One morning this summer, my family and I drove to a warehouse in an industrial park on the west side of Chicago to do our eco-duty. We were finally going to buy a composting bin for our condo building. I was delighted to see we weren’t alone in that dusty parking lot. Dozens of other Chicagoans turned out to take advantage of discounted composting bins and rain barrels on offer from the city.

On that sunny Saturday morning there were lots of smiling faces and a palpable mood of low-key excitement as kids and adults talked with the city workers and volunteers who answered questions, collected payments, and handed out the green gear. The scene had a feeling of civic pride and neighborly good will that reminded me of what you might see in a typical polling station on election day—sans any secretiveness about ballots or partisan rivalry. We were all there to take an active role in making our community a more sustainable one, and it was a pleasure to bask in the collective spirit.

So, why is it that two months later we have a sturdy black composter sitting unassembled under our back steps? The answer is that, like lots of eco-minded urbanites who share space with their neighbors, I wasn’t trying to do this alone. When you live in a city, turning green thoughts into green actions requires coordination and cooperation. Neighborly goodwill alone doesn’t often get big changes made.

Rethinking the Garbage Game

The basic concept of home composting makes intuitive sense to most people: take part of your household garbage and create something useful from it—namely an organic soil fertilizer that conditions the soil by restoring depleted nutrients without synthetic fertilizers. But what if you’re not an avid gardener with a burning passion for quality humus? I’m certainly not, so for I long time I considered composting beyond my abilities, the luxury pursuit of true tillers of the soil.

About a year ago, I seriously began mulling over the idea of jumping on the composting train, but I was conflicted. No, I wasn’t worried about creating a stink by trying to ferment my garbage in the backyard. Actually, I had learned in researching composting that keeping oil, meat, and dairy products out of the compost would keep the pile smelling sweet (or at least inoffensive). Instead, I was a bit daunted by the decision of buying a compost bin. You can find a world of choices in compost bins on the market today, and they range in price from as little as $40 to over $400. The high-priced bins seemed awfully costly for essentially a large chunk of plastic, but I was afraid that by cheaping out, I might doom my experiment with substandard equipment.

The decision was complicated by the fact that it was a communal one. The new bin was going to be used by the five other families in our condo building who all wanted to give composting a try. Even with everyone’s agreement on the basic concept, though, choosing a model, picking a day, and putting someone in charge of the whole project usually lost out to panicked conversations about tuckpointing bids or how to get the roof through another winter.

Mayor Daley Makes It Easier

My dilemma was solved when I heard about a new program sponsored by Chicago’s Department of the Environment. The offer to city residents was simple: get a brand new compost bin for the rock bottom price of $30. I figured that even if the bins weren’t top of the line, I wasn’t risking much. I could even swing the price myself and therefore feel confident in making an executive decision. Problem solved!

Driving home with my new composter in the back seat, my son drumming on the lid we had to wedge next to his car seat, I did think the problem was solved. I had a great new bin, made of recycled plastic, called the Earth Machine: no cheaping out after all. In fact, the model retails for $80 or $90.

Now, two months later, the composter is a casualty of simple neighborly inertia. Our resident landscaper hasn’t had the time to move the flagstones that currently occupy the agreed-upon site so that the new composter can be put into action. So our Earth Machine sits, waiting behind other gardening projects to be put into service.

Reasons to Recapture the Momentum

So, I write this for myself, and for all of you who need to be reenergized: composting is important. And, if you find yourself in my situation, or one very much like it, here are some important things to remember, and to share with those neighbors who might need some reminding or convincing:

• You probably already recycle items like paper and beverage containers. Good for you. But what about the wet stuff? According to the Chicago Recycling Association, food waste constitutes 10% of an average household’s trash, and landscape waste constitutes another 20%. Compare these totals with a material like glass, which comprises just 5.5% of a home’s waste stream on average, and it becomes clear that composting has a role to play for anyone serious about striving for a zero-impact lifestyle.
• Need more? Consider your local landfill. Assuming that a modern industrial society like ours is required to collect its refuse somewhere for the sake of public health and sanitation, such sites are a limited resource. Every pound of organic matter you toss in the waste stream instead of composting contributes to the depletion of this resource. When the landfills currently in use fill up, other ones will have to be opened—and chances are these new sites won’t be situated as advantageously as the previous one. For example, the Illinois EPA estimates that there are only five years of landfill capacity left in northeastern Illinios. After that, waste from Chicago will have to be trucked further and further to facilities outside the region. The increased energy use and truck pollution will likely take a hefty toll.
• The case for composting has an even more direct link to global climate change. By reducing the amount of raw garbage entering landfills, composting also helps reduce the amount of methane and other gases produced there. As the Chicago Recycling Association reports, landfills have been identified by the U.S. EPA as the country’s largest single human source of methane emissions, and are responsible for one third of all such pollution. Methane is of particular concern in the fight against global warming because it is 21 times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.

As I write this, I find myself realizing that the inertia that has made our road to composting such a long one will dissipate. Our condo will soon have that bin assembled and ready to start turning our table scraps into flower food. And if we’re lucky, we’ll have something to show for our efforts before the snow flies.