Why Throw Away Food When It Can Feed People Twice

We talk dirt with Eric Gardner from Loaves and Fishes and Chuck Corrigan from Rotary, digging into how food waste can become soil instead of methane. We walk through the real numbers, the grant that funded an industrial composter, and the simple composting habits that make the “full circle” possible. 
• Loaves and Fishes growth from a church closet pantry to a four-county operation 
• How donated grocery food gets sorted and why some items cannot be distributed 
• The scale of discarded food and why landfills turn it into methane 
• How a small Rotary club uses a global grant locally with international partners 
• What an industrial composting machine does in a 24-hour cycle 
• The “trash to treasure” loop with parks and farms growing produce back for the pantry 
• The icky factor, safety training, and why finished compost is clean and earthy 
• Composting basics with greens vs browns and simple fixes for odor and moisture 
• Easy ways to start at home without getting overwhelmed 
Please tell friends about the show. We’re also on YouTube. We even have a blog, and the show hits the road. If you have a great event or a conference or a project that you’d like the show to show up at, email me, won’t you? Rotarianpod at gmail.com. 

Transcript

Welcome And Why Compost Matters

SPEAKER_04 0:00

Hi there everybody, Gwen Jones here. Welcome again to the Action Impact Show. This week we're talking dirt. I'm giving you the full dirt, the full soil, the full compost, the full environmental impact. That's right. We're talking about a rotary group this week that has 15 people in it. 15! That's it! Five, ten, fifteen. But lo and behold, those 15 people got a worldwide grant, hooked up with another country, and before you knew it, was helping a local food bank get a hundred thousand dollar industrial composting machine. I'm super excited for you to listen to this conversation. Why? Because I am a huge gardener. If I'm not talking about football all over the world, I'm talking about gardening. I love gardening. It is my therapy. And composting is something I personally have gotten really into this last year. So join me for the conversation, won't you? We're getting the real dirt on composting. And as always, I'm super glad that you joined me for the conversation. Welcome back to the show, everybody. Well, I am very excited to talk about our first show about environmentalism. Now we've had other shows about environmentalism, but we're going to have a whole chunk of shows coming up this month. And we're starting it off with dirt. That's right. Dirt or composting, as I should say. And my good friend Chuck Corrigan is here, and we're going to talk about the Mapleville downtown, because there is four clubs. And he's very specific to say his is the downtown club in that city and how they turned trash into treasure with an amazing group of people run by Eric Gardner at Loaves and Fishes. And that's all I'm going to say. Because I know a lot about what composting is, but I think the average American really forgets the glory that is composting. So Eric, I'm going to start with you and not my Rotarian buddy, because I want people to explain what exactly loaves and fishes is

Loaves And Fishes Mission

SPEAKER_04 2:34

and why are loaves and fishes so excited about dirt.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

Yeah. Well, well, thank you for having me on here today. Well, first I got to say is I love dirt and I love soil even more. You know, when we think about the two, compost really makes it dirt into soil. So yeah, and I think that's a difference, correct? There is, yes.

SPEAKER_04 2:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

But if I could just kind of talk a little about loaves and fishes really quickly. Loaves and fishes is a food pantry. You know, we started in 1984 and we were serving, you know, eight families, you know, in 1984 out of a church closet. You know, you fast forward, you know, throughout the many years, you know, we've gone through some growth throughout that. And now we serve a four county area. We're the largest food pantry in Illinois. We serve DuPage, King, Kendall, and Will County. That's about an area of 2.3 million people. And then we what we really do.

SPEAKER_03 3:20

So sorry, you started with eight families and now two point how many?

SPEAKER_01 3:26

Well, the 2.3 million is the population within those four counties. We we have about 400, a little right around 484,000 visits throughout an entire year that are actually coming for our services. So that's just an idea of the uh the scope and the impact that we have. You know, we do provide food, it's healthy food, milk, eggs, vegetables, lean proteins. And in addition to food, we're really focusing on programs that help self-sufficiency. So we have a car rental program, an emergency assistance program that help people keep housed. But really, what this and what the Rotary Club has helped us do is on our food side of things and really helping with our food. 35% of the food that we get donated to us or that we receive, I should rephrase that is 35% of the food is donated to us through our grocery assistance program. And that's kind of where this food is coming from for the composter. This is food that we get that's been expired. We can't give it out to our clients. So instead of throwing that out, we're able to actually turn that into soil.

