Creating a Sustainable Food Chain: Networking Food, Waste, and Soil

Can a small business create sustainable soil? For some, the link between sustainable food and soil is a one way street. Food comes from the soil. That's where it grows. In many urban centers, food scraps do not return to the soil. Food waste is just that: wasted. The valuable resources that are contained in food peelings go into the garbage, they're put out on the curb, and they're trucked to places where they are buried or burned. However, small community-based companies are recreating a sustainable food chain in urban areas. They're networking food, waste and soil again so that the food that grows in the soil returns to the soil and provides rich compost for urban gardeners.

For many, composting and food waste are a problem of garbage. Cities strive to reduce the amount of garbage they reduce, partly because landfill space is precious and expensive and also because when food rots in a landfill, it does so in the absence of oxygen, producing the gas methane, a less than sustainable contributor to climate change. The government wants people to compost for environmental reasons, but sometimes this food waste seems to be a liability, not a resource.

Making a business case for composting is simple: turn food waste into a resource, and recreate a sustainable food chain in which urban residents place food scraps at the curb, food scraps create soil, and the rich compost builds urban food gardens. In some models, the finished compost is available for sale to the same people who paid to have someone remove their food scraps.

In Victoria, Canada, a fleet of bicycle-powered composting activists is doing just that. The community network is called Pedal to Petal. For a small fee, you can put out your kitchen scraps in a designated bin and a person on a bike will come along and collect them. The finished compost is used in community agriculture projects that help those with low incomes grow their own food. It's a community food chain that is both socially beneficial and financially viable.

While some governments are now turning to large-scale compost and green waste pickup to solve the food waste problem, this service is not always available to those who need it the most: people in apartment buildings. Nor is the finished compost always available to those who need it: those who run community gardens and small urban garden plots. Local community composting networks are flexible and adaptable. They're an investment in a social network that breeds community food self-sufficiency, from the ground up. While no one will likely get rich making compost, urban soil and urban food will be thankful for the infusion of local nutrients.

If home composting is difficult for you, would you participate in a community compost program?