I’ve been thinking so much about over consumption and what happens to our clothes when we're done with them, hint: a lot of our old clothes end up in landfills all over the world. Recently there was an article circulating around the internet about composting our clothes or rather how we can compost our clothes at home. What? This didn’t sound right to me. Do I even know what composting is? I mean, you can’t even throw meat in the community compost collection sites, how can I compost this polyester shirt that permanently smells like BO, “at home”? Composting our clothes at home sounds like it could be an answer to our problem….couldn’t it?
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I don’t really know what composting is. I decided I needed to ask a true badass, a lover of life in all forms and a true compost queen - Desiree Tuttle. I got to meet Desi when she was the chef at Achilles Heel. Honestly Desi’s food is so delicious and you can actually feel her love in every bite. These days, you have probably seen her at the Union Square Farmer’s Market (wo)manning the compost tent <3 She let me be annoying and ask her some questions about herself, composting in general, like what is it exactly? And what’s the deal with composting clothes?
Tell us a little bit about yourself. Where did you grow up? How’d you end up in NYC? Chef life? Etc!
I grew up in sunny San Diego and spent summers visiting my family’s farm in North Berwick, Maine. I loved baking and cooking as a kid; by 9 I was watching as much Food Network as I could at the sitter’s or friend’s houses (we didn't have cable). I entered a culinary school scholarship competition and, as a shock to me, I won! I moved to San Francisco and went to baking and patisserie school at the California Culinary Academy and immediately started working in restaurants. After a few years of working in SF, I got a call from a former culinary instructor and good friend, Erin Kanagy-Loux, asking if I wanted to move to Brooklyn to be her sous chef at the soon-to-be-open Reynard in the Wythe Hotel. I eventually switched to the savory side and worked my way up through a few different NYC restaurants to become the chef at Achilles Heel. I left in November of 2020.
How did you get into composting?
Food waste has always been on my radar as a chef. Margins are pretty tight when it comes to looking at a restaurant’s P&L spreadsheet; the less food you waste, the better your food costs are, the more money you have to offer people raises or hire new staff. So, you’re always trying to have as little that goes to the compost as possible. I’ve worked in places that do separate and a lot of places that don’t. When the pandemic hit and lots of businesses were starting to shut down, I learned that our organics were being thrown into the normal waste stream and was gutted. We put all of this effort in to do our part and the program had been cut. My solution? I started wheeling our food scraps to the local weekend farmer’s market. Which was not sustainable. It got me thinking, “why is this so hard? It can’t be this hard.” In November 2020, I left Achilles with the intention to take a break from cooking; with more free time on my hands, I became a member of my community garden in Flatbush and it was there that I was made aware of Dr. Elaine Ingham’s Soil Food Web School. An online class that dives deep into making “biocomplete” compost and teaching regenerative practices. My Sagittarius moon and Scorpio sun needed to know everything about compost, so I enrolled. I would say, leaving restaurants and really learning to understand soil, that it is a living thing, has been the shift from a practical task that I was doing throughout my prepping for service to something that is so deeply connected to everything we do. I wouldn't have the food I was cooking if it were not for the soil. Mother nature is a poet, she has written into the story that nothing gets wasted, everything is valuable, everything transforms and takes new life. I think compost has opened my eyes to the possibilities of starting anew, to looking at myself and the world differently. I could go on and on about composting your feelings….
Can you tell us a little bit about composting? Like, what is it exactly?
Let’s go over some terms:
Parent material is sand, silt, clay, rocks pebbles…mainly minerals
Compost is the nutrient-dense, dark chocolate colored product that you get after billions of microbes have eaten and broken down organic matter. This is a natural fertilizer that (hopefully) has some good biology in it that, once added back to your soil, will help keep soil aerated, able to hold moisture, grow super nutritious plants (the benefits are kind of endless)
Dirt is referred to in the field as, put simply, lifeless parent material. Little to no organic matter and no biology (or solely bacteria)
Soil is parent material +organic matter +living organisms **you need all three of these things to have healthy soils**
There are lots of different composting methods but the main factor I think that is important to be aware of is if it is anaerobic (without oxygen) or aerobic (with oxygen). Most of us are familiar with aerobic, thermophilic composting, meaning we are introducing air and monitoring the temperature of a pile. For the sake of not confusing everyone, this is the type of composting we can focus on. In an aerobic, thermophilic pile, you are taking your “greens” (i.e. food scraps, this is considered the “high-in-nitrogen” material) and your “browns” (i.e. “high-in-carbon” material, fall leaves, wood chips, shredded paper), mixing them together and making sure there is adequate water and oxygen. Why do we keep talking about carbon and nitrogen?? They are the two most important elements needed for decomposition, and they’re EVERYWHERE. Did you know that nitrogen, just before oxygen, is the most abundant gas in our atmosphere?? Sups cool. The microorganisms chow down on the organic matter, pulling those elemental compounds apart and excreting, yes pooping out, what are called exudates or plant available nutrients/food. The microorganism has the ability to metabolize certain nutrients so it’s easier for the plant to absorb. Aside from all of the positive benefits, separating your organics diverts food waste from landfills which would otherwise decompose improperly, creating noxious greenhouse gasses like methane that add to the climate crisis. Not good!