SPEAKER_04 4:22

Okay, so let's let's put a hard stop in there because a lot of people go to the grocery store and they say, What happens to all this bakery stuff? Or every single time a vegetable falls on the ground, I'm usually the first to pick it up. And somebody'll say, I'm sorry, we can't sell that now. And I'm like, There's nothing wrong with it. And I'm like, they're like, nope, we can't do with it. But it doesn't always get thrown away. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_01 4:49

Correct. So the food we don't really get food that's been, you know, fallen on the ground or anything like that. So the food that we get is gonna be, you know, items that are coming in, let's say they have a new shipment coming in and they don't have room on their shelves, or they think their product line is close to the expiration date. We can get that food out into the public within 24 hours.

SPEAKER_02 5:06

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

However, as we go through that and we inventory that, we know we're gonna come with this, you know, we have to take all the food. So some of it is food that we wouldn't want to give out to an individual. That's the food that we normally discard. So we have a whole set of volunteers. You know, we work with about a thousand volunteers throughout the entire year, and they're really going through and inventorying that food for us. They're gonna go through each one and looking at every strawberries. If they have a bunch of mold on them, we wouldn't want to be giving that out. Or if it's just mush, we wouldn't be giving that out. We take healthy food, the food that's great, the food that I would eat, the food that all our, you know, all our staff we'd meet, our volunteers would eat. We're that's the food we want to give out to the clients and get into the hands of them. But unfortunately, within this, there is food that normally we would discard that we were throwing it out. It was going to dumpsters, that was going back into landfills and just taking up space.

SPEAKER_04 5:53

And how much food, how much I mean, because I I I am appalled at how much food we throw away. Some figures say nationwide that we almost throw out half the food that we produce.

The Hidden Scale Of Food Waste

SPEAKER_04 6:06

So how much of this food given to you from generous loving people that want to do the greater good for the world? How much of this food was you was ending up in landfills?

SPEAKER_01 6:18

Yeah, so with us locally, you know, we give out about, you know, we distribute about 8 million pounds of food. That's about how much food is actually going out our doors to our clients. When we're taking in food, about three to four hundred thousand pounds is food that we would normally be throwing out in every every single year. It's just unhealthy, not quality food. So with Chuck's help and the Rotary Club's help, we fix that issue.

SPEAKER_04 6:41

So over a half a million pounds or quarter of a million pounds of food every single year. And this is just in the suburbs of Chicago. Let's say wrap your head around that, everybody, because we have 50 states, Puerto Rico, and all of a sudden you're telling me that so it's not unheard of that there's a quarter of a million pounds of food here in Boston, where I'm talking to you at, around Boston that's being thrown away. Is that I'm not asking you to me, but it's not unrealistic to say that this is how much food ends up in landfills every single year.

SPEAKER_01 7:26

Correct. If if they're on a scale similar to loads and fishes, that's that three to four hundred thousand pounds is loads of fishes. So yeah, you can look at other organizations of the same size. Some smaller organizations are gonna have less pounds of food that they're discarding. Larger organizations may have more food that they're discarding. But yes, there's quite a bit nationwide. You're looking at billions and billions of pounds of food that just gets discarded.

SPEAKER_04 7:50

And I hope everybody who's listening or watching us can be shocked by that because I I'm shocked by that. I I think when we have people that are hungry and we are throwing away food, there's something wrong in the circle of life, let's say, there. And Chuck and his gang helped you with that. So let's let's get to composting, let's get to the positive side. Now that everybody's driving their car or watching this, like fully depressed, that we're throwing away hundreds of thousands.

SPEAKER_01 8:23

There's good news to it, right? Yes. Yeah, that's where Chuck stats in with the good news.

Rotary Steps In With A Grant

SPEAKER_04 8:29

So, Chuck, what did you guys do to help you know, a quarter of a million pounds of food not end up making methane gas? I might throw in, because once it gets the landfill, it makes methane gas, does it not?

SPEAKER_00 8:43

That adds our state of Illinois studies showed that about 25% of the waste going into the landfills in Illinois is food waste. So it's a huge problem. And you know, we put together a grant with loads and fishes that addresses, you know, the problem of food going into the land waste. And they have a great mission of helping people with food security. And really this this project combined two really important things helping the environment and helping those who who have a need back up a little bit. Our our district in the Chicago area was looking for a project that they could put some of their DDF into. So DDF is district designated funds, part of the whole Rotary Foundation process. And we have very active clubs that do wonderful projects all around the world in foreign countries, India and Africa, you name it. Uh we have a presence there. Uh but we were looking for a project that we could do with a global grant, but locally in the Chicago area, and put some of those dollars to work so that our clubs in our district could say, here's what we're doing with Rotary Foundation dollars. And so we put the word out, we're looking for a project that can make a difference, have a big impact locally. And we reached out to Loaves and Fishes because they're a great organization that everybody is very admiring of. I love the work they do and said, Do you have a project that we could help with? We can't just buy you food with a global grant, right? Right. Because that's not going to sustain itself.

