range of applications for compost.

[00:02:07] Crystal: And when you say it’s organic matter, where does it come?

[00:02:10] Java: Popularly people a associated with things you typically find around dried leaves from the fall. And now obviously increasingly common is food scraps, woody materials, wood chips and shavings, coffee grounds, some recipes, you’ll have a mineral component as well.

Added something like that.

[00:02:30] Crystal: So you’re increasingly hearing about either community compost initiatives or that people should start composting at home. Why should we even bother composting? Why is it important?

[00:02:43] Michelle: One of the goals of our company is to try and get people to kinda rethink their food scraps as a resource and not trash, and that just changes some mind shift for people.

Once you see that food scraps can turn into this really beautiful, resourceful nutrient soil, it kind of motivates people to wanna do it. When you throw food in the trash, it either goes to one or two places. It’ll go to a landfill or it’ll go to an incinerator, and if it ends up in a landfill, it’s gonna get buried there and it won’t decompose.

A lot of people think, oh, I’m gonna throw my banana peel in the trash. It’s gonna go landfill buried. It’ll just decompose there. But that’s not the case because there’s no oxygen in that environment. So it pretty. Stays as it is. The head of lettuce will take five years to actually decompose in the landfill.

Cause there’s no microbial life there. There’s no oxygen, there’s no environment for the microbes to actually get there and break down the food scraps. And also another unfortunate ramification of that, it’s, it’s gonna create methane there, which is a greenhouse gas. Likewise, if you’re a trash stream ends up an incinerator, then you basically don’t get all of the benefit.

Of the food scraps cause you’re just burning them. And that actually is not efficient for the incinerator. It requires a lot more power when they have food scraps in the incinerator process cause there’s a lot of moisture. So it kinda slows down the whole system.

[00:03:58] Crystal: And I suppose with the incinerator, there’s also the CO2 emissions from that.

Yes. You either have the CO2 emissions from the incinerator or the methane emissions from the landfill. How much of our trash is actually organic

[00:04:12] Michelle: material? I think the STA is about 40% of municipal trash is actually compostable. That’s a really big number, and people’s household trash. You see, when you start composting in your personal household, you’ll see usually about half of what you throw away is.

In a way that’s

[00:04:28] Crystal: an encouraging statistic because that means that just by, instead of throwing it in the trash, throwing this stuff into compost, you could decrease what you’re sending to landfills and incinerators by 40 to 50%, which is a lot, and it’s a huge impact though one can have just from their own homes.

So it’s actually something.

[00:04:50] Java: It’s pretty tremendous. Yeah. You don’t realize how just in the short time that we’ve been in the industry, I think we’re close to 2 million pounds and this is all from the people that we service, and you realize that it, it is just one family at a time. It seems like a drop in the bucket, but you can make a bigger drop in the bucket.

I mean, there’s a long way to go, but it’s pretty neat.

[00:05:09] Crystal: How long have you guys been in business? So you run Java’s Compost in New Jersey, correct. How long have you been around and how did it even come to.

[00:05:21] Michelle: We’ve been around since two 16 and we started the first two years of the business doing basically a backyard composting service.

So one of the challenges of starting a business like ours is that there’s a lot of regulations around food scraps and how they get recycled. And in jersey you can only bring food scraps to a commercial compost facility. So I technically can’t go to your house and take your food scraps and bring them to my house to compost them.

Like let’s say you didn’t have a compost bin, but I did. I legally couldn’t do that. It has. Commercial site that has a specific license to deal with organics. So when we first started the business, we got so excited and hyped on composting. Cause I had watched this movie called Jerk the Movie, and it’s really just like eye opening for somebody who does not have any experience or knowledge.

Composting is why it matters. It shows you very clearly why it does matter. And one of the reasons why it does is cause we have been also just depleting our soils of the natural nutrients. From the way that we farmed. So I watched that movie. I was very resistant to composting before that. And then after I saw that, I was like, oh, this is no brainer.

We have to start composting. Java had this thought of like, oh, well if we start composting, maybe there are other people that wanna compost, maybe we can bring it to our community garden, which is where we were bringing our compost at that time. Cause we lived in an apartment and he said, let’s see if we can collect it from other people.

