As a musician, you have the ability to incorporate composting into your music life and your home life and to serve as an example for others. When we say your music life, no, we do not mean throwing your guitars and drums and violins into the compost bin. We mean composting food and organic waste at shows, on tour, at rehearsals, and everywhere else where you create this kind of waste when possible. Every human being has ample opportunities to compost in their home life as well, regardless of your location or living situation. There is simply no reason we should be throwing easily compostable food waste into a trash bin to go to a landfill in this day and age. The goal of Musicians Who Compost is to get 10 new people or venues composting per year who did not previously compost. 

Program participants and their impact in diverted food waste will be posted here

What is compost and why should you compost?

Compost is an nutrient-rich material that results from the natural breakdown of organic waste. Many items can be composted rather than thrown in the trash to go to a landfill. In fact, it is estimated that up to 30% of our waste stream could be composted rather than landfilled. Items that can be composted include things like food scraps (excluding dairy, meat, and greasy items unless you are sending your items to a servicer that accepts these), coffee grounds, newspaper, cardboard, flowers and houseplants, yard trimmings, and many more. A full list of what can be composted be found on the US EPA's website here. 

The reasons to compost are plentiful. The first and most obvious reason is to reduce food waste. An estimated 30-40% of food is wasted in the United States (1). Instead of sending your food waste to a landfill where it will have a hard time breaking down and will release a lot of methane (more on this below), you can compost it and turn it into a rich fertilizer for your own plants or to give away to other farmers and gardeners. This is nature’s way of breaking down waste and returning those nutrients to the soil to fuel new growth. We should not be using up more and more landfill space for food and other organic waste that could instead be composted and used for a productive purpose. 

The second biggest reason to compost is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change. When food waste and other organic materials are sent to a landfill, they emit much higher quantities of methane than when they are composted. When they are composted, these wastes are in a more open environment exposed to more air, allowing aerobic decomposition to occur, which results in less methane emissions. Methane is an extremely potent greenhouse gas that is 28 times stronger at capturing heat than carbon dioxide and is thus a major contributor to our climate change problem. By composting food scraps instead of sending them to a landfill, you can reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from your food waste by an estimated 38-84% (2). 

Finally, when you compost, whether by yourself at home or by sending your organic waste to a servicer, you are creating an extremely nutrient-rich, all-natural fertilizer for plants and crops that can be used by farmers and gardeners. Not only does this mean your waste is going toward a productive purpose, but it also means you are helping reduce the need for synthetic fertilizers to grow crops. Why does this matter? Synthetic fertilizers result in a great deal of pollution of our waterways because when it rains, they get washed into local water sources. Although compost also results in nutrient runoff into nearby water sources, it does so to a much lesser degree (3, 4). Compost also has a number of other positive qualities that synthetic fertilizers do not have. For one, it retains soil moisture well, thereby lowering farmers' water consumption, and it also improves the texture and pH of the soil. Overall, it is an excellent product to use in gardens and farms!

The answer depends on your living situation and where you live. The good news is that composting can be done by anyone, regardless of where and how you live. Read on to find out how to compost in any living situation. 

Compost for Apartment Dwellers

There are multiple ways to go about composting as an apartment dweller. Either you can keep your own vermicompost bin indoors or outdoors on a patio if you have one, or you can drop off your food scraps and other compostable materials with a compost service, community composter, or, in some cases, an urban farm or garden. You may also live in a city that provides a separate waste bin for compostable waste that the city will pick up for you. More and more cities are beginning to offer this. 

Perhaps your city offers curbside municipal composting for free and you just aren't aware. Explore this map resource to find out if your city offers municipal composting. 

For a map and list of community compost services not offered by city governments, visit https://ilsr.org/composting/map/. You’d be surprised to find out what services are out there looking to collect your organic scraps - everything from micro haulers to urban gardeners!

To make your own vermicompost, check out our step-by-step guide.

Compost for Single-Family Home Dwellers

Owning or renting a home with some outdoor yard space opens up the options for composting exponentially. We're not going to get into every way to set up a compost pile because there are books and lots of resources out there on home composting methods. However, these posts from the Denver Botanic Garden and the Recology provide some great guidelines and tips to get you started. It really is as simple as picking the right spot, deciding on the type of container, and watering and turning it every once in a while to speed up decomposition.

How do I bring composting into my music life?

Think about all the ways you generate food and other organic waste in your music life. Those paper towels you used to clean up a beer spill? That meal you threw in the trash because you had too many butterflies before a show? All that food that went in the garbage at the restaurant or coffee house you had a show at? These are all opportunities to compost organic waste in your music world rather than throw these items away. Whether you're playing at a recording studio, rehearsal space or venue; whether you're having a meeting at a record label office or music lesson, there are going to be items to throw in the trash, and chances are, a percentage of them will be compostable. Remember, it's not just food scraps you can compost - it's also things like soiled paper towels, tissues, paper, coffee grounds, and cardboard. 

In many cases - in fact, in most cases - you will not be the person dealing with the garbage. Think about the places you will rehearse and perform over the next several months. A simple email or call to the manager of the venues can make all the difference. Tell them you'd like to bring composting to their space because it helps reduce food waste and is good for the planet (the Green Music Program can even make this call for you or help provide talking points!). Tell them that you and a program you're part of - the Green Music Program - will do the work to make it happen. From there, we can work together to make a plan to compost in these spaces, whether it's collecting scraps for a local service or taking advantage of a municipally run program. Get in touch with the program at greenmusicprog@gmail.com and we'll map out a plan for you to compost in your music world. 

Sources

1. Food Waste Faqs. USDA. (n.d.). https://www.usda.gov/foodwaste/faqs

2. Pérez, T., Vergara, S. E., & Silver, W. L. (2023). Assessing the climate change mitigation potential from food waste composting. Scientific Reports, 13(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-34174-z 

3. Click, L. (2023, October 16). Reducing water runoff with compost. Let’s Go Compost. https://www.letsgocompost.org/post/reducing-water-runoff-with-compost#:~:text=Reducing%20Runoff%20and%20Soil%20Particle%20Transport:%20Compost,transport%20of%20soil%20particles%20and%20pollutants%20downstream. 

4. Massive algae blooms choking waterways, synthetic fertilizers in chemical-intensive land management a major cause. Beyond Pesticides Daily News Blog. (2018, July 20). https://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/2018/07/massive-algae-blooms-choking-waterways-caused-synthetic-fertilizers-chemical-intensive-land-management/#:~:text=Put%20simply:%20nitrogen%20and%20phosphorous%2C%20characteristic%20of,is%20a%20huge%20contributor%20to%20the%20problem.