SPEAKER_04 10:27

Right. Actually, impact. We gotta we gotta have an impact, right.

SPEAKER_00 10:31

They they came back to set to us and said, Hey, look, we have a problem we've been looking at for a little while, and that's this food waste that we generate or collect and and have to pass

How The Industrial Composter Works

SPEAKER_00 10:42

on to the to the landfills. And we've identified a solution, which is an industrial composter, huge machine that takes the food waste, turns it into compost, and the compost then can go to gardens and farms and create new food that can come back to those and fishes, immediately recognize it as a perfect project for the thing we were looking for. And we were able to expand and get a lot of clubs to participate. But Eric and his team identified exactly the product they needed. It's a compost that can process over a thousand pounds of food waste a day and turn it into roughly about a hundred pounds of compost uh on a 24-hour cycle. And so we went through the process of getting that bit out, ordering the machinery, and fortunately was installed and is now up and running. And uh, we have to the most part eliminated all that food waste that uh loaves and fishes was taking to the landfills every year.

SPEAKER_04 11:51

Wow. So so use so this industrial machine, Eric, Chuck is telling me that so so it's running like all the time? Is it like a 24-hour a day thing because you get this much food?

SPEAKER_01 12:09

Yeah, so you know, we we rescue food seven days a week. So we have volunteer staff that are out picking up food from local grocery stores, you know, other places, seven days a week, you know. So we're we're really never closed.

SPEAKER_04 12:20

First of all, I think it's very cool to say that we're out there 24 hours to seven days a week rescuing food. Yeah, we have I think that's a really cool way to think of it. You know, I'm here to rescue you, like you should wear capes or something.

SPEAKER_01 12:34

You know, I'll have to bring that up to our volunteer coordinator. She's like that idea.

SPEAKER_04 12:38

Super fooders. And so so it comes to you guys, you guys pick it. You guys already explained that strawberries that are moldy, they go in this composter. And is that get filled daily?

SPEAKER_01 12:53

Yeah, so we, you know, it depending on when staff is there and all that, you know. But yeah, we we try to achieve for that. You know, there is going to be it's it's kind of like where you similar to your you mentioned you had a desktop kind of a countertop little composter. Mention that thousand times larger, you know. So it is a you know, heat, cooked heat, steam, and all that in there. So we are we able to load that up in there, kind of cooks it down, you know, shrinks that amount down, and we can kind of keep on adding to that till it gets full. And then once it's full, we're able to remove that compost. And that's the actual compost that we have. From there, we have partnerships with the Naperville Park District and the Conservation Foundation. So then we would bring that over to the Conservation Foundation, and they actually have a really neat program. The park district's able to use it in their flower beds

Compost To Farms To Food

SPEAKER_01 13:38

and all that. Right. Conservation Foundation, they actually use it in their farms, and they actually have a part that they use at, and they're actually growing food for us. So we're able to take in old produce that we wouldn't be able to give away, reduce the size of it, compost it, put it back into the soil, you know, back to Mother Earth. So it's going to landfills, taking up landfills. From there, the Conservation Foundation actually grows produce for us that we actually get gratis. So there's no charge for that kind for that food that they grow for us. And we're able to give that out to the clients as well, too. So we're basically taking trash, growing food, and feeding people with it. Trash to treasure. Yes, trash to treasure, yes.

SPEAKER_04 14:14

Yeah. So you were mentioning mine, and we're not they're not sponsoring the show, but the company that I work with is a company called Vigo. And I mean, I I can put that up there, but that's my machine, and that's how many pounds that I've done in the last couple, so 74, so almost 75 pounds of material that has not gone into a landfill. And also tells me my carbon footprint. So just in case I don't want to I love data like that too. Yeah, so it's hard data. So but what I found amazing is how much we as people can compost. I mean, when you get the now, this is just one for your house, and you've got an industrial one. But when people think composting, I think they're I think they're only thinking, you know, banana peels, or maybe they're thinking, you know, orange rinds or stuff like that. But what I've discovered is, you know, if you paper towels can go into a composter and you know, all kinds of all kinds of things, sometimes even packing peanuts, if they're made out of the the potato fiber and not, and then of course, tea and coffee. And I was told years ago, yeah, I was told years ago that where you can start composting is just hanging on to your tea and coffee and sprinkling it on your on your flowers. So, what what goes into this giant machine?

