Eco-Stories: Christopher Templeton from ReSoil

Eco-Stories: Christopher Templeton from ReSoil

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Eco-Stories: Christopher Templeton from ReSoil

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. See the full interview below.

Christopher Templeton is the Operations Manager and a Master Composter at ReSoil Compost in Elgin, SC. Chris was born and raised just outside Washington, DC, and moved to South Carolina in the 90’s. In the 2000s, he and his family moved to a 20 acre property in the middle of nowhere, somewhere between Kershaw and Camden, SC. Chris loves the peace and quiet, the abundance of trees, grass, and the best part is the over 1,500 sq. ft. fenced in garden! Chris has always been a “home gardener” of some sort from a young age, with multiple generations of his family having home gardens of various sorts. Compost piles were integral in his upbringing, but he never thought his career path would lead him to making commercial compost! Chris loves his job and getting his hands dirty, a big change from his previous career as a Certified Pharmacy Technician. Chris was hired at ReSoil in 2018 assumed the Operations Manager position in January 2019.

ReSoil Compost is the only class 3, commercial scale, composting facility in the Midlands of South Carolina. We take commercial organics and food scraps and turn them into a high quality STA certified compost soil. With the help of our parent company, Smart Recycling US, we collect food scraps from locations like The University of South Carolina, The Metropolitan Convention Center in Columbia, The National Advocacy Center at USC, some local schools and more. This material that was going straight to the landfill is now feedstock for our compost operations. Our compost products are in high demand! We enjoy EVERY relationship we have with local landscapers, garden shops, farmers, and families/individuals that use or resell our soils. We are also a proud member of the US Composting Council! To learn more about us visit www.resoil.us and contact us today.

This interview was recorded on July 24, 2020.

Resources:

Fiona Martin (FM):

Welcome. We're with Christoper Templeton today from ReSoil, which is a commercial compost facility in Elgin, South Carolina. How are you doing today, Chris?

Christopher Templeton (CT):

I'm doing great. How about you?

FM:

I'm excited to talk about compost. We have so much stuff to talk about. So this is great. Chris is the operations manager and a master composter at ReSoil, a commercial composting facility in Elgin, South Carolina, and he serves Columbia, South Carolina Metro Area. So tell us a bit about yourself and how you got into commercial composting?

CT:

Well, we lived at the beach for 27 years from the D.C. Area and worked in retail pharmacy as a certified technician for 12, 13 years. When we moved, I was looking for a job and found the opening on Facebook Marketplace, out of all, places. I didn't expect it. I started in 2018, and the gentleman that had started the company trained me, and he had resigned. Then in January of 2019, I took over as operations manager and went to a US Composting Council. They had a CCREF, the Composting Council Research and Education Fund or Foundation. They have a training course. It's a five-day training course. I had gone and gotten my Master Composter or certificate and since then just have been trying to improve everything at ReSoil.

I never thought I would be able to do commercial composting and get paid to do it. I had always had the leaf piles at home, and we'd always used our own leaf compost or kitchen scraps. My grandmother did it. All the way back, we always had compost at home. So I got into it when I saw that, and I was thrilled to get hired, and ever since then, it's just been, "Oh my gosh, I can't believe I get paid to do this." So it's been a crazy, wild, beautiful ride.

FM:

It is. I was super excited to find, first of all, commercial composting. So similar to you, I didn't grow up with composting, but my husband and I started composting in our own yard maybe five years ago, and we have our hot pile and then I'm worm composting as well.

Now we've got chickens on top of the compost pile, breaking that down. So we love compost, but the reality is not everyone is going to be able to compost in their backyard. So there has to be some sort of large-scale commercial composting service. I was in a call, and there's only three commercial composting facilities in South Carolina, and to find you, who's only nine miles away from me down the road in Elgin was super exciting. So talk to us about what a commercial composting operation is like. Where do you get your feedstock, which is what goes into the compost? That's a word I've learned. How do you process it? What's your final product, and who buys this from you, or who uses it?

CT:

Well, there are many different ways to do commercial composting. Our particular method is an ASP or aerated static pile, which could be positively or negatively aerated. We do a positive variation, where we force oxygen into it. We have a slightly indoor area. We are in a steel aluminum building. So we have bays. We have six bays. They're approximately about 10 feet wide and 40-foot long, and we have pipes. We have four-inch PVC pipes that have holes drilled at specific intervals in specific sizes with blowers behind some walls, and we've build compost piles up, and the blowers on electrical timers are mechanical clock timers, run the blowers around the clock, X number of minutes on and X number of minutes off in 30 minutes cycles, and we force the oxygen into them. That's how the microbes get what they need because when you introduce oxygen to the microbes, they start going crazy. That's how your compost pile heats up from the activity of the microbes, good beneficial microbes.

Of course, that could go south, and you can get bad stuff forming, acidic microbes, the ones that love the different kinds of fungus and whatnot. But anyway, we have an aerated static pile operation, and if everything goes right according to temperatures and turning the product and a lot of monitoring and testing, we can have the product ready from beginning to finish in 45 days, and there's a specific... I have a spreadsheet that you take test results from your feedstocks. We test our wood chips. We test our food waste. We test our coffee beans and even dog food. We have a Mars Petcare facility here in Columbia that is sustainable and brings product to us.

So there's certain ratios and whatnot. Then you mix it. You make sure it's thoroughly mixed, right moisture content and right porosity, or it's got fluffy airspace, bulk density, how much of it, how heavy it is. You want precise numbers. Then you put it into the bays and let the microbes go to work. That means that absolutely beautiful thing. You go in and turn it with a little skid steer, and then after, in the neighborhood of 15 to 30 days, we can actually take it and move it out once the temperature comes down into a curing pile, where it sits outside, and the temperature continues to fall and drop off, and then we run it through a trommel screener, which separates out overs, as we call them, which is the big stuff, the big chunks of wood, and everything else that doesn't go into the finished product.

