John Darling Presentation - July 12

John Darling from the University of Texas at Arlington provided an excellent presentation on composting for our Tuesday night class, Compost: Trash to Treasure.  He provided a brief personal history about how he came to be the Master Composter for UTA and then went into more detail about what they compost at UTA.  They use leaves collected by the grounds keepers and pre-consumer food waste from the student food services that are created in the food preparation process.  Food that has come into contact with human saliva (post-consumer food waste) has to be handled differently and requires more stringent regulation and therefore it is not included in the UTA compost system.  They currently componst 50 tons of kitchen waste, coffee grounds and leaves per year and save them from going to the landfill.
Big Thought #1:     FOOD WASTE (Google "food waste")
1. The energy to raise and transport food is enormous
2. 1/3 of everything we buy in the US goes straight to the garbage.
3. Surprisingly, Japan and UK waste more than that.
4. A problem with piles of food waste creates methane which is worse than CO2 as a GRG.

Possible solutions for food waste:

1. Source Reduction

2. Feed Hungry People (food bank)
3. Feed Animals
4. Industrial Uses (methane recovery?)
5. Composting
If we don't do one of these it winds up in the Landfill or is incinerated.

Big thought #2:     TOPSOIL LOSS (Google "topsoil loss")

1.  Topsoil loss is 2^nd only to population growth
2.  US is losing topsoil 10x faster than it is being replenished
3.  China/India are losing topsoil 30-40X faster than it is being replenished
4.  37.5 billion in losses are due to agriculture
5.  30% of arable land in the world has become unproductive over the last 40 years.

Compost supports,
Organic Farming/Gardening which supports,
Wildscaping which supports,
Habitat Improvement which supports,
Environmental Health

Compost = The product of controlled aerobic decomposition of organic materials.

It’s compost when you can no longer identify the original materials.

What is organic?  Anything that was ever alive.

Recycle clean paper, compost soiled paper.