And the community garden wasn’t that interested in that. They felt like there could be some issues around it. We made this compost there and then people used it in their beds and somebody got sick and, but then that just got our, our wheels spinning and we were like, well, if we can’t do it there, how can we do it?

And I thought, well, maybe we could actually make it into a real business. And all kinda came from Java working at a school in Newark where Rooftop garden, there was actually garden. And so it was very robust and beautiful and that’s where he first learned about. That was kind of the origin of the business.

But then we did this backyard service because we didn’t have a commercial facility to bring scraps that we collected to. So we decided let’s keep everything in somebody’s backyard. We’ll set them up with this Tumblr, we’ll come, we’ll blr for them, and we’ll balance the Tumblr. Spin it and do all the things that you need to get the finished compost.

So we did that for the first two years and then after that time, we were able to establish a relationship with the commercial facility. So we launched our pickup service in two 18. So these

[00:07:39] Crystal: food scraps become soil? Yes.

[00:07:42] Java: That’s actually one of the, the miracles I think that on the rooftop garden at the school I used to work at, that really jumped out when I realized like there were these traditional box compost systems in the garden and they explained that basically they’re taking the prep material from the.

Kitchen and tossing it in there and you know, mixing it up with some other stuff. At the time, I didn’t really know what that meant, but I saw what they were gonna do with it. At the end of the process, when we see food rotting, it’s just time to throw it in the garbage. That’s just the end of life right there.

And, but they were explaining to me in the garden that, no, this is actually, there’s a whole life cycle that I didn’t. Was happening around us and you’re kind of recreating what’s happening in the natural world around you. When forests or backyards, wherever organic material is found, you’re gonna find this decomposed organic matter.

That reality was pretty amazing to me, that there was a real generous provision available to humanity that we typically associate with garbage, but it actually is a tremendous resource that can help to grow a lot more. And like Michelle was saying with the movie Dirt, it kind of emphasized the benefit of replacing some of the modern approaches to fertilizing soil with this age old natural approach that is available to us and is sustainable in a wide range of ways.

[00:09:00] Michelle: When Java first brought the idea of composting home to me, I remember we were in our apartment and I was in the kitchen and he was like, yeah, this banana peel, it can turn into soil. Like held it up. I was like, this, see this, this, this actually turn into soil. And I just had no idea what he was talking about.

And I was like, I don’t really see how that’s possible. It’s a banana peel. I just had no concept that that actually happens. So that’s why that movie is really powerful cause it, it shows you and explains it to you in a very visual.

[00:09:26] Crystal: So what I was gonna ask was the end product has enough nutrients to replace chemical izer.

[00:09:33] Java: All I know is that before we had these variety of synthetic manmade fertilizers, people found ways to enrich the soil to grow more, and I recently was exposed to just a few paragraphs in a composting course. It was a few paragraphs from George Washington Carver. He was suggesting that all farmers should do their utmost to take whatever organic material leaves and prepare it for a compost pile to fertilize their soils.

I know when I was a little kid, you know, I heard Native Americans would take the leftover fish and put that in the soil as a fertilizer. In ancient China, they would collect biosolids, which is basically human manure. They would take that and turn it into fertilizer. I know that’s going on in a somewhat different direction, but basically it’s all organic matter.

It’s just remarkable that these things which are typically associated with the waste product, whatever it might be, whether it’s food or otherwise, there’s plenty of organic matter that’s available to humanity to fertilize our soils.

[00:10:35] Crystal: Now, how can someone get started composting in their home if their municipality doesn’t offer the service, like offer pickups in their home and or apartment?

[00:10:46] Michelle: So you can do a Bacai kit. They sell these kits online. It’s a method of like kind of fermenting food with these Bacai flakes they’re called, they’re like kind of brand flakes, and you put your food in this bucket and you put the brand flakes on top and you seal the bucket, closed it, ferment the food, and then the end, you don’t have like finished compost.

It kind of needs to go out for another process, but that’s one way to do it. And that actually doesn’t smell at all, which is a nice thing about. And then they sell these little worm kits. So you could do verma composting if you wanted to do it in an apartment. So that’s another way to do it. And then there’s obviously backyard composting, which involves figuring out what kind of Tumblr you’re gonna get.

