I am looking for any research, past project reports, or tools for introducing composting to groups with absolutely no culture of it.
I'm working with landless, rural displaced people who previously fed all scraps to animals or burnt it. They need a lot of convincing it will not smell, it will not take too much effort, and that it's not actually a little crazy to want to horde decomposing things.
All ideas appreciated!
Dion Battersby
Sustainability specialist
CENN
Georgia
Community Composting in Groups with No Knowledge
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The reality is that composting does smell (a bit) and does take a bit of effort. So to reduce these barriers your group needs to be incentivised by personal gain.
In my view, the personal gain is using the compost to help grow a productive veggie garden (even if it is in a pot). Thus, I think a project like this has to be long term and about growing herbs or a flower garden etc and then composting is just an element of that.
Home gardeners are quick to see the benefit of having their own compost supply to keep their crops in good condition. Having fresh veggies or a pretty garden as an incentive helps get over the barriers of bad smell and hard work because it becomes a worthwhile project.
For this group in particular, luckily they do have some experience in recycling waste feeding scraps to animals. You could build on this by promoting worm farming instead of traditional bin composting. As this is still feeding scraps to animals a behaviour they have a culture of as you said.
Candice Laidlaw Thompson
Sustainability Awareness Projects Officer
Toowoomba Regional Council
Australia
Thanks for your help, not sure we have any Compost Masters/Doctors in this country yet, but the sources are very useful.
Interesting about the animal feeding - i'll try and keep records of different uptakes by IDPs from different (agricultural or professional)backgrounds and see if correlates.
Dion Battersby
Sustainability specialist
CENN
Georgia
Feeding scraps to animals is actually a pretty good way of dealing with food waste, before it enters the composting cycle.
Two resources for you.
1. Biocycle Magazine, Emmaus, Pennsylvania. They're online at www.jgpress.org and their archives may have articles on the subject. If not, and if you contact them, they can very likely point you to someone in your State who is an expert at composting, and introducing the idea to rural areas.
2. U.S. Composting Council. http://www.compostingcouncil.org/
3. Talk to Brian Rosa, at North Carolina Dept of Environment. Brian's been involved with composting for 30 years, and knows everyone and everything about it.
Norm Ruttan
President
iWasteNot Systems
Canada
www.iwastenotsystems.com