SPEAKER_01 15:48

So, right now we're kind of starting small, you know. We've had this machine up and running, I believe, since like, you know, the mid mid-March, and we've we've put in about 20,000 pounds of you know material.

SPEAKER_03 15:58

I think you beat mine.

SPEAKER_01 16:02

We're just starting small, and we have a lot more to grow and more room to grow as we get more staff involved with it and get our processes down and all that. And that produced about 2,000 pounds of compost. So you're talking about going from 20,000 to 2,000 pounds, and that compost obviously goes into the soil, so it's really like you know, no pounds at that point.

SPEAKER_04 16:18

Right.

SPEAKER_01 16:19

Really, everybody can make a difference. And you were kind of talking about that a little bit, you know, you don't have to be a zero percent household where you have no waste at all. You know, that's how I started. I started very small, and now I'm doing at work, we got an industrial compost or you know, at home I do you know, worm composting, verma composting, and I have a pile where I do a more of a cow, a cold compost pile. But what we put are putting in ours, obviously, you know, fruits, vegetables, breads. You know, we might have to get some wood chips to put some browns if it gets too, you know, if there's too much water in it, or if there's too much liquid, you got to dry it out a little bit. So there is that fine balance of getting that recipe down, but a lot of it is our our produce that we're picking up that's you know not quality that we can't give out. That's that's the stuff that we're composting right now. Eventually we want to get to the part where you can do in these machines, you can do meats, you can do bones, cheeses, dairies, all those type of things. But right now we're just starting off with you know the basics of what you think of of greens.

SPEAKER_04 17:15

So, Chuck, you first

Local Global Grant Explained

SPEAKER_04 17:18

of all, you said two things that that interested me. You said the word that you used a global grant on this. And I think there's a lot of people in, I would say, Canada and the United States that think, oh, global grant. You have to go over a body of water to use a global grant. So, first of all, you used a global grant, and second of all, was this was this thought of as an a real original idea? Because composting has been around forever, but it's now just become fashionable. So, did you kind of have a a double whammy formula there that worked perfectly?

SPEAKER_00 17:56

We we call this a local global grant. So it's it is a global grant because we do have a partner, our we have a club in Savu, Romania, who is our international partner. We had done a grant with them and helped them out in a project over in Romania, and now they've returned the favor and was our partner on this one. We also had partners from Ireland and Mexico, as well as a number of clubs in our district. So really it was fun to connect with people, explaining the project to them. It was an easy sell to get them to contribute, you know, funds to it. I think the total budget of the project, just for the grant part of it, was about $114,000. And and probably over $50,000 of that came from the Rotary Foundation and DDF and matching grant dollars. So our club is a small club. We have 18 members, and we're excited to be able to do a project of this scale and and make a big impact like that. The other part of it that you mentioned escaped my memory now. Yeah. You talked about the grant, and then what was the second part?

SPEAKER_04 19:07

Was composting itself. I mean, when you wrote that global grant where people like, is it?

SPEAKER_00 19:14

Well, you know, in in our area, there generally most it varies community by community, but most of our communities do not have a municipal supply of composting. So you can't put it on the curb. You know, maybe some uh yard waste can be picked up and compost like in Naperville, but in in a lot of towns, you're kind of on your own. Other parts of the country, they're more active in that. But we're hoping that this project, besides helping out loaves and fishes, is a tool to educate people about the importance of composting. And in fact, as part of our grant, we've committed to doing some educational programming for the general public in the area, telling them about what we're doing and the general benefits of composting as well, uh, you know, for the environmental effect and but also just uh be good stewards of what we've been given in this this world, right?

SPEAKER_04 20:10

Okay, what the heck? As of right now, we can't live anywhere else. This is the only one spaceship we got right now in the universe. So so are you hoping to have kind of a trifecta? You mentioned Eric that you're working with the gardeners, of course, and you're working with Rotary. Rotary is working with you. Are are you trying to like make a beautiful triangle here of perhaps Rotary using this method to make other composters in other needy areas that then can acknowledge other farmers and make like this little triangle? Are we trying to trying to kind of go for a triangle here of need composting farmer and back again?