We always have certain recommendations about that because you wanna make sure that you have something that’s squeezed off the ground and you wanna make sure that it has two sides to it, like two chambers. So you always have an active side to put your fresh straps in. And then the other side is decomposing.

So you always wanna look for a tumble that has two compartments. , but those are some of the ways we get started.

[00:11:42] Crystal: And you guys actually offer a service of helping people set up their home composting as well as the

[00:11:48] Michelle: pickup? Yes, that’s correct.

[00:11:51] Crystal: So what are the dos and don’ts of composting?

[00:11:54] Michelle: Just as a general guideline, any food item is compostable.

So a lot of people think things like meat and dairy, oils and fats are not compostable. That’s not really true. It’s just not recommended to compost those materials. If you’re using like a box bin that sits on the ground, that’s. Exposed to the earth because those materials are harder to break down. They take longer and they’ll be sitting around longer, and that can attract animals, rodents, et cetera.

So if you’re using, they’re called earth machines. They’re these black boxes that sit on the ground. You wouldn’t wanna compost meat and dairy, but if you’re using a Tumblr, then you can compost pretty much anything. So that could be meat, bones, dairy cooked and uncooked food. You could compost salad with salad dressing on it.

You could. Condiments. You can compost any processed food, so like chips, desserts, cookies, cakes, anything can really go into a Tumblr because it’s fully enclosed and you’re not gonna get issues with animals.

[00:12:51] Crystal: Also, if you are composting fruits and veggies, take off those little stickers yes, that you find on on them.

[00:12:58] Michelle: That’s a big contamination issue. The stickers, rubber bands, those twist ties that you have on vegetables, all those things are not compost. I’ve seen

[00:13:07] Crystal: they make dog poop bags that they say that are biodegradable or compostable. Can you throw your dog poop in that bag

in

[00:13:16] Michelle: your Tumblr? No. No. Okay. , it’s not recommended to mix.

Not that dog waste is not compostable. It’s, but it’s not recommended to mix it with your regular compost that you’re gonna be using to grow food. Good to know, because you just need to make sure, like if you’re gonna compost pet waste, that it reaches very high temperatures, like over 140 degrees over at a sustained period of time to kill all the pathogens.

So it’s not recommended to do. . And what about

[00:13:40] Crystal: those now you see ’em all over the place, like the plastic utensils that say they’re biodegradable or compostable. Is that actually the.

[00:13:48] Michelle: Again, it’s not recommended to put those in your backyard, Tumblr, or your pile, cause the temperatures are not gonna get hot enough to break those materials down.

But they are plant-based and if they say BPI certified, then you know they’ve been tested to actually compost fully. So if you are using a service that uses a commercial composting facility, a lot of those facilities will accept those materials. So for us, we can take any material that is B P I certified, whether it’s a utensil, a cup, like a cold cup, hot cup.

[00:14:17] Java: The reality is that anybody who’s done backyard composting, even without any meat, any fats, any oils, they know that it can get pretty mucky if it goes outta balance. It can happen with basically any combination. And really what you need is a well-balanced pile. And so if you have a well-balanced pile, you really can compost any of your food scraps 100% of them.

And by a well-balanced pile, I mean a pile that. Your food scraps and, uh, ratio, uh, dry material and enough basic porosity or airflow space that oxygen can get in there. It’s important to have like a dry material, and I think this is where a lot of people get in trouble is when they have all their food scraps, but they just don’t take the time to make sure that there’s a bulking agent or a carbon rich component to mix into their compost.

is it

easy?

[00:15:07] Crystal: Because when you talk about balance and all that, is it easy to do for

[00:15:12] Michelle: a novice? I think there’s a bit of a learning curve. You definitely need some like basic knowledge of what the ratios are to follow and what you can use for your carbon source, which is wood chips, wood pellets, shredded paper, but each of those different carbon sources act differently in your compost.

Shredded paper is not gonna be as absorbent as wood chips and wood chips are. Not as absorbent as with pellets. So you have to kind of know a little bit about different carbon sources and how they function. And then the other keys are making sure that your food scraps are cut into small pieces, so there’s more surface area for the microbes to be able to munch on.

