About a third of all resources used in farming (water, energy, fertilisers etc) grow food that ends up being wasted. If this waste is put into landfill it produces methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent that carbon dioxide.
Maybe you’d like to reduce your carbon footprint by composting your food waste? If you’re thinking you can’t because you don’t have space for a compost bin or you live in an apartment then community composting may be for you.
What is community composting?
Community composting connects people within a local area to reduce the quantity of organic waste going to landfill. People who have food scraps but no way to compost them are put in touch with people with capacity to take those scraps and turn them into a valuable resource: compost!
According to the Local Community Composting Alliance (Australia), “community composting is about empowering people of all backgrounds and cultures to access local solutions to managing food waste, process valuable growing nutrients, and unlock the power of sharing as a community that strengthens and nourishes us all.”
Donors are not only apartment dwellers, but also residents owning a bokashi system or people who are travelling and are looking for a place to drop off their organic waste ecologically. Compost hosts include residents with their own composting system or a worm farm, community gardens and people with chickens.
Some relationships between users and donors grow into friendships where, as well as exchanging organic waste, people also small share gifts, produce from their gardens, eggs or invite each other for a cuppa etc.
ShareWaste: A community composting pioneer
A few years ago a young couple in Sydney started an organisation to help address the problem of food waste and help all those renters and apartment dwellers play a larger role in reducing the human environmental footprint. So they started ShareWaste to enable people with waste they couldn’t recycle (donors) to give it to those (hosts) who wanted more compost for their gardens. Through an App people with compost ingredients but no room for a bin could find people in their neighbourhood who were willing to share their composting infrastructure with others.
ShareWaste was a community project which not only helped to close the food loop, but enables people to better connect within their community, share skills and resources. Founders Eliska and Tom built ShareWaste in their spare time without expecting it to grow as much as it did.
The ShareWaste project closed at the end of 2024.
Enter Peels
Started by Sydneysider Danny White, Peels is an open source project run on the same model to ShareWaste.
The Peels app provides an easy way for donors and hosts to sign up and connect via an interactive map. The map shows hosts and donor around Australia. So if you’re looking for a compost drop-off or to find a neighbour or community garden that accepts food scraps you can search the map. Or if you can’t produce enough compost of your own, or want to see less food waste go to landfill you can create a listing to accept scraps from neighbours. Learn more at peels.app.