The Nothing Wasted group is inviting people who are interested in recycling, trash, food “waste,” carbon sequestration.
- Recycling: what can be recycled in our town, what can’t, and why, where does it go, and what happens to it?
- Trash: what goes into our trash, what happens to it, where does it go, how much of it is there, and how does it contribute to pollution and social injustice?
- Food “Waste”: why are we throwing out all the fertility still locked in food “waste”, how can we compost it properly, could we have town-wide composting? What would happen with the compost? How could it be combined with carbon sequestration to combat climate change?
- Carbon Sequestration: this fits in our mission to mitigate climate change. Did you know that agriculture, landscaping, woodlot management and our handling of organic materials can reverse climate change? We plan to learn how, and how to apply it here in Wayland.
This group is planning a course and two field trips:
- The Living Soil is a course (several classes) currently being designed by Kaat Vander Straeten. It will cover the life in the soil that makes nutrient cycling and therefore plant growth happen, the basic biology and chemistry of growth, the implications for carbon sequestration, hands-on experiments, and practices we can put in place to grow the best (most nutritious) food we can grow while not only not contributing to climate change, but actually reversing it. Date and Location TBA – Sign up by emailing Kaat.
- A field trip to Casella, which is the factory that processes Wayland’s (Transfer Station) one-stream recycling. It’s a fascinating process and they give tours!
- A field trip to the City Soil’s Boston Compost Site, which composts mounds of food waste in an environmental and socially just way. They also work with biochar, which aids in carbon sequestration.
The aim is to educate ourselves so we can do right by the environment and the tax payers (mistakes in recycling result in fines paid by the Town), to see how we can do better, and to become responsible users of consumer goods and composters of organics.