So there’s definitely some learning that needs to go into it. I wouldn’t recommend just buying a Tumblr and starting. You wanna do some research first.

[00:15:52] Java: It’s just getting a routine for maintaining your pile or your Tumblr. And once you set up your in-house routine, it really begins to be kind of like second nature, you know?

You know that once or twice a week you take out your garbage and you’re gonna do the same with your compost, and it’s just another system that you build into your routine.

[00:16:10] Crystal: You guys offer through the company pickups from people’s homes, you offer at home consultations on how people could do it at home.

Do you also offer, like people can drop compost

[00:16:21] Michelle: off to you?

[00:16:23] Java: The drop-offs are something that we have been excited about trying to make available more and more. Cause it just makes the opportunity to get more people involved, especially in areas that we are beyond our normal service area or maybe there’s not enough concentration of interested people.

It makes it possible for more people. It’s less expensive to participate in, in a drop-off program as well. So it’s a nice option to have. All right.

[00:16:48] Crystal: This one has been great. Do you guys have anything you would like to add?

[00:16:53] Michelle: I would just say, you know, people are listening that are kind of on the fence about composting or intimidated. We always encourage people to reach out to us cause we’re always happy to give help and ways to get started. I mean, I’m from New York City and I had zero interest in composting cause I was really fearful.

We were gonna get mice and it was gonna be disgusting, but now I’m really. Hundred percent into it. And like I’m one of those weird people that will like carry around their Apple core if I’m like out and about eating it and then bring it home to my compost bin. So definitely have had a total shift in my feelings about composting.

So I think if other people are concerned or nervous, they should just reach out.

[00:17:29] Crystal: And so you’re saying it won’t attract mice or smell in an apartment? ,

[00:17:34] Michelle: yeah. I mean, if you’re in an apartment and you’re using some sort of seal container like the Pacas kit, or if you live in an apartment and you use a pickup service, they provide, like we provide a bucket with a lid that’s very secure.

So mice or any other animal’s not gonna be able to get into it. And the smell factor is not really an issue either. The only times that I’ve experienced horrendous smell with my compost bucket is I had put like cooked broccoli that had already been in the fridge, like for many weeks, , and I put it in my bucket and that had to go out immediately.

And the same thing with like black beans that I had made, but generally it does not smell, which people are surprised about

[00:18:07] Crystal: Java. Were you gonna add.

[00:18:09] Java: It’s funny because I think for me it’s also been a almost like a spiritual experience because it had this odd effect, the reality that like, you know, this is something that’s typically treated as garbage, but it’s actually a tremendously rich resource that can really do a lot of good for humanity.

If we just kind of put a little bit of thought and a little bit of time and a little bit of effort into manag. It’s like a provision on our planet. For me, it really kind of brought about this exciting sense of like, that there’s a creator who is providing on, you know, in some kind of mysterious way.

That’s one of the things that’s always kind of ticking in the back of my mind as I’m marveling over, you know, how we ended up involved in all of this and one of the kind of little things that keep me excited about it as well. That’s be.

[00:18:58] Crystal: Michelle and Java. Thank you so much. I’ve been so interested in learning more about compost and so this has been really great.

Thank you so much for what you guys do. You’re making a

[00:19:07] Michelle: difference. Well, thank you. Very compost.

[00:19:12] Java: We appreciate. Thank you very much.

[00:19:21] Crystal: It’s time that composting becomes a second nature as. Because it could have just as big or an even greater beneficial impact on the environment. It’s certainly starting to gain momentum with pickup services popping up in more and more communities. But until it comes to yours, starting to compost at home is a lot easier than you think.

There are tons of tutorials online, and Michelle and Java also offer in-person and virtual consultation services. Talk to them, give it a. And you can decrease up to 40 to 50% of what you’re sending to landfills and the emissions that result from that.

Do you know someone else who would enjoy this episode? I would be so grateful if you would share it with them. Hit me up on Instagram and Facebook at becoming Forces for Nature, and let me know what actions you have been taking. Adopting just one habit can be a game changer because imagine if a billion people also adopted that.

What difference for the world are you going to make today?