Then we take the finished product and separate that, and people from landscapers, garden centers, home users, golf courses. There's so many different benefits to compost, and even the DOT could use it, erosion control, biofiltration. You can filter out stormwater, build a berm and plant grasses and bamboo and all kinds of plants like that, that love water and love to help soak up all the toxins and leachate so to speak that the product that comes off the cooking compost pile. But yeah, we have an aerated static pile operation, and I am absolutely in love with it.

FM:

Yeah. I mean, it's pretty amazing that you can get a finished product in 45 days, whereas a home composting setup, not only do you have to have the physical capabilities of turning a pile.

CT:

Telling me with a pitchfork.

FM:

Exactly. I must say my husband does most of it. But the chickens have been helping. So I can get more involved now because the chickens go through it like crazy. But it takes us a lot longer to have a finished product doing it in our backyards than it does for you to create one. What I'm interested in as well is talk a little bit about right now what your current feedstock is. Like you said, you're getting it from the Mars dog food plant. I'm sure you're getting it maybe from restaurants or larger facilities in Columbia.

CT:

Yeah. Well, under normal circumstances, without the COVID pandemic, we have University of South Carolina. We partner with SMART Recycling US, which is based out of Charleston. We have Charleston, and we have Horry County, and we have the Columbia Area. We collect from USC, National Advocacy Center at USC, the Metropolitan Convention Center, a couple of elementary schools in Lexington-Richland Five and a private school downtown, Heathwood Hall Episcopal School, and we collect food waste from them, which we give... SMART Recycling has 64-gallon roll cards that look just like the ones you pushed to the curb, and some of them have compostable liners, compostable trash bags. Some of them don't. Then we collect them all. That's our food waste.

We also have produce that comes in from a national organization that collects it from grocery stores. They would bring it twice a week. It'd be produce that would almost look like it was fresh off the grocery store shelves and make you wonder why it was bad. But they have their standards, but there's that. Then coffee, coffee beans from Starbucks. I have a big mound out in the back and all different types of coffee from the whole process. Then woodchips. Woodchips is the big, big, big thing. When we have to buy them, we don't like to because of the cost and transporting.

But we do have a couple local companies that come and drop off, and we don't charge them when they're chipped. We don't charge them a tipping fee. We just say, "Hey, we need this stuff. Bring it on." We were very fortunate to have companies locally like that, that can come and do that. So basically, you're looking at wood chips, coffee beans, a little bit of dog food, and a lot of the food waste and the produce and in certain ratios and formulas and just, it makes a beautiful, I would say organic. But I am cautious of the word because of organizations like OMRI and whatnot, but I say it's organic based.

FM:

Yeah. We're talking a lot about food waste, and this is stuff that if it wasn't going to your compost facility, it would be going to?

CT:

It would be going to a landfill and producing methane, which destroys the atmosphere. I don't have the exact numbers, but approximately... For instance, South Carolina DHEC has the Don't Waste Food SC program, amazing people, amazing program. They're trying to cut food waste in half by 2030 and great people to work with. We are also ambassadors for them. They have some numbers that I was able to pull off their website and the toolkit they gave us that about each year, up to about 40% of the food supply in the US is not consumed and that quite still what they say about $218 billion of loss annually every year. South Carolina alone, that's about 700,000 tons, as of 2017, I believe those numbers came from.

That goes to the landfill. Like I said, it creates methane, where it could go to a composting facility or needy families. I mean, we have a food shortage problem in the US. There's people that are starving. So there is a food hierarchy that composting is on. They say they prefer to go to needy families and then down the list somewhere is composting, where we can generate a product that goes back to the farmers and back to the food that farmers grow for us. So yeah. It's kind of disturbing when you think about it going to the landfill, and it could go to composting and not make all these dangerous greenhouse gases. So yeah. It's heartbreaking.

FM:

Yeah. I mean, 40% of our food going to waste to the landfill is shocking. Like you said, not everyone in this country is fed. There's a lot of people experiencing hunger and food insecurity. There's also things that are waste products that could be used, like you said, woodchips, coffee grounds.

CT:

Untreated pallets, ground up.

FM:

Untreated pallets. We have some breweries around here. Do you have any connections with the breweries for their mash?

CT:

Not yet. I have a part-time employee that unfortunately had a furlough temporarily. He used to get some, and that's what he fed his chickens. So I'm working on trying to get that into it. I believe that it's very compostable. But I've got a list on my computer of potential places to get all this food waste from. There's so many businesses, so many schools, I even want to start a residential program. There's many cities and many states that have even small-scale micro composters or micro haulers that could even go as far as riding around on bicycles collecting five-gallon buckets from homeowners.

So I mean, there's a couple of hurdles in the way, and legislation is one of them and trying to get people educated and aware of the problem and how we can fix it and getting all that taken care of in the statehouse is a big start. But there's residential collection possibly in our future for the City of Columbia. I haven't really taken any steps yet, except trying to figure out how I can do this, how we can get it all set up and how you can also prevent the contamination, people putting plastics. There are compostable plastics, but source separating the plastics and the food waste and the trash and making that easy for a collection's route or whatnot to keep it out of the landfill.

So there's a lot of good things that I'm trying to work on all at one time and trying to make the compost product and keep up with the demand because with the pandemic, people are starting these victory gardens at home, and we sold out completely in March, and I'm still trying to recover from that. But yeah. Another note I had was about 3% of food waste diverted from landfills compared to an overall recycling rate of about 34%.