Can anybody compost? Here in NYC even with no access to a yard?
Everyone can compost in NYC!!! Unfortunately, we are pretty behind the ball in terms of educating about compost and having the infrastructure for everyone to participate BUT we are pushing our elected officials to make this a priority so it is less cumbersome to participate. People need an easy button, not everyone is willing to walk to their local farmer’s market or drop-off location to participate. That is a lot of what the conversation is right now, how do we scale up and make it more convenient.
I’ve seen some articles on composting clothes. What’s your take?!?!
I love the idea of composting clothes! However, my mind first jumps to feasibility. A lot of our clothes these days are made with synthetic fibers and treated with harsh chemicals. Although it may not be harmful for us to wear (depending on who you are talking to hehe), these materials and chemicals are not degradable by these microorganisms (or would take centuries to do the job, even then, those chemicals runoff as leachate and end up in our waterways). I would love to see less petroleum-based synthetic fibers and more natural, but it’s going to take time and education. We have to follow the money always; at this point it’s “cheaper” to make synthetic fibers, I put that into quotes because we aren’t able to quantify fully the future environmental impacts this has and even the facts we have now are quieted for the sake of keeping the people making these products making money.
What are the requirements of composting clothes correctly?
At this point, it looks like step one of composting clothes in ensuring that your material is natural and free of chemicals. Step two is shredding them down into smaller pieces; remember, these are microscopic organisms we’re talking about that are doing the work, so the more surface area we can give them to work, the faster and more efficient that will be. Step three would be letting the microbes eat away at the material until it is disintegrated. Any sort of chemical used to treat these materials is adding an inhibiting factor for decomposition.
What is your vision/fantasy for composting in the future? For you? For us? For the world?!
My vision for composting starts with everyone acknowledging the damage that has been done thus far. Actually acknowledging that these practices are nothing new, indigenous peoples all over the world have been practicing regenerative land stewardship for millennia but have been removed from the conversation in the name of exploitation and profit. We cannot move forward if we aren’t willing to understand how we got where we are. I envision farmers being able to grow food without worry of a drought or hurricane because the soil is healthy and able to maintain it’s balance; or that they don’t have to buy synthetic fertilizers, that end up running off into our clean water supply, that are derived from fossil fuels because their soil is lacking nitrogen. I’ve learned a lot about soil from a biological and chemical standpoint, but also from a spiritual one. I imagine a world where we no longer “other” nature as something that is separate from ourselves. We are nature, we are able to bend and change and transform when something no longer suits us; not to be thrown away or seen as useless, but actually as a resource for something new. I imagine a world where we are not scared of nature, of ourselves.
Here are a couple pages I came across while answering these questions!!
http://compost.css.cornell.edu/chemistry.html
http://thebokashibucket.com/microbes-soil-plants-how-do-they-all-work-together/
This is the article that got me thinking about composting clothes:
After reading this article I reached out to Desi to see what she had to say. We decided that we should just try composting some different fabrics and see how we do! The Button up Breakdown (the Denim Digest) was born. We picked 3 weights of (what we think are made with) “natural” 100% undyed cotton; a 10oz duck cotton, a light weight canvas and a loose gauze. We cut the fabric into small pieces and wrapped them each individually in plastic mesh. Of course it would be most ideal to cut the fabrics into small pieces and mix them in with the compost piles but DUH we want to track and document the breakdown progress with you dolls! We actually started this project weeks ago, Desi volunteers at a community compost site so she threw the bags in one Sunday when they were starting a brand new pile. Unfortunately, we had a few flubs and we have to start over. BUTT we are starting again this week! We’ll check in with ya’ll regularly and share the progress.