James Mcsweeney Of Compost Technical Services: Closing the loop of 'food waste' with community-scale composting (podcast interview)
James McSweeney is an educator, the owner of Compost Technical Services, and the author of Community-Scale Composting Systems: A Comprehensive Practical Guide for Closing the Food System Loop and Solving Our Waste Crisis.
In this podcast episode, James sheds light on our ‘food waste’ crisis, the challenges we face in implementing decentralized composting systems and scaling composting facilities, and more.
To start, get a glimpse below into the conversation between James and Green Dreamer Podcast's host, Kamea Chayne.
Musical feature: Trust The Sun by Yarrow by Kim Anderson
“Compost is the seed of life for the soil and it has a very balanced chemistry. When you put compost in the soil, it can actually initiate biological processes in combination with the plants that are growing that start to sequester carbon.”
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This is a conversation on Green Dreamer with Kamea Chayne, a podcast and multimedia journal illuminating our paths towards ecological regeneration, intersectional sustainability, and true abundance and wellness for all. This preview has been edited for clarity. Subscribe to Green Dreamer Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any podcast app to stay informed and updated on our latest episodes!
On the relationship between composting and carbon sequestration:
"Compost is the seed of life. When you think about compost, it has this structure, this fluffiness, this feeling, and this look you would associate with healthy soil.
It's more than just decayed organic matter—it's alive. So compost really is the seed of life for the soil.
And it has a very balanced chemistry, so when you put compost in the soil, it can actually initiate biological processes that, in combination with the plants that are growing, can start to sequester carbon. The carbon in the soil is building up in forms that are much more stable than we ever realized."
On how building soil health can address climate change:
"There's about three times as much carbon in our soil than in our atmosphere; [slightly] less than a third of that carbon is in the top one foot of soil. So in the top one foot of soil, there's as much carbon as there is in our atmosphere, and if you go down from one foot to three feet, there's another third, and below three feet is more than a third.
So you've got all this carbon deep down in the soil, and simply by building organic matter and putting compost in the soil, there's a long-term effect that's happening of building carbon, and it can be sequestered there. Quite frankly, in order to battle climate change, the carbon needs to go somewhere. The oceans have been sucking it up—they may not do that much longer.
If we can get to net zero, we'd still have 150 petagrams of CO2 that need to find a home. The soil is a very logical place to put it, because there's so much capacity there, and carbon is actually good for the soil."
Final words of wisdom:
"We're at an exciting time in the composting industry where there's a huge amount of potential and people are making it work in dozens of different ways and models.
I hope that people will look to what's working out there, learn from each other, and pass it on and join in. Composting is something everyone can participate in and it needs support. So, please, please, compost!
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