Everything You Ever Wanted to Know (or Didn’t Know You Wanted to Know) about Community Compost!

Abstract

First paragraph: What once may have been an underground movement to save organic materials from the waste stream, community composting is now celebrated and further empowered by James McSweeney’s technical guide Community-Scale Composting Systems: A Comprehensive Practical Guide for Closing the Food Systems Loop and Solving Our Waste Crisis. The book meticulously unpacks this major challenge facing the food system in the U.S.—nothing short of a food waste crisis—and how to scale up in order to solve it. From the neighborly grassroots level to the budding entrepreneur, this tome feeds the budding “rotstar” on every scale—from backyard composting to organic waste haul­ing. There’s just something about composting for everyone. As McSweeney notes in the introduction, “Composting calls, it speaks from the beyond, drawing in believers. . . . A large number maintain a deep belief in composting as part of a holistic way of life” (p. 5). His new book is a well-researched, intricate foray into the world of community composting.