FM:

I've said this on the podcast before speaking about compost and waste, that once you start composting, and you go somewhere where composting isn't available, it's just painful to put that banana peel in the trash can. Actually, where we're recording right now is at my coworking space. Before the pandemic, I had a bucket and was trying to educate people and move it into my own compost. But it's actually quite hard to do it just as an individual with something with so many people. So to find commercial composting that hopefully eventually allows a more sort of industrial size version of removing that waste and diverting it to compost instead of going to the landfill is pretty exciting.

CT:

Oh, yeah. Talking to my colleague, Megan, networks for Smart Recycling yesterday. She got a call from a lady who had moved into Mount Pleasant and was wanting a list of businesses and local places that supported that and composted, and she'd do business specifically with them if at all possible. It's just educating the consumer and then getting the lawmakers in the Statehouse to realize that there are ways that we can do this. I mean, there are hurdles, but we have to hash them out. We have to have a game plan. It's almost like writing a business plan. Get the regulations from other states. Look into that research and then educate.

Vermont just passed a food waste ban. I believe it was when the beginning of the year. It's just, I believe back in June. I think it was maybe July 1st. Let's just say that. Food waste ban completely, cannot go to the landfill.

FM:

That's amazing.

CT:

And even here in Columbia. I know South Carolina has yard waste. It might be Columbia, but I think it's statewide, has a yard waste ban. That's why all the yard waste, leaves, branches, and whatnot, they put them out on the side of the road, where they'll collect them separately, and they have a ban that you can't take them to the landfill.

FM:

So that leads right into what I was thinking about is, what are these legal roadblocks that we have, me on a small scale, just as a person, has struggled to, for example, get my hands on some of that yard waste, right? I'm looking for wood chips. I would love to... If the city is collecting this and chipping it, it's going to be different by county. I think in Kershaw County, they take it to the landfill, even though they separate out. It's very confusing. I know I went on my own journey and called Kershaw County people, and basically nobody could tell me. It's clear that the systems are not in place, they're not used to, let's call myself a consumer. They're not used to someone calling up and asking for these things. So you get someone on the other end of the line who doesn't know, It's ingrained systems in place. I feel like you are going to know a lot more about this than I would. So can you tell us some of the roadblocks that we currently have... Because it seems like why don't we just like, "Hey, food waste. Send it to Chris at ReSoil."

CT:

It sounds simple.

FM:

Right. So what are you finding is difficult?

CT:

What's difficult is number one, like we said, the legislation, the lawmakers not knowing what their options are. Number two, what do they do with it, and how we can figure out an easier way for them to divert. For instance, if they, you go to the local recycling centers, you have a yard waste bin, right. They take those, and then whichever county hauls them off to... I don't know.

FM:

But I don't think they know. I called and I say, "Can I go to the convenience center and take that?" They said, "Absolutely not."

CT:

No.

FM:

I said, "Can I go to the landfill?" They said, "No, you can't go to the landfill." So I mean, where does it go?

CT:

That's a very good question. If I could get in there even as a private entity, number one, those woodchip grinders, horizontal tub grinders are hugely expensive. But if I could get access, I would take them day in and day out. I mean, because it's a product, now obviously, if it was whole tree trunks and whole logs, they'd have to go through the grinder, which reduces the size, and we would charge less of a tipping fee because it's more of a demand product. We would use more of it. Then obviously, it costs to operate the machines. I mean, we're talking about machines that are half million dollars or more, brand new, but they are essential, and you could use them for grinding feedstocks, reducing that particle size. It makes it easier, and the composting process goes smoother.

But woodchips are a hot commodity. A lot of gardeners are wanting to do the Back to Eden method, the lasagna gardening, where it's cardboard and wood chips, and you don't disturb, the no till method, and that's a big component, and finding good quality wood chips is a tough one. To answer that, about what the counties do with it, I haven't had the time or the luxury to be able to investigate like I want to and find out where they're taking it and how I could help them and reduce their costs of transporting or what they do with it. It's an open book, and I wish I had all the answers to that. But I have some digging on that still. Yeah.

FM:

Yeah. So yeah. Let's talk about the quality because it's something, when we talk about this search for wood chips, that maybe people who haven't been on this journey aren't aware of is that you do have to be careful with the wood chips that you get or even the mulch that you buy from the store because... The example I use is if these woodchips contained chipped utility poles, those utility poles are soaked in.

CT:

Creosote or-

FM:

Yeah. Soaked in carcinogenic chemicals. You do not want that anywhere near you as a person or definitely not in your garden for your flowers or your vegetables. That's going straight into your body. So let's talk about certified compost and the STA and talking about keeping these contaminants out. I have another example. Recently, in North Carolina, a company, traced back to McGill Compost, sold contaminated compost likely without their knowledge. So I would hope that a compost company would not purposely sell contaminated compost. So talk to us about what these certified compost, what these labels mean, the STA. How do composters like yourself try to mitigate contamination so that gardeners and farmers are not buying a product that may possibly stunt plant growth, or God forbid, add chemicals to their soil?

CT:

First of all, we are proud soil builders. We are proud members of the US Composting Council. I just happened to be a member ambassador myself. That happened, and I got into learning about the STA program, which stands for Seal of Testing Assurance, which states basically that according to how much we produce, I have to test a certain frequency. It'd be anywhere from monthly to... We have to test quarterly based off of how much we produce, and we send off a compost sample every three months from different batches, obviously, and they go down to a specific way. They call it the TMECC the method of examination of compost and composting, I believe is what the acronym is for. But the TMECC standard, where the STA program of the US Composting Council certifies the labs to a certain high standard and how the products that we test for and what the EPA limits, like for example, the 503 heavy metals.

