What goes around, comes back around. Dealing with our waste is as important as buying produce. Every banana peel thrown into the landfill produces methane. Methane is a greenhouse gas that is more potent than carbon dioxide. Greenhouse gases are a threat to biodiversity. Species such as Shenandoah salamanders, lichens, fish, turtles, and toads are at a risk of endangerment. Poor soil and air quality is also harmful to human beings. It is a cycle.
In April of 2018, Harrisonburg’s contract with Van Der Linde Recycling, the corporation responsible for collecting and converting municipal recyclables, came to an abrupt and premature end. The same occurred all over the country as China suddenly announced that it would no longer handle recycling for the United States.
Cities all over the country have struggled to find an adequate replacement for the former arrangement that eventually brought all U.S. recyclables to China for processing. SoilCycles and the many comparable grassroots efforts across the country are mending the severed link between waste and regeneration that drive natural systems. Together, these organizations are leading the way toward a model that treats trash as the treasure it can be.
Many believe composting is the answer to making our cities healthy. While similar processes have been sustaining forests for millennia, cities are just beginning to catch on to this natural process in which organic matter breaks down into a nutrient-rich soil — perfect for gardens. The idea of transforming discarded food waste into a generative resource is growing from the grassroots and spreading across the country. From Denver to D.C., small organizations across the United States are launching pick-up services for household food scraps and organic waste in an attempt to prevent them from ending up in landfills. The breakdown of organic waste in landfills produces methane. Composting can greatly reduce or, in some cases, eliminate methane emissions from organic waste by returning it to the natural systems that recycle valuable nutrients, particularly carbon and nitrogen, that plants need for growth.
Furthermore, compost provides habitats for millions of microorganisms that collectively strengthen plant resistance to disease, pests, and other stressors. Compost therefore reduces or, in some cases, eliminates the need to apply chemical pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers.
In this emerging model for more complete cycles of consumption and waste, SoilCycles acts as a conduit for connecting individual residences to locations where compostable waste can be collected. Relying on bicycle power to pick up waste from subscribing households, SoilCycles’ collects and carries organic waste to centrally located “hubs” where it is consolidated and picked up by SoilCycles partner, Black Bear Organics Recycling, an industrial-scale composting service located in Crimora, Virginia. Black Bear makes the rapid transformation of household organic material into garden-ready compost possible. By partnering with Black Bear, Soil-Cycles subscribers are saved the trouble of sorting their scraps — meat, bones, dairy, and even compostable plastic containers can all be tossed in the bucket.
The process is simple: residences sign up for a monthly subscription to SoilCycles, and receive a fivegallon bucket and compostable liner for household organic waste, a weekly pick-up service, and a monthly return of fresh compost, ready for use on home gardens. As an added bonus, subscribers also recieve the benefits of discounts at local businesses and farms through SoilCycles’ rewards program. For every pound of compostable waste collected, residents earn points that can eventually be redeemed at The Farmers Market in downtown Harrisonburg. Participating businesses are listed on the SoilCycles website — soilcycleshva.org.
Harrisonburg’s new citizen-powered composting service makes composting easy and accessible to residents who lack time, space, or knowledge about backyard composting. The process can be smelly, can attract unwanted animals or insects, and requires upkeep. SoilCycles pick-up-service handles the dirty work of creating the compost, while greatly expanding the ability of residents in our city to participate in the process. As a result, members of the Harrisonburg community can more effectively participate in collective efforts to reduce waste, decrease our city’s greenhouse gas emissions, support our local food economy, and become more conscious of our impact on our own local and global environment.
SoilCycles and the many comparable grassroots efforts across the country are mending the severed link between waste and production. Together, these organizations and the residents participating in emerging compost programs are leading the shift in perspective on how we view “trash,” and how we can utilize resources completely, from cradle to grave.