SPEAKER_01 20:56

I mean, that would be the ultimate goal to have something like that. You know, we're setting ours up is where that people can learn from us so we can kind of talk with them, the struggles we went through, you know, the pros and the cons of having one, whether it makes sense to have a composter there or not, or partnering up with maybe somebody else who does have a composter. You know, that's what we would love to see. You know, it's just the more food we can remove from the waste stream, the better. You know, and the more food that we can have going to building nutrients to build our soil, even more so. And even if we can get food back from that, that's the trifecta right there.

SPEAKER_02 21:27

Right.

SPEAKER_01 21:28

What we're doing with the conservation foundation is that full circle. You know, that's that triangle. They're the farmers right there. So we're taking that waste, giving it to them, and they're growing food for us. And that's that beautiful circle right there. Now, if we can mimic that across the board for other organizations, that'd be fantastic. You know, there was a fee for us. We do have a fee, a trash fee, when we were throwing it out. Now that fee is slowly evaporating because we don't need that, and I shouldn't say evaporating, we're able to use that money to actually buy food, but we don't have. Have to pay as much just to throw out it's cheaper to do this. Correct. Yes. Yes. And the funds that we're saving this go back into our programming. So that's more money that can go into our programming.

SPEAKER_00 22:12

Or be set aside to replace this equipment eventually when it wears out. Right. Well, absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 22:18

Yeah. What's the longevity on some of these equipment?

SPEAKER_01 22:22

Well, I think that all depends on how well you take care of it. You know, we're looking at 20, 30 years for this machine to last with no problems.

SPEAKER_04 22:28

Wow. 20, 30 years. And that's with technology increase increasing exponentially. I mean, we've got the use of mushrooms to even break things down. And we've got all these different scientific studies about. So who knows in 20 years, your new composter could just like kick booty over the one you've got right now. It could maybe do this whole thing in just a matter of hours.

SPEAKER_01 22:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 22:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:54

If we get one that's hooked up to solar, you know, something like that. So we're not even using anything off the grid, that'd be a beautiful thing as well.

Beating The Icky Factor

SPEAKER_04 23:01

That would be super cool. So, how do you get over? And Chuck, if you want to answer this one when it comes to this, how do you get over the icky factor? And that's my word. When somebody thinks of composting, they're thinking, and it's gonna have wraps, it's gonna smell, I know it's good for the environment, but I don't have a farm. The icky factor.

SPEAKER_00 23:25

I think if you're talking about doing it uh at home, you know, the machinery like you have the the equipment like that is something where it's just like throw throwing in the trash bin. The machine does the work and and what comes comes out is not icky at all. It's pretty, pretty nice uh finished product. Uh I know the compost that Eric and uh loaves and fishes are generating is beautiful stuff. You can hold it in your hands and and you know there's not much ickiness to putting the food in there either. They just load it up into large barrels that are are lifted up and dumped into the to the composter. So for loaves and fishes, it they're just dealing with the same food. They've always been dealing with something going inside, and the output is good. And then at home, again, it's the same thing. You can just if you can if you have a good means to to create the compost or have it collected somewhere, it's really just changing your routine just a little bit to make a big difference.

SPEAKER_04 24:25

So your rotary group wrote a check, you got the funds, it's bought, it's going. Has your rotary group gone and volunteered at loaves and fishes and actually made some compost?

SPEAKER_00 24:39

Well, we we we routinely volunteer with loaves and fishes, but we haven't volunteered to do the composting. Um they're training their staff.

SPEAKER_02 24:48

So, Eric, just letting you know. Just letting you know.

SPEAKER_00 24:54

They have some safety protocols. They're not just gonna let anybody in there to play with machinery. So they're training folks uh that are regular volunteers to do it. We did have an excellent unveiling of the machinery, and most of our club members were there, as well as a lot of people in the general public who heard about it, contributed to the project, and and were excited about it. So we get involved with it, uh, but we're not pushing the buttons on the machine, at least not yet.