The labs have to go by certain requirements, and then we have to meet or exceed those requirements. So the STA program does wonderful things, from advocating for us, and it's pretty much the gold standard of compost quality in the industry. About McGill, Gary Gittere, a wonderful guy. He was part of the people that taught us at the Master Composter class. I had the privilege of meeting him. As their sales and marketing manager, he was put into a tough spot when I couldn't even imagine getting those phone calls. But their product, and they're still looking into... I believe they're still looking into and waiting for test results from where it could have come from.

It's most likely coming from either tainted grasses, like lawn clippings, if a tree company or a landscaping company were to come in and cut grass that the herbicide was used on, then we wouldn't know. But there's manures. We're also talking about clopyralid. It's one of the persistent herbicides that even lasted the composting process and then even 18 months through, if the animal eats the grass, it goes through the animal's digestive system into the manure or into the bedding, and it still through our process, the heat and what we call the PFRP, the process to further reduce pathogens, kills off salmonella and the fecal coliform and the weed seeds. But this persistent herbicide gets in there. We don't know it. So you have to really test your feedstocks, for instance, the woodchips, and then you have to know the companies that drop them off or bring them to you. Do they use these products? Do the landscapers at these homeowners properties, do they use this?

So right now, the EPA is looking for comments on this specific one, clopyralid, and there will be others. It's damaging to a lot of plants - peas, lettuces, sunflowers even, tomatoes. It could be toxic to the plants at one part per billion, I believe it is. But it's not toxic to mammals. So you're talking into parts per million. Unfortunately, what happened with McGill, it breaks my heart, but they're assuming it's clopyralid, I believe, and they're tracing it to find out where it came from and trying to keep those regulated and EPA stepping in, and we're all commenting on it from the Composting Council because it's our voice and our product that depends on the regulations they come up with.

But to keep that out of the composting cycle or even regulate who can use it and when specifically do you use it and how, they could actually potentially keep it out of the compost stream and hopefully put it not out of the watersheds, the groundwater and even the air and soil. So my heart goes out to McGill, and I know that they're going to work on it very diligently. As far as we go, we have, knock on wood, we have pretty good relationship with the arborists that bring us chipped-up wood, and we do test. It's a completely different test for testing for the herbicides, but we have had a good product, and I'm not just biased. I've actually put it to the test at home to try and figure out where my weak spots are.

So I haven't had, I guess you could say the unfortunate privilege of killing my plants with it, but having a good relationship with your woodchip drop-offs and knowing exactly what is in the feedstock is key. There's a lot that the Composting Council and the research foundation are doing to identify these persistent herbicides and to get the EPA to regulate them. So I mean, like I said, my heart goes out to McGill, and that's unfortunate, but they'll fix it.

FM:

With these persistent herbicides, it again, makes me think about sometimes as consumers, our short-sightedness as to what we're doing. We see an issue. We see a weed, and we buy a weed killer, and we put it on our lawn. Are these persistent herbicides in particular residential, or is it more agricultural, or is it just a mix?

CT:

Oh, I know it's agriculture, and it could be the landscape companies that people hire to do their lawns. It could be off-the-shelf products. I don't have any names off the top of my head. But the active ingredient with this particular one is clopyralid. As of right now, I believe the homeowner can go into any hardware store or big box hardware store and buy a... Well, for instance, Roundup is glyphosate.

FM:

Exactly. Roundup is a big boogeyman, right?

CT:

It is. But glyphosate, and don't quote me on this exactly, I know from reading the label that glyphosate, you can actually kill off the weeds and grass in your garden spot and then plant it a day later. There are different types and different strengths. You wouldn't want to use Roundup 365 because then it stays in the soil for a good year. But I know that there are ones that are safe for... There's even home remedies. They have a horticulture vinegar. It's very dangerous to work with because it's super concentrated acetic acid.

So there's very specific labeling that people need to follow, and it could be from multiple sources, but I haven't looked at the labels off of products yet on the shelf that is available to the homeowner, and it very well could be a mix of homeowners usage or landscaping services using it, and it's just there's no way of telling what we would get. We have to know the people and know where the source of the product comes from. We take grasp of things, but we don't get any. So I'm fortunate that if that were to be the case and somebody just was to start bringing me a lot of grass clippings, and I would start sending off some samples to try and figure out if we had any persistent herbicides that would make it through this composting process.

CT:

So as far as contamination goes, it's hard to tell unless you have those really good relationships and express to them, "Hey, I can't have this. It makes it through the composting process and into the finished product and could be damaging."

FM:

Yeah. I was just listening to my gardening teacher who was talking about in LA County, they use human sewage in their composting, and I understand they give compost away for free, but the problem being that part of their composting is human sewage, and something that comes through human sewage is all the pharmaceuticals that we're taking. So that's another contaminant. Again, I feel like we've been maybe lulled into this. We take something once or we spray something once, and that's done with, and the reality is-

CT:

There's a triple effect.

FM:

... it's not done with what we put into. You even mentioned animal manure, especially I imagine in large industrial agriculture, like CAFOs and stuff like that, the amount of antibiotics that livestock are given just to stay well in those situations, you wouldn't necessarily want that manure to go into your composting cycle.

CT:

Exactly. Unless you have an operation, and I'm not too familiar with on-farm composting that exists, like a dairy farm, or a chicken farm. I know chicken litter is very, very... It could burn your plants if you don't cook it properly, but you have to mix up the carbon sources, the browns, and all that into... You have to cook it the proper amount of time to kill off the pathogens. Like you said about the pharmaceuticals, I remember reading some years back that they'd found Prozac in the city water supply in another city in South Carolina. It's like, "No wonder why we were all happy or depressed or whatnot." But yeah. Pharmaceuticals, I haven't had to worry about that yet. I hope it's not an issue with us and the organic nature of our product.

