Charity’s Column: I’ve been thinking (maybe too much) about compost

Recently, my sister called me to discuss her wishes, in the event of her demise.  She’s not sick, or even old, but she does have strong feelings about the environment and so she felt the need to make it clear now that she has decided to be composted.

Burial composting is a service that’s available in California, where she lives, and I admit that my first reaction, once she assured me that she has no specific date in mind, was how lucky she is to live in a place where composting has come so far.

I’m still locked in battle with my husband over whether banana peels belong in the compost bucket. We haven’t gotten into the compostability of sisters yet.

Shelter Island has entered a new era of composting, with the commencement of a program undertaken by the town this summer, supported by the Sylvester Manor Educational Farm. Scores of 5-gallon plastic buckets were deployed in households across the Island for the melon rinds, corn husks, potato peels, eggshells and lettuce cores that have been adding unwelcome heft to town garbage bags. 

On Shelter Island we pay to throw things away, and unless you are raising vegetables out back, you are probably creating more compostable scraps than you can use. Your choices are to pay to throw them away in a town bag, pay to have them picked up by a garbage service, or drop off your scraps at the Manwaring Road farmstand gate with professionals who know what to do with them.

Composting and I go way back. When I was a teenager, my father, who grew up on a farm, established a compost pile in the corner of our suburban yard.

He took a very long view of biodegradability and was convinced that steel and glass would eventually break down if one waited long enough. Dad had a libertarian streak that was sometimes at odds with the green lawns and leashed dogs of our neighborhood, and in my memory, our compost pile with its jars and cans was one more embarrassing example of his not caring what the neighbors thought.

As far as Dad was concerned, he was helping save the Earth.

For many decades, I made most of my garbage in a city apartment with no yard, where composting meant acquiring a team of worms and a box to house them as they turned the wilted lettuce into plant food. I never did this, mind you, I just heard about it endlessly from the few who did.

In the city it’s now possible to drop off food scraps on your block, and some lucky apartment-dwellers can take scraps to the basement of their building, where they take the rest of their garbage. There must now be quite a few domesticated earthworms looking for work.

David Browne, who comes out on the weekends, is interested in the new town program, but his schedule hasn’t made it practical to take the plunge. He’s already developed the habit of composting in the city and says on the Island, everything garbage-related is a little more challenging. “The rules are very different on Shelter Island. You can’t include bones, or anything made with oils. In NYC, we basically just dump everything into a bin in our basement.”

The recent increase in American enthusiasm for composting still leaves us far behind much of Europe, where laws prohibit food waste.

According to my sister, (not the one in California, the one who married a German man), composting is practiced by all Germans and is accepted as routine household maintenance.  Although governed by regulations, individuals often feel strongly about the right way to do it.

Her late father-in-law impressed upon her the importance of avoiding “southern fruits” in the compost, by which he meant banana peels, citrus and anything too tropical to grow in German soil.

When my sister began composting in a backyard bin, she followed her father-in-law’s credo. She avoided southern fruits and still managed to produce plenty of compost for her vegetable garden. But that kind of composting is not for the weekend waste-creator who lacks a garden or the vigor to turn and aerate their mound of coffee grounds and cabbage leaves.

Now I take my bucket to the Sylvester Manor farmstand and leave my unwanted nutrients with people who know how to turn them into fertilizer without establishing a petting zoo of raccoons, rabbits, and groundhogs under my porch. The program has turned me into a compost zealot.

When you see me at the IGA, buying carrots with the stems intact, ask me about my compost … at your own risk.