Personal Work: Compost Awareness

Played with my trash in honor of Composts Awareness week. I've been composting consistently for ten years now, thanks to the fact that I live in San Francisco and we have such a great waste system. And, okay, my compost doesn’t actually look like this, but it’s also not as gross as people may assume it is.
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I originally learned how to compost at SF State, where we had trash monitors who stood at the three bins–compost, recycling & landfill–and made sure you threw stuff in correctly. At the time I was like, CAN YOU NOT?? But now I'm so glad I learned from them and I have been known to provide unsolicited help when I see someone puzzled at the bins.

Not feeling convinced? Here are my 5 favorite things about composting:

1. Your garbage won't smell like hot death. Without the smell of decaying food, your garbage can is way less gag-worthy.⁠⠀
2. Since it's not as stinky and full, you'll take it out less frequently, saving countless garbage bags. You can also downgrade to a smaller can that fits under your sink, which you'll love cause they're never cute and now you don't have to look at it.⁠⠀
3. Lots of water, land, energy and labor resources go into growing our food. Compost is a valuable resource that can go back into the ground and help generate more food.⁠⠀
4. Speaking of food going into the ground, food in landfill releases methane because it isn't able to break down properly. It can take a head of lettuce 25 years to break down in landfill! Methane is 34-86 times more potent than carbon dioxide (too much science to explain here). ⁠⠀
^^This is actually my #1 reason, but I had to grab your attention to get you to read this (see "hot death" above), so here we are.⁠⠀
5. You'll naturally become more aware of the waste you produce, which will help you make less. Noticed you keep throwing out sad, limp carrots? I feel like you don't like carrots, maybe stop buying them for a bit and see if you miss them. I just saved you money, we just prevented food waste!