Composting & Me
“Making time to care for community compost on a weekly basis is a great way for me to cultivate and advocate an intentional way of living, where I prioritise choices and actions I want to see in the world.”
Composting has been a big part of my personal exploration into what it means to live a sustainable life as a city dweller. It provided a doorway to exploring many things, including trying new things that helped me shift my mindset; explore composting as a way to care for Earth, people and self; and explore shaping a neighbourhood’s culture by encouraging collaborations for community composting.
One of my first experiences with composting was more than 10 years ago. Inspired by a former colleague’s request to learn composting, I read Bhavani Prakash’s blog, Eco Walk The Talk, which provided information on how to be successful with composting in Singapore. I decided to try the simplest method — bury food scraps in soil. At the time, I didn’t know anyone else who did this. I waited until everyone else was asleep before I went to the frontyard and tried digging a hole.
The soil was clayey and hard to dig. I managed to dig a deep enough hole, put in 9 parts food scrap and 1 part used tea leaves, and bury them with the dug up soil. A few days later, I was curious and went back to dig around the area during the day time. I would do this every 3 days. Every time I did so, I would notice noticeable changes in the decomposing food scrap and the soil. The soil became darker and more crumbly over time. After a while, the earthworms came too. Despite growing up as a Nature lover, I remember it was the first time I was truly delighted to see earthworms. Even though I didn’t continue with my experiment, the experience convinced me that the simplest composting method can bring tangible difference in soil.
A few years later, I would go on to start a community garden with my neighbours. Composting was integral to the garden design from Day 1. Some of my neighbours happened to be self-taught permaculture gardeners. They guided me and others to create our first-ever compost heap. It was a huge pile with alternating layers of dried leaves and garden trimmings. I didn’t understand why my neighbours would happily spend time sweeping leaves in the park, or cutting leaves and garden trimmings small.
One day, I decided to try sweeping leaves myself. That was when I experienced a mindset shift. I finally understood why my neighbours kept saying our garden was blessed with abundance. We had everything we needed to make compost! Every day, the trees in the park shed leaves big and small. For the longest time, I saw it as evidence that the park was not being well maintained. I was also afraid that others would judge us as people being punished if we were sighted sweeping leaves. With the mindset shift, I was able to see the place and the trees in a different light. I also felt more free to practice different behaviour that are aligned to what I want to see in the world. Such mindset shifts are internal and personal. Your own way of viewing the world shifts even if the world hasn’t. I feel that that is part of the reason most educators focus on teaching information and not try to shift people’s mindset. From my own experience, I feel that people may have a lot of knowledge about something, and it’s only when the person truly connects the dots and establishes a new meaning for taking action, can change truly happen.
Since then, I have had the opportunity to learn from other compost makers. I discovered that I enjoyed helping to spread their stories and why what they do is important. I also enjoy hearing what motivates them and keeps them going.
One of them is A. He shared with me how his community’s garden was at the edge of the forest, and how the soil was improved by burying banana peels in soil. He pointed out that there were baskets of such peels at a nearby stall that sells fried bananas. He said the stall was willing to give away baskets of peels, and he was willing to drive a truck to distribute the peels to people who make compost. The question that we didn’t have a clue about— were there other people who wanted these peels?
At the time I had only composted food in small holes. I couldn’t answer his question but I was open to trying. One of the things I did was to go online to ask if people had food scraps for composting. I came back with a carload of frozen food, and bags of nuts that went moldy. My first few tries with food composting were really experiments, I had no clue what I was doing.
T unintentionally helped me clarify what needs to be done. He saw that the garden’s community compost heaps were well maintained and we harvested great smelling compost. He also said, “This is fungi-based. You are growing food. You need to be composting food. Food will introduce bacteria, which is needed in the soil.”
I can’t remember what we did next, but a key shift was adding food scraps into the community compost heaps. My fellow neighbour gardeners followed suit. At one stage, we rescued 16 big bags of banana peels, and created 3 compost heaps with them! All in a morning’s work!
I learned to value community-based knowledge when people from the Government ministries and agencies came to learn about composting and ‘see the real thing’. Composting had been carried out in Singapore for decades, but for many people, it’s something that was done overseas and ‘not real’.
My community composting experience expanded when I had the opportunity to help shape a new communal gardening and composting space in another park (Boon Lay Nature Garden). Although a number of us in the group are experienced compost makers, our initial attempts at composting didn’t go well. The way we made compost was a mix of many good ideas, which is not always a good thing. Over time, the composting area evolved into one with multiple heaps. One heap was always layered with fresh material, and the rest were maturing. I go down to this location on a weekly basis to cultivate an intentional way of living, where I prioritise actions I want to see in this world.
T would come regularly to share his knowledge on composting and gardening. Amongst the many things he shared was how plants would ‘eat’ microbes, and how plants would tell microbes that live at their root-tips to bring nutrients to get from soil. All these sounded too fluffy to me, and I half-listened. I only got truly interested when I Googled and found that there are scientific papers on the topic. I was formerly working as a scientist, and I think there’s still a part of me that believes in the value of good science. With the combination of T’s sharing and the scientific information, I started appreciating that there was emerging knowledge that scientists are just starting to learn about. My deep dives into discovering reliable knowledge that I trusted led to a deeper appreciation of what I was already doing with people I enjoy spending time with.
I had the opportunity to initiate a separate project where experienced compost makers go to different neighbourhoods and guide people to become confident compost makers (Project Black Gold). The informal learnings became helpful as I discussed with team-mates CW and CY on what would be the common learnings we bring to different groups of people we interact with. Coincidentally, CW was also learning the value of microbial life in compost. It became a key teaching point of our community composting syllabus.
With this PBG project, I had the opportunity to guide a group of volunteers at a national garden. The actual in-person program is over 4-months. After the program officially ended, I continued to be in the group chat and be there whenever they have questions, have harvest, or need help getting more food scraps. It has been over a year, and within this time, we have documented many weight and temperature observations that provides great insight on what worked, and what did not. In more recent months, I introduced the more committed compost makers to rescuing food scraps at nearby businesses.
Thanks to this project, I got to lean into my former environmental science knowledge by getting my former colleagues to do environmental lab tests on community-made compost, and then interpreting the lab test results for compost makers in the wider community.
All these unexpected adventures have helped to deepen my knowledge and appreciation of community-made compost. With these as a strong foundation, I design thought-provoking workshops and talks for schools and the wider public. Teaching is a wonderful way to find out what you know well, and what you still need to work on. I mainly teach via Food Citizen, a social venture that I create with others to bring ground-up knowledge to schools and communities.
This year, I’m intentionally setting aside more days each month for people to discover community compost locations, and explore collaborations that allow for culture and mindset shifts, in Singapore neighbourhoods.
It’s extra fulfilling to bring all these new learnings back to my own neighbourhood’s community garden.
To more community compost adventures!