But even with the, like you said, the municipal biosludges and biosolids. Biosolids is a completely different, separate part of composting, and they are compostable, and there are very, very strict rules and stuff that go into play when you're talking about testing with biosolid, specifically municipal solid waste and human waste like that. As far as our permit goes, we aren't allowed to take any kind of manures, and then I was also mentioning to you before the show that there are commercial products available that are absolutely wonderful, slow-release nitrogen sources that are great for your lawn. I use it four times a year on mine that are made from a major city in the US and their human wastes, but there are specific procedures and specific composting techniques that come into play to actually reduce those pathogens and to make it a safe product. It's just a matter of fact of trying to figure out the testing, what you're testing for, and how to go about doing it. So it's important to reduce those pathogens.

FM:

Well, since I have a Master Composter in front of me, can you rewind it back, and let's talk about, or you talk to me about what goes into a compost pile. We just mentioned browns and greens, and that's a terminology that people who compost have an understanding of. But let's pretend that our audience doesn't know what browns and greens are. Can you talk us through a compost pile and what that means?

CT:

Carbon and nitrogen.

FM:

Okay. So the browns are carbon, right? And greens are nitrogen.

CT:

Exactly, the leaves and the grasses, and greens would have a higher nitrogen content, would be your vegetable, brines, your banana peels, and all the kitchen scraps. Of course, you want to keep your meats and your fats or what we call FOGs - fats, oil, grease. They don't compost as well. They do compost, but also, at the home, they attract unwanted predators and unwanted rodents, and they can make it a really smelly process. We are a class 3 permitted facility. We can accept certain amounts of pre-consumer raw meat. Actually, it breaks down really fast, to my understanding, and DHEC also plays a role into that as well. If there's certain quantities that will be coming regularly, you have to sort of let them know, but that's part of being a class 3 level permitted facility that we can accept pre-consumer, raw, uncooked meat. But at home, you don't want to do that as much.

Browns and greens, my suggestion is probably to have three parts of carbon or browns to one part of the food waste or greens. There are many, many, many resources online, even the Composting Council. DHEC has a lot of resources on how to do a home composting pile and what's safe and what isn't. At home, you won't reach the temperature is quite likely, between 137 and 173 is our sweet spot. Anything less than that, anything more than that, then it gets kind of either building the wrong type of microbes. Or at 180 degrees, we look into going to turn it and potentially with the gases igniting and spontaneously combusting.

FM:

Wow.

CT:

So I mean, it's a very delicate time frame and with the temperatures, and they call them thermophilic and mesophilic phases. So if you don't have the right moisture content and the right ratio of browns to greens, it can happen a lot slower or a lot quicker, and that's when I said earlier monitoring. We monitored temperatures every day, every pile, every day, just to make sure that we don't run into a flash bang situation. So you've got to keep it in line for commercial.

FM:

Yeah, exactly. Whereas if my compost pile doesn't get hot enough, it's on me, and it takes a little bit-

CT:

That's hard to do.

FM:

Oh my God, yes.

CT:

It's so hard. I've known one person that has had a hard time keeping it low or getting it to drop.

FM:

Oh, wow.

CT:

It usually has a lot to do with, make sure your moisture content is right. Grab a handful of it, squeeze it. It's like a wet sponge. You don't have any dripping water at your hand or undo it, and it stays shaped, ideal. 40% to 60% moisture is where we like it. But at home, it's usually got to take a lot longer, and especially with leaves, depending on... I was talking before about the oak leaves. They're so hard to break down, and they have tannic acids on them and whatnot. They have to be chopped up. You make them all similar sizes, it's going to build quicker.

But yeah. There's a lot of resources out there from the Composting Council, and you could even shoot me an email and say, "Hey, how can I do this home composting?" There's a couple of resources. Obviously, I came unprepared with them right now at the moment. But there's a lot of resources out there available to me and to the consumer for home composting, even through DHEC, the Don't Waste Food program. Don't Waste Food SC.

FM:

Don't Waste Food. That's good. So as you mentioned, home composting is an option, but it really isn't an option for everyone when it comes to space, if you live in an apartment, and you're likely not going to have any available space. The compost tumblers, I don't know anyone who's really had success with them.

CT:

My sister.

FM:

Oh, that's good.

CT:

It works, but they're small.

FM:

Exactly.

CT:

You have to still supplement. So I get to people that have compost piles at home, but they come to me and say, "Hey, we need to add compost to it. What would you recommend?" We have a Microsoft Word document that we typed up as far as recommendations go, and you can add it to your home compost pile and supplement because you won't get enough.

FM:

Yeah, we do. We do that. Exactly. We don't make enough, or it takes a long time. So it came around to our growing season, and if we hadn't turned the pile enough or added the right mixture, then we don't have a prepared compost.

CT:

Right moisture with the heat. Oh my goodness.

FM:

Exactly. We don't have the right compost. So I mean, not only can it be difficult - we don't want to dissuade anyone if they want to do a whole compost pile - but also, for example, my parents who are elderly, they're not going to be able to turn a home compost pile. It's not going to happen. So how far away are we in this area from having residential composting pickup?

CT:

As far as legislation goes, I am not sure. But I know that I have many resources at my fingertips at ReSoil. I have unlimited, it feels like, resources at the Composting Council that I can look into models that other states have done, and it's just a matter of being able to look at what other states and municipalities have done and what South Carolina can do. As far as the Columbia Area, I think we're behind. As far as Horry County or the beaches and Charleston County.

FM:

And the Upstate as well. We had Shelley Robbins from Upstate Forever and she lives in Spartanburg, and they have Atlas Organics, which she has her residential compost pickup.