SPEAKER_01 25:23

Yeah, I think we're the Rotary Club has definitely expressed an interest in that, and a lot of our volunteers, you know, that and that really goes to show, you know, a lot of our volunteers express an interest interest interest in that as well. So it goes to show that there's really an interest in the community of composting in general. But yeah, you know, when you're thinking of this machine though, there's a lot of moving parts to it. Right. Oh, and you know, you you talked about the ickiness and how do you get over that? And it's like, you know, well, you're dealing with the ickiness whether you put it into a composter or whether you put it into a trash can. That's the ickiness part. You're done with that. That's true. So with that, you know, we we have it where we put the you know, all the ickiness into you know, like a big garbage can, say. And then that garbage can is then wheel, you know, wheeled over, you know, multiple garbage cans are wheeled over. And you ever see like a dump truck that has where it picks up the garbage cans and it kind of flips it into the into the track? Yeah, something similar to like that. So you're dealing with a lot of moving parts and a lot of machinery. So there is definitely specialized training with it. So that kind of goes into a cage, cage door gets shut, then that thing gets flipped into it, and then you do that over and over, then you hit a button to start cooking it. So there's definitely training with it as far as the recipe. Do we need to put browns in it? Are we still good with putting greens in it? And another thing I always tell people if they're coming across ickiness within their compost, add more browns. It's very as simple as that.

SPEAKER_04 26:37

Okay,

Greens Vs Browns Compost Basics

SPEAKER_04 26:38

so so everybody's sitting there going, okay, what's browns? What's greens?

SPEAKER_01 26:42

Yeah, yeah. So greens I always look at the high nitrogen, your fruits, long clipping fruits, vegetables, lettuce stems, celery bottoms.

SPEAKER_04 26:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:50

Yeah, the browns are going to be like you mentioned earlier. You talked about, you know, the popcorn peanut things, boxes. If you do shredded boxes, those are browns, wood chips, leaves. You know, once the leaves have dried up, those are browns at that point. You know, we, you know, for me at home in my family, we use our delivery boxes that come to us. We get a lot of deliveries, right? Those up. To me, I look at that as as free browns. I can never get enough browns because we're always, you know, lawn clippings. You're always cutting your lawn. You know, a lot of food that you go through is salads, but you got to match that. So it's really where do I get all those browns from? And and and you know, shredding boxes are a great way to do it. I personally remove all the labeling off them, all the tape, shred them up, throw them out in a pile or in my composting bin, and I'm all set.

SPEAKER_04 27:35

I love it. How long does the whole procedure take? So if I'm if I'm if Chuck and his gang have just thrown in one of those tubs because you allowed him to look at the big machine.

SPEAKER_01 27:47

We got to let him push the button, right?

SPEAKER_04 27:49

He got to push the button from pushing the button to being able to scramble 24-hour period.

SPEAKER_01 27:54

Yeah, so the once you push the button, it takes 24 hours to cook it in there.

SPEAKER_04 27:58

And and you keep saying cook it. So could you explain to people what that's okay? Because I know there's people in the car going, okay, greens, greens and browns. Okay, I know what that is. Yeah. But when you say cook it, I know, I know because it's very similar to what I have at home, but it actually is a big soup in a way.

SPEAKER_01 28:18

Yeah, it is. And this one, you know, you can consider it maybe an oven. Maybe it looks like an oven, something like that. But you you wouldn't do this in your oven, obviously, right? But you know, no matter what you're doing, like you're doing a hot coat composting outside in this, you know, that takes you know, you know, 18 to 30 days to really get that compost inside. And this one, which is a 24-hour period, there's a cooking process, it's all heat, right? So this really heats it up and it stirs it up, and that heat is what the microbes are really breaking down all that food, and that's what speeds it up. So the hotter the heat you have, the faster it goes.

SPEAKER_04 28:50

Wow. So Chuck, you you have said a couple times that you are open and receptive for others to catch on to this. Would that be the plan? Would you like your little 15, 18 member rotary group? Which by the way, the next time that somebody comes and emails me going, we're only a you know, 15-member group, what could we do? I'll give you Chuck's number and give. But are you is this something that you'd like to be like a blueprint and say, let's do it here and here and here?

SPEAKER_00 29:28

Absolutely. You know, we can educate people that these things are possible and you know, the the cost can be managed. Really, in the long run, clothes and fishes is saving the money that they would have been spending on food waste disposal anyhow. So by using the grant, we're able to accelerate the, you know, getting the the capital to to have the machine put in. But businesses, restaurants, schools, the hospitals, people, any anywhere that generates a large quantity of food waste can be looking at a similar project. And they might have the resources to do it without a grant. Family households can look at ways to reduce the amount of waste that goes into the landfills. If we can shrink the 25% of what goes into our landfills in Illinois down to 12% or 10%, we made a huge difference, not only in reducing the amount that actually goes in the landfills, but reducing the methane gases and the other negative side effects that we think is the result of that as well.

SPEAKER_02 30:32

Amazing.

SPEAKER_00 30:33

And that's okay not paying attention to the using the compost in good ways, right?

