Ducks @ Oregon - University of Oregon

Composting

Peter E.

November 15, 2009 - 5:38 PM

As I mentioned in my previous post, I am taking a Pioneers of Sustainability class this term. My professor has us reading books from the 1970s from the founders of the sustainability movement in subjects ranging from economics to urban planning to energy. There's a common theme throughout that our modern industrial society needs a massive overhaul to localize and use clean, reusable energy sources, reduce reliance on fossil fuels, utilize our local bioregions for resources, rescale industry to an appropriate level, and place convivial tools back into the hands of the common man. Unfortunately, these changes were not made over the last 30 years, and we are beginning to realize that we need to implement some of these elements.

Our class is instilling us with a strong understanding of the problems we still face and the changes and principles that need to be implemented. Nonetheless, our class has some lethargy and reluctance to act on some of the ideas we've discussed. This frustrated me, my professor, and some others in the class. Thus, we had a heated discussion about the matter and vowed to act on something.

Six classmates and I met last Wednesday evening to vent our frustrations and figure out what we could do. Some of us were upset with the Universities tenuring process for professors, others were upset that sustainability groups on campus didn't really do anything hands-on; others were yearning for a sense of community.

I suggested we build a compost system in my backyard. Everyone jumped on the idea, and we made that our first project. While it was a smaller project, it represents the first step towards building our sustainable community. The seven of us all live in separate places, so one big compost site will now be a communal place for seven residences (upwards of 20+ people).

We talked with our professor, Robert Young, and he recommended a design and offered to help us build our compost system. We took him up on his offer, and today we built our compost system. We used wood pallets, PVC pipe, nails, and plywood boards to create the structure. All the materials were found for free minus the 50 cents we spent on nails. We walked over to Professor Young's house and picked up some plywood and pallets, and transported them to my house using his childrens' Radio Flyer wagon. We made the trek back to my house with his kids, dog Daphne, and the Radio Flyer in tow and proceeded to build our compost bins.

The most difficult part of the project was nailing the pallets together. We sawed off parts of the pallet to use as binding pieces for the pallets. Professor Young fervently criticized nails earlier in the term because they don't make them out of pure steel like they used to. Instead, we now have flimsy nails that go off at odd angles when you try to drive them in. I bought 15 nails assuming we'd only need to use about six. However, they bent at odd angles, and we wanted to do the job right so we barely got by with only six nailed as they are intended with the head going squarely into the board (we wasted 9, and made do with a couple shabby fastening jobs).

The lesson we took away from this is that goods today are made cheaply and poorly, and if you want to have them work properly you need to use a nail gun or some other tool that is excessively violent and unnecessary for the task at hand (violent in the sense that it takes a lot of resources and power to generate the tool and make it function, and it may be used violently). Like we learned in class, why not make nails properly so they don't bend as easily? That way you don't need to produce twice as many of them, they can be used as intended with a simple hammer, and they are appropriate for the task at hand. In a nutshell, that's the problem with modern industrial society. The needed changes are to: make goods work as intended, scale the technology appropriately (hammer and nail is all that's necessary), and reduce our reliance on fossil fuels (energy from human power rather than plugging in a nail gun powered by energy obtained through coal, natural gas, or oil).

Nonetheless, we got our compost bins built. We loaded them up with leaves, paper, discarded produce, and even a pumpkin. The compost will be a great resource to help us grow a garden and distribute to our neighbors for their gardens. However, the greater significance of today's compost bins was connecting with one another outside of class and building community. Our group gets tighter every time we meet, and we have a strong desire to get to know each other better while accomplishing practical tasks that make a difference in our community. In our world and in our lives it's so easy to go to work or school, take care of business, and go back to your house or apartment or dorm room. However, we've pulled ourselves out of that routine, and are looking around us at what needs work, what's wrong with the world, and we're doing things to fix that while looking one another in the eyes and taking a genuine interest in making our community and lives meaningful. Funny that it took rallying around a pile of trash to make me realize that.