Waste, Worms and Windrows: Domingo Morales' Quest to Make Compost Cool

How to Save a Planet

Gimlet

Science, News, Society & Culture

4.8 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 17 March 2022

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Food waste accounts for 6% of global greenhouse gas emissions. But it turns out composting — the mystical art of turning your food scraps into nutritious organic material that can be used to grow even more food — can help to reduce those emissions. We talk to Domingo Morales of Compost Power about how he found composting, how he’s trying to make it cool, and why he’s building compost sites at public housing developments all over New York City. This episode contains a description of suicide, so please take care while listening. And if you or someone you love is having thoughts of suicide, you can call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1- 800-273-TALK. Guest: Domingo Morales Calls to Action If you have food scraps…compost them! Domingo recommends finding your local food scrap drop off to start – just separate your waste, freeze it so it doesn’t smell, and bring it to a drop off bin If you want to learn how to compost at home, check out: the Compost Power Instagram, the EPA, and SodGod for your classic aerobic compost pile, and Loop Closing to learn about worm bins And if you’re already composting, share it with the people around you Listen to Domingo’s compost rap! Check out our Calls to Action archive for all of the actions we've recommended on the show. Send us your ideas or feedback with our Listener Mail Form. Sign up for our newsletter here. And follow us on Twitter and Instagram. This episode of How to Save a Planet was produced by Anna Ladd. The rest of our reporting and producing team includes Kendra Pierre-Louis, Rachel Waldholz, Daniel Ackerman, and Hannah Chinn. Our supervising producer is Katelyn Bogucki. Our editor is Caitlin Kenney. Our intern is Nicole Welch. Sound design and mixing by Peter Leonard with original music from Peter Leonard and Emma Munger. Our fact checker for this episode was Claudia Geib. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to How to Save a Planet, I'm Alex Bloomberg, this is the show about what we need
0:06.7	to do to address climate change and how to make those things happen.
0:23.9	Today on the program, we are talking about a climate solution that maybe you don't even
0:27.4	think of as a climate solution.
0:29.4	This climate solution that addresses the emissions that come from food waste.
0:33.6	The food and agriculture sector makes up a huge chunk of global carbon emissions.
0:38.6	Food and agriculture are part of what I think of as the big three, electricity generation,
0:43.6	transportation, and food and ag.
0:46.3	You decarbonize those three sectors and you have dealt with almost two-thirds of the entire
0:52.0	problem.
0:53.0	And as we've said before, we have solutions right now in all of these sectors.
0:59.3	The thing is, the solutions to solving the first two electricity or transportation, they
1:05.3	can be sort of flashy feeling and high tech.
1:09.4	Decarbonizing electricity involves deploying lots of cool technology like huge solar arrays
1:14.3	or state-of-the-art wind turbines.
1:16.8	Decarbonizing transportation means, among other things, lots of cool new electric vehicles
1:21.6	like sports cars and pickup trucks.
1:23.8	There's even an all-electric race car right now.
1:28.0	To compare that, to one of the big solutions we have in the food and agriculture sector,
1:33.5	composting.
1:35.7	Humboldt composting is the solution that our guest today is championing.
1:40.5	My name is Domingo Morales.
	...

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