SPEAKER_04 30:39

Well, yeah. I mean, I I had a I started putting in some annuals and repaunting some perennials, and there I was with my bucket of compost that I have just been storing up in my garage all winter long, and off it went into the garden, all of it. So it was kind of cool. It was, you know, I had I had a young man who was helping me and he said, Where did you get all this dirt? And I said, Oh, that's that's all my scraps from all this winter. And it was in the garage, it didn't smell, it didn't. I mean, that's another thing is that once it is compost, Eric, the smell and the icky is gone.

SPEAKER_01 31:19

Yeah, you have that nice earthy smell to it.

SPEAKER_04 31:22

Yeah, and it is very touchable. So if if somebody is now listening to me and they're already going to get in touch with with Chuck, and you can, you know, you can get in touch with him easy enough. But let's say someone is saying, I want to start composting at home,

Simple Ways To Start At Home

SPEAKER_04 31:40

what's the easiest way for them to start?

SPEAKER_01 31:44

Yeah, that that's a great question. You know, there's there's I think they really need to kind of look into like what really speaks to them. You know, if they have if they live in an area that they can have a pile out front or out back in their backyard on the side of their house, or would I do multiple piles around my house and in my backyard and wherever I can hide them, you know, that's one of the easiest ways. You're just you put greens and browns and just let it sit outside. And no matter what you do, eventually it will turn into compost. If you do it, if you want it correctly done, you know, you that's where you have your recipes as far as your browns and your greens. You know, a nice easy way to do it is a nice 50-50 split between the two. But if you don't care and you don't you want to set something up at the end of fall and you want it ready for spring, just throw it in a pile out back and it'll eventually compost down. That's one of the easiest ways. There's vermicomposting, if you're comfortable with worms, they can go through quite a bit of I had worms, they were great. They're awesome, and they they produce a very great, you know, you know, matter that can go back into the soil as well. Too that's another way of doing it. Or there's even you know, there's services that you can pay for that. If you just want to put a bucket out front in certain areas and certain towns, you can pay a service that they'll come and pick up a bucket of compost for you. So there's a couple different ways of going about it. But I always tell people just start small. Don't think that you have to have everything that you gotta compost everything. Because that when I first got into it, that's what I was trying to do, and it became overwhelming. You know, and it's like you get to that point, okay. What do I compost? What can I compost? Eggs take longer, shells take longer. Do I need to wash shells? Well, when's if I use this and cooked with it already? It's got oil on it. Can I use that? Let's start with something when you when you cut up a tomato. If you don't use all the tomato, put that outside. Carrots, put that outside. Whatever you don't use from your salads, put that outside. You know, and if you have a mix that with some of your shredded cardboard, and if it's outside in the ground, nature and worms will come and dissolve it and make it into soil for you.

SPEAKER_02 33:39

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_04 33:41

And you know, sometimes it might just be as easy as saving your tea and your coffee grounds.

SPEAKER_01 33:46

It is easy as and if you have the funds, you can buy a machine like you have, and that makes it even super easy. You just throw it in there and let let the machine do the work for you.

SPEAKER_04 33:55

There is tons on the market, and they fit the about the size of a trash can in your kitchen. And my grandson calls it the dirt machine. He loves it. He's like, Does that go in the dirt machine?

SPEAKER_01 34:07

And I might get a name from him and call our big machine the dirt machine.

SPEAKER_04 34:11

The dirt machine. He calls it the dirt machine. And now what I like is I I love it if I don't finish a meal, like the salad or whatever, or if I for you know, if I'm on location, all of a sudden they come back and everybody finds that interesting thing in the back of their fridge.

SPEAKER_05 34:30

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 34:31

I put it in the dirt machine. And so now it's not now it's not waste. I know it's it's gonna make more. Chuck, I will throw you under the bus though. Do you compost?

SPEAKER_00 34:43

No, we we have tried it in the backyard. We tried different recipes, we got a little discouraged, but now we're reinvigorated and we're gonna give it another shot.

SPEAKER_04 34:54

If you would do me a favor and go get Chuck, because I I didn't realize the one of the last questions of the show was gonna be a gotcha question to Chuck. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_00 35:04

Well, Chuck has done it. I've been educated myself by this whole process, so it's good.