CT:

Yeah. They have a great program. Jim Davis who does the marketing and Gary who started it was one of the founding members of Atlas. They're great people. But in Columbia here, I feel like, as a state capital, we're kind of behind the loop with sustainability and green business infrastructure and getting those people involved. It takes a lot and exactly how to go about what we want to do or what to suggest to lawmakers. I'm in the process, fingers crossed. I'm trying to start a South Carolina chapter of the US Composting Council because each state could have their own that not all of them do. I'm trying to get some things going in that department so we could get that presence and that support behind us to move forward with creating that legislation. My advisor, Gary, he is on the board for the North Carolina Composting Council. He's been a master composter over 20 years, and he helped make some of the regulations that composting councils sent to South Carolina as far as permitting.

So there are loops and speed bumps to go over and hoops to hop through and whatnot. But I couldn't give you a timeframe. I'd like it sooner rather than later, and I've had people reach out to me, apartment dwellers or renters in Columbia to compost with me, but it's on my to-do lists with a lot of stuff that just moving forward, I would like to just see Columbia catch up with the rest of the state. How to do it, I don't know.

FM:

It sounds like there is a bit of a demand. So part of what we're talking about at the beginning was consumer education. So I mean, it's on your list, and understandably, you're a one person operation-

CT:

Yeah, right now.

FM:

... and that is a lot, right? There's just only so many hours in the day, and the reality is you got to keep your products going, or else there's nothing else that can be done. But do you think there's more education needed to raise the demand? Because if we had an upswell of demand from the consumer level, would that nudge legislators to look for solutions for that?

CT:

Of course. People that vote or people that have a voice. Everybody has a voice. But writing to your lawmakers in the state and federal level, but more so specifically in our situation, the state, writing to those people, getting with the people like the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association, Sustainable Midlands, even Sonoco Recycling. Great companies, and getting with the organizations that we could all sort of write these legislators, write those lawmakers and say, "Hey, we need this. We need to figure out this." That's part of what I'm trying to do is educate people and let them know, "Here's the problem. X amount of food goes to the landfill that produces dangerous methane gas, and it could be going to composting companies to help produce a soil product that helps go back into the food cycle."

It's just, like you said, educating. But writing those lawmakers and letting them know, "Hey, this is a real problem." Columbia is behind it as far as the rest of the state goes. I think we need to bring that up a notch, get residential collecting, or do a food waste ban or get local restaurants. I know down in Charleston, SMART Recycling has several little restaurants, no matter how big or small, hotels. No matter how big or small the organization is, if they have any kind of paper waste, I know Boeing was another one that was sending their cafeteria waste and even bathroom trash, like clean paper towels that were just used the wash your hands, anything that's a good carbon source, cardboard. There's so much that goes into feedstocks that. You can even compost gypsum from plasterboard.

FM:

Oh, okay. I'm like, what is gypsum?

CT:

Yeah. Plasterboard. Drywall, but obviously a certain amounts, but educating them on what is and what isn't compostable and what can be done at home and how to do it and how to supplement that, and then if you see a business, ask if they're composting, recycling. I saw on the way in here, our recycling and trash bin have a compostable one, right? They have three-bin system right beside it. Signage.

FM:

Well, I mean, I've tried to do composting here. But as I mentioned, as one person, and this is a bigger facility, it's very hard to keep up with a five-gallon bucket of compostable stuff. The frequency was too high for me to be able to take it back and forth to Lugoff, right?

CT:

Of course.

FM:

So that's where commercial composting facilities that have regular pickups, it can come through and get it.

CT:

Designing around. Yep.

FM:

Exactly. Education was a huge one. I know that we had a composting bin here, and for a time, it wasn't getting filled because I think people didn't know what to do. So I just made a little, like you said, a Word document with pictures and was like paper towels, banana peels, coffee grounds, anything from that coffee, even the filter because we had the filter without the plastic, go in there. By putting that sign up, I had more than we could handle. So we need to get commercial composting here, for sure.

CT:

Holy cow. That was not what I was expecting as far as the answer goes because you can say, "Hey, get everybody in a room. We're going to start doing this." They even make little two and a half gallon, little small tabletop, countertop type bins, even with carbon filters built into them so you don't get the smell. But they also even have the little compostable liners, which are made out of a vegetable oil, starch, sugar byproduct, same as the lunch school trays that are compostable lunch trays made out of a sugar pulp or a fiber of some kind that's compostable.

FM:

That's only commercially compostable, right? There's a big difference.

CT:

Yes. Yeah. You do not want to put a compostable trash bag or compostable liners, as we call them, into a home compost pile.

FM:

Right. So there, again, the need for a commercial compost is certainly very high.

CT:

Exactly. There are companies like BioBag or Eco-Safe, Zero Waste that produce all these little plastic compostable clamshells and to-go containers and cups and all that, that commercial facilities would be able to take. But the stuff is out there. Yes, it might cost a little bit more. Then there's also the cost. That's another hurdle, is the cost of enlisting these services of, say SMART Recycling or another food waste hauler, or whomever. It costs money. But if you look at the cost of how much you pay in your trash bill, it could actually be reduced.

Depending on how that's worked out, you could reduce the cost of how much you pay to dispose of trash and supplement it with taking out what is in the trash that could be compostable and switching that over to, "Hey, I'm going to pay less than landfill prices," which I believe is in the neighborhood of $47 a ton, $30, $40 a ton. We take it for way less, and that's because it goes into a sustainable means. It's just, again, education and getting those businesses. They want to say, "Oh, no. We don't want another bill for this or another bill for that." But look how it balances out. Yes, we'll give you this cart. We'll come around and pick it up X number of days a week. It's based off of your needs.

