The Compost Economy
Quick post as I’m in the midst of preparing stuff for our exhibition at Salone del Mobile.
As I’ve mentioned before, I presented a concept during the review before Christmas which involved composting. The idea was to close the loop between consumers and farmers (consumers and producers), with supermarkets as intermediaries. (I cover this concept in greater detail in my thesis report.)
Sydney just sent me an article from Treehugger which describes a service currently running in San Francisco which takes food waste (primarily from restaurants) and turns it into compost which is resold to farmers.
My concept looked more at the individual’s contribution, and at the time I wasn’t looking at regulation or involving other parties…my focus was perhaps too narrowly aimed at supermarkets and only supermarkets. I’ve since opened things up in terms of stakeholders—while it may be hard to justify a supermarket’s incentives for collecting compost, a city can certainly benefit from such practices, and private companies would definitely be willing participants.
Another difference is that the actual composting in San Francisco occurs in Vacaville, whereas in my concept each individual was composting in their home. I think there would need to be an intense look at whether centralized methods of composting are better than individual composting, both in terms of convenience and in terms of material usage, and such things as transportation costs and emissions.
I think in the end, however, I wasn’t really interested in composting per se as I was the motivations for the individual to participate within such a system. It’s one thing if you have a recycling container which you dump things into: that’s easy enough to accommodate in your life. What’s harder is to get a sense of contribution and the role you play within the larger system and community. For those of us who get personal satisfaction from doing good, it’s enough to know you’re doing the right thing. But for others, a little more incentive and visibility is perhaps warranted.