Adventures in D.C.’s Curbside Composting Pilot Program
For the longest time, I didn’t see the workers who collected my compost as part of D.C.’s Curbside Composting Pilot Program. Those stealthy individuals dropped off a clean bucket and picked up my compost repeatedly without being caught on camera or otherwise being seen by me. I came to understand that: 1) There are Curbside Composting ninjas in this world, and 2) I am a Curbside Composting cultist.
Maybe ninjas don’t have cultists, but that is beside the point.
Four neighbors on my street are participating in the pilot program. No one else has claimed to be a Curbside Composting cultist. I’m taking liberties.
We cultists received our indoor and outdoor compost bins from the City in mid-September. A cute green-lidded little bin was for inside-the-house collection. For outside, cultists were to use a big cylindrical bin with a screw-top black lid. Cake Man and subsequent visitors had various questions, all centered around the wealth of waste bins now inside the house.
Cake Man is an enthusiastic recycler. He offered nary a peep about the third bin added a few years ago to gather our store drop-off plastic. We also have bins for trash and for paper/plastic/metal recycling.
But the fourth bin–the one for compost–was looking like a bin too far. The potential for rotten food smells was the issue. I assured Cake Man that the scent situation would be better because the compost would be removed from the kitchen every three days instead of weekly. Compost would go directly into the outdoor leak-and-smell-proof bin provided by the ninjas. For too long, he had suffered in silence infused with the stench of my banana peels.
Cake Man was all in.
Our subsequent visitors were onboard, too, but only haltingly. My own ninja-like action was needed. I quickly learned how to spot and to deal with visitor waste bin paralysis. That’s when someone from out-of-town is confronted by four unlabeled faux-trash cans in one D.C. kitchen. It’s important to play it cool and not upset guests on the verge of straining their sidelong glances for witnesses to improper waste disposal. The plastic bag bin caused the most confusion. It turns out I am actual friends with real people who live in states where grocery stores don’t take plastic bag drop-offs.
Curbside Composting Pilot Week #1 was a success! The outside compost bin was very full. The regular trash was not. In fact, the unrecyclable, undropoffable, uncompostable waste on Week #1 was no bigger than the Cthulhu plush that Cake Man and I sometimes use as a Christmas tree topper when Darth Vader isn’t in that honored spot.
Week #2 was a little sad. We got some styrofoam as part of a delivery. It was a backsliding one-and-a-half trashbags week. Please continue your good work to rid the world of unrecyclable plastics, Charlotte Dreizen.
Then tragedy struck!
In Week #3, our compost bin was stolen! As was a fellow cultist’s bin! After a swift round of neighbor text messages to the tune of “Have you seen my compost bin?” I spent the remainder of the day contemplating if I had brought this upon myself. Not only am I a person who picks up trash on the street, but it seems I have come to believe that the trash itself should be cleaner. Had the Cosmic All-Landfill decided that my opinion was foolish enough that I should be mocked?
I would have discarded the “It’s me” idea if not for the fact that around the time I was going door-to-door in search of my compost bin (and also picking up trash), I had an odd encounter with a stranger. He smiled at me, walked three feet past me, and deposited a see-through plastic bag containing clothing at a curb near my house. Then he walked away! Through the otherwise trash-free street! Past the randomly-“parked” scooters! And out of sight! NEVER TO BE SEEN AGAIN!
Was this the Cosmic All-Landfill come to walk among us and deride D.C.’s Curbside Composting Pilot Program?!?
Leaving the bag at the curb to serve as an object of meditation, I shifted my contemplation to the many aspects of the bag’s meaning, my role in the bag’s journey, and whether the Cosmic All-Landfill had smelled more of marijuana or methane. The bag was gone later the next day. I imagined that some sympathetic cultists who had witnessed my brush with the insensate took care of the bag. Clearly, I could not.
D.C.’s 311 said it would be as many as fifteen business days until my household received a new compost bin. My compost-bin-deficient neighbor and I commiserated. We concocted a plan to take all of our compost to the farmer’s market at the weekend. That was exactly what I didn’t want to do. I wanted to compost curbside from my house!
But there is no going back once composting has started. I would be visiting the farmers market with a load of compost (mine and the neighbor’s) for the next three weeks. I didn’t tell Cake Man that I would be temporarily placing the bagged compost in the regular trash outside while I waited for the Saturday farmer’s market drop-off. D.C. trash bins are rat-resistent, which make them practically smell-free, right?!?
Then something awesome happened. In Week #4 the ninjas struck again with a broad daylight yet surreptitious compost bin drop-off. Only four business days had passed since I contacted D.C.’s 311. Success! I was elated! My enthusiasm bubble for the D.C. Curbside Composting Pilot Program could not be burst, even by a text message that same day from a different neighbor asking, “Have you seen my compost bin?”
Pilot programs are good for bringing otherwise unknown information into the open. In the Curbside Composting Pilot, many in D.C. have learned that either a black market for stolen compost bins exists, or the All-Landfill has us in his sights. Any more contemplation of this situation by me will require a discarded bag of clothing to stare at.
In the meantime, I couldn’t be happier with D.C.’s Curbside Composting Pilot Program, and not just because I finally got a picture of the amazing composting crew.
Andrea M. Pawley 