Living in a semi-sustainable world

Sense and Sustainability is, perhaps, an odd title for this blog. I’ve never been much of a Jane Austen reader. But it definitely encapsulates what I’ll be writing about here: Sensible sustainability.

I grew up in Bellingham, Wash., a growing city in the shadow of the Cascade mountain range that I’m most apt to describe as “crunchy.” On fall mornings I shook the trees in our yard to get apples for my school lunches; in the summers I grudgingly picked raspberries from their half-dead, prickly vines; and a visit to the neighbors’ goats meant tramping through a cow pasture to get there. Everyone’s childhood was like this, right?

Sustainable-ish life was ingrained in me at an early age—it was just how things worked. Because of Washington’s temperate climate, very few people had central air conditioning; on hot days, we just hung out in the basement. My mom turned off her car while waiting in a drive-thru line to reduce her emissions. And I would never have dreamed of not recycling every last can, newspaper, yogurt tub or piece of cardboard that came into the house. (Actually, the yogurt tubs were re-used for storing leftovers.)

This is not how people in the Midwest live. I have to actively remind my live-in boyfriend to recycle (no, the cereal box does not go in the trash); parents idle their engines for God knows how long while picking their kids up from school; the other day, the guy in line ahead of me at the drug store asked for a plastic bag for his single bag of chips—and the clerk gave it to him. What are these people doing?

Thankfully I’m also seeing some signs of sanity. Recently I spoke with Chris Koetke, vice president of the School of Culinary Arts at Kendall College, about the composting program at his Chicago campus. This admittedly was a very nerdy conversation about the anaerobic breakdown of organic material and smelly garbage cans, but I was completely inspired by what Chris has been able to accomplish. Of the 350 tons of waste produced at Kendall in 2014, 210 tons were diverted into compost. Imagine what that would look like if Americans were composting all or some of the $165 billion in food that’s wasted each year. 

While complete nationwide compliance certainly isn’t a reality, I began doing my part after speaking with Chris. The small, green worm compost bin I inherited from a friend is working overtime in a corner of my pantry. Twice a week I feed them a mixture of spoiled produce, egg shells and coffee grounds, and they squeal out a tiny “thank you” while making dirt for my garden (or so I like to imagine). It’s almost as simple as hauling out the trash—and a lot more beneficial to landfills.

Composting laws vary by location. For more information, visit the US Composting Council website.