So I mean, it's just getting the people to follow the signage and not do the contamination with the glass and the plastics that aren't compostable when the... I couldn't tell you how much forks I have, and then the porcelain bowls and whatnot. I ran over one with the skid-steer the other day, and it punctured the hole in the tire. So that kind of contamination is a whole different ball game and a whole different level for us. But that's stuff that you educate the consumer that actually puts it in there or the back of the house in the kitchen and the restaurants and getting them to not be lazy and throw them into the carts.

Then we really could have not only a great product, but compost companies can also sell mulch, colored mulch. There are so many different blends, like a raised bed blend or a lawn blend, or there's so many different formulas and so many different ideas I have that there are additives you can add to the compost to make it a finished product for a raised bed or a specific mix for blueberry farmers who liked more acidic soil.

There's so many different things I have in mind and, it's just getting everything where we want it at the same time and then doing the legislative part. It's a lot to take on. There's so much that we can do as a society to help keep this planet going and not contribute to the greenhouse gases that destroy our atmosphere and whatnot. So there's so much to do and support local businesses, just ask them, do they compost? If not, get their business card, send it to me. We have the resources. Or send it to another if you're in a different municipality and they have compost in there, look at it, look into what's available, and these people, there's so many resources. Don't Waste Food from DHEC and Department of Commerce and the US Composting Council. Oh my goodness. They have been amazing. They support us, we support them, and it's a partnership that I don't think I would have gotten this far without them or SMART Recycling behind me to do the food waste collection. I've been really fortunate, I really have.

FM:

Good. Well, let's talk about motivation beyond just re-diverting from the landfill. Well, a few things off the top of my head. They say, or I've read, Dr. Zach Bush MD and other academics out there say that we only have about 50 or 60 years of farming left on the soil that we have because we have depleted the soil so much, and the reason we do that is we've tilled it, we've tilled the fertility completely out of it, which is why we have to pump the chemicals into the soil to be able to grow anything.

CT:

Add the organic matter back.

FM:

Exactly. We have erosion issues, which washes all the top soil down the rivers. I mean, it's basically the Dust Bowl all over again. It washes it all into our oceans. We have dead spots all over the Gulf of Mexico, where fish and nothing can live because everything has come downstream, all the chemicals and killed it. So the compost is not just great for our home gardens, but composting is a way to completely reverse this and push our ability to feed ourselves for a whole new generation.

CT:

I think it was the Paris Climate Accord or something that feeding the world is becoming a bigger and bigger issue. That's why they came out with those genetically modified plants to resist drought and to resist certain things. From what I know, their goal was to lessen the amount of chemicals that you apply to it. But what's actually happened is that you're having to add more chemicals to it. But you take compost. It's great organic matter. It takes Mother Nature a hundred some years, I think it's a hundred years to make one inch of topsoil. So everything you see in bags nowadays, and I don't know how much percentage wise, but it's mostly subsoil, which is not top soul. It does not have those rich nutrients in it.

So you have to supplement it. You add compost to it. It adds not only those beneficial microorganisms and bacteria, but it adds the important micro and macro nutrients. Of course, the MPK is the nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, that plants need calcium, magnesium. All these other things that we take as vitamins, plants need them as well. Compost, it adds that organic matter back into the soil, along with all those other nutrients. It's not a fertilizer, but it helps you use less fertilizer. It also helps you use less water.

FM:

That's a huge one.

CT:

You have to build that soil up. Where I am, it's all sand. Over by where the facility is, there's sand and sand clay. There's just clay. So there are ways to augment those soils, clay to sand, to get that good loam that you want and that soil pyramid, and adding compost is a good way, like you said, with erosion control and all that good stuff. So again, educating the consumer on what compost is and how you can use it, it's huge. It's absolutely huge. I dare or challenge somebody to come to me and say, "Hey, compost can't be used for this." I'll find a way. I'm sure there's a way compost can be used, anything, stormwater management, erosion control, not just for gardens, lawns, and landscaping. So there's a lot that can be done that is very underestimated and undervalued. But educating them is a good source and a good start.

FM:

Yeah. The drought and water issue is interesting. I've heard through my soil advocacy course a different take on drought being an issue.

It's an issue, but in the sense that we perceive drought as having not enough rain and not enough water, but if the rain and water that we do have is running off because we have compacted the soil so much and we've tilled the soil, we're not absorbing the water in the natural way. So by adding things like compost, that loamy feeling, the water lands in it and it soaks down into our groundwater, replenishes our aquifers, so we have aquifers drying up all the time and becoming contaminated. It was just a very interesting way of thinking of it. It's a positive outlook on something that seems so bleak, I think. And it doesn't all start with compost, but compost is a huge part of that.

CT:

No, no, you're right. It doesn't all start with compost, I mean, if you ask me.

FM:

It does.

CT:

Yeah. It's my job, it's my career path. It is all compost. But it doesn't all start with compost. It's a bunch of different variables. Compost is a good one because it's sustainable. It's natural, and it's something that we take waste. We take a waste stream that goes into the landfill, and we turn it into a earthy smelling, good soil amendment, organic matter of microbes and all these different nutrients and can do anything from growing vegetables to growing your grass, to preventing that erosion. It's just so much that compost. Like I said, compost can be used for so many different things.

One of the important ones is replenishing the depleted soils because it's not going to be around forever. We don't have a time frame, but the need as the world's population gets bigger and bigger and bigger, the need for these farmers to produce more and more and more and with devastating rains. It ruins crops, causes the price inflation to go up, and it's just there's so much that if you just educated them, get farmers to start using it, get a flooding rain. That's another property of compost is to be able to absorb and use water properly.