SPEAKER_01 35:10

And really, if I could just say, you know, too, you know, I think you know, him not composting, he's gonna be making up more by doing this project and all that. But it really was a neat project in the sense that it's really bringing multiple clubs together, bringing different organizations together. And right there, you have Chuck right there is saying it kind of reinvigorated him to kind of give composting another shot again. And composting is like thing when you start talking about it, people start enjoying it and they see the benefit of it. Composting really sells itself. So just getting the word out there, you know, with this podcast, I know we'll get more people to at least try composting, and that's all I can really ask for is just try composting. And then for other businesses, restaurants, do an industrial composter and just stop throwing it out. You'll save money long term. I mean, it yeah, the benefits, you know, going into the land is what speaks to me. But a business person, you know, if they're business minded, they're gonna be saving money by composting.

SPEAKER_04 36:04

In fact, I just I one of the biggest composters that are starting to go on are these all-inclusive hotels and cruise ships are starting to compost like crazy because they make more food than people use. So so then

What Other Countries Do Differently

SPEAKER_04 36:20

last question for you, Chuck. Since uh are since you had buddy groups from other countries, are they composting? Have we have we at least gone that way, or is that another gotcha question for you? I'm sorry, Hans.

SPEAKER_00 36:35

It's interesting. Uh it is an interesting question because we did talk to our partners and and they were kind of surprised that we were throwing food waste into landfills. You know, they they they have different approaches. You know, they they in in Europe they have thousands of years of history of where the food scraps just go back on a farm somewhere, you know, and and become compost. And in other parts of the world, they just have different approaches to it. So we live we we don't really think about how other people treat their garbage or treat their food waste. But it is it does vary quite a bit. But once we explain what the issue was and why we put things in the in the landfills here, then they were very supportive. You know, on the East Coast, there was a time when New York City would and New Jersey, places like that would just take a barge and take it out in the ocean and and dump it in the ocean, right? Yeah, which for food waste is isn't the worst thing because it can't get recycled in the oceans. But the plastics and other trash that goes with it is is the bigger problem. But every every organ at every location has its own way of dealing with it. We've identified it's a problem here, and we're just trying to help a little bit with the solution.

SPEAKER_04 37:55

Don't let that small club fool you. And Eric, what's your goal for composting? Are you hoping this kind of grows? Are you in touch with other food banks and or you know, media organizations about maybe expanding this whole idea?

SPEAKER_01 38:10

Yeah, we haven't really got to the point where we're talking other organizations about expanding, but we have added to our partnership of people that would research the compost. Okay, but we're not at a point yet where we can take in you know materials to put in there that you know aren't going through our operations yet, as of yet. But you know, I I would open it up that if anybody's interested, you know, we definitely would love to show it off, show it how it works. So if there are other organizations out there that want to learn a little bit about it, we would love to have them come out and and and demonstrate it for them.

SPEAKER_04 38:39

There you go.

Tour Invites And Closing Notes

SPEAKER_04 38:40

Invite everybody. All right, Chuck Corrigan and Eric Gardner. Thank you so much for joining me on the show. I should say Eric is from Loaves, a load of loaves and fishes that you turn into compost. And of course, uh Chuck is from the Naperville downtown because there are four clubs, and we're not giving those other three clubs any credit.

SPEAKER_00 39:06

You guys are we are giving them credit, they all contributed to the project and we're very good late work.

SPEAKER_04 39:16

That's right, baby. Sounds biblical. Alright, thank you guys for being on the show. It was an honor to have both of you come on by. It was great. Okay, I'm serious. I love my at-home composter. I know, I like, and and no, Vigo is not like giving me sponsorship, but I'm saying I love my Vigo. And you know, if you want to sponsor the show, please feel free. I mean, I'm just saying it. But what do you think? Composting, it's awesome. Chuck, Eric, thank you so much for being part of the show. Thank you for telling people about composting. This is one of many environmental shows I'm gonna be doing. I'm gonna be talking with an architect about environmental architecture. I mean, we're gonna have some cool shows about our beautiful Mother Earth. And uh, I hope that composting has got me a little bit intrigued. At the very least, I hope you're out in the garden. I love gardening. If I'm not watching an international football game, I am gardening. So again, uh Eric, thank you so much for being on the show. And hey, please tell friends about the show. We're also on YouTube. We even have a blog, and the show hits the road. So if you have a great event or uh a conference or a project that you'd like the show to show up at. The show to show up at? Well, you get the gist. Email me, won't you? Rotarianpod at gmail.com. All right then, until next week. Take care of yourself and the world around you, and we'll hear you next time right here on the Action to Impact Show with me, Gwen Jones. Have a great week, everybody. We'll talk to you soon.