FM:

It's pretty crazy that as humans, we've gone so far away from the natural waste cycles. Because if you think about it, as an ecosystem grows from its beginning, these waste systems were put in place. That's how we thrived, survived, grew food, and all that sort of stuff, and somehow along the way, we've completely extracted ourselves from a natural cycle and turned it into something different.

CT:

Wetlands. Bioremediation. You could actually use compost in contaminated soil. The big thing right now is also carbon sequestration. They're doing a lot of studies because they're finding out that plants need carbon. Compost has carbon. Put carbon into an agriculture field that has a crop of whatever growing into it. The plants will actually pull the carbon out of the atmosphere. Part of the Kiss the Ground book that I was reading, a great book, so far, comes very highly recommended by many people in the compost industry. They point out that if we were to reduce the amount of carbon pulled from the atmosphere 0.4%, I think it was, we could actually mitigate how many gigatons of carbon that the human race has put in that atmosphere. I think somewhere in the neighborhood when it was written, I think they were saying about 850 gigatons of carbon has been put in since 10,000 some years or however many years since the human race had been around, 350 gigatons of that had been since 1980.

Here, just by using compost as one source, they're finding out and doing all these studies that compost actually pulls the carbon and the greenhouse gases that the plants can use out of the atmosphere, and there's a lot of studies going on. So bioremediation of contaminated soils is a big one. And then water use, it could actually reduce the amount of water you have to use to water your garden by 25% to 50%, and just keep adding it year after year. But soil test. Send those samples off to get tested. I mean, too much organic matter is a good thing, but too little is just as bad. So one about 5% is usually what we say. So healthy soil and all these good nutrients, adding the organic matter. It's just there's so much. Then there's still so much more that's emerging, like I said, about wetlands, creating wetlands and helping existing wetlands. Even like I said, one of the new ones is bioremediation of contaminated soils, brownfield projects. That's another market that you can use with compost. So educating people on where it is, not just homeowners and landscaping centers, but state governments as well. I mean, DOT could use it to quickly grow grass on the side of a brand new road or an interstate.

FM:

Yeah. Yeah. They tried kudzu, and how did that go?

CT:

Can you compost it?

FM:

Anyone who's not from South Carolina-

CT:

Can you compost it?

FM:

... you can eat kudzu. Anyone who's not from South Carolina, kudzu, what is a vine that was brought over from Japan? We have many invasive species from Japan, and they did this as erosion mitigation in I think the '50s, '60s, '70s (actually 1930s) and it is taken over. What I didn't know about kudzu is that it actually doesn't propagate very well on its own, So the kudzu we see was purposely put there by SCDOT.

CT:

It's a beautiful leaf.

FM:

Yeah, and you can eat it. But I mean, let's not bring invasives in. Why don't we do something different and do compost?

CT:

Well, yeah. No. As part of the world challenges, they say by 2050, the UN actually predicts that the world population will hit about, what, 9 billion people or more, and then food security becomes a big issue. Worldwide agriculture is actually 38% land use. Next 40 years or so, you would have had to produce, all these farmers would have had their produce more than they have in the last 10,000 years just to keep up with feeding those people. So there are local and national and even regional things. For instance, the USDA survey from 2015 say the US farms sold X number of dollars in edible food directly to consumers, and at the same time, you see regionally the Southeast, Northeast, and their sales numbers, it varies from place to place to place, but 80% grew vegetables herbs, and fruits. 22% grew flowers. 37% raised livestock. 8% grow crops, and 9% grow nursery crops. What happens when these farmers can't use the soil?

FM:

Right. Yeah. Because the way we farm right now is a degenerative style of farming instead of a regenerative style.

CT:

Exactly.

FM:

Regeneration, 100%.

CT:

Permaculture.

FM:

It starts with putting the nutrients back into the soil. Right?

CT:

It's just so many different uses of composts, and it can help in so many different aspects worldwide. It's an amazing feeling to know that you're doing something that not only helps the local economy and you take that food waste stream out of the landfill, but you're contributing to something that helps the sustainable future of our planet. How many resources get tied up or get recirculated? It's such a privilege to be a part of it. I absolutely love it. It's just like I'm part of, I'm small.

I'm one person, but what we do can have lasting effects years and generations down the road and not just here in South Carolina, but globally. Pullthe carbon out in the atmosphere, pull the food and the landfill. It reduces greenhouse gases. So it's very humbling to me to be doing what I do, and it frustrates me at the same time that it's like, "All right, we need to get this, need to get this legislation." Not even laws really, but we need to educate, let the people know, "Hey, we can do this." So I mean, it's something I can geek out, nerd out on it all day long.

It's something I'm very super proud to be a part of. I couldn't do it without ReSoil and SMART Recycling, our parent company and definitely without the people that helped me day in and day out via text message or email and the US Composting Council. So a great organization. They have great data for the consumer. They had to go to their website. They have awesome information for consumers, where they may have a compost map, where you can buy a SGA certified compost, and they have a consumer use program.

So they have a lot of resources available to the individual or the homeowner as well as the landscapers and all the other potential uses of compost business streams.

FM:

Well, I think those definitely come full circle and a great way for us to wrap it up. How would you like... If anyone wants to follow you and support of ReSoil or composting in general, can you give us some resources, either online or otherwise that they can find you on?

CT:

Well, find us specifically. We are on Facebook at ReSoil Compost and Instagram. It's just @ReSoilCompost. I didn't write that one down. Megan helps me out a lot with the Instagram stuff, and I do more of the Facebook side. But Facebook and Instagram and our website is www.resoil.us, where you'll find our toll-free number, and the main email address, the info@resoil.us. Send a message. It comes directly to me. If I don't know how to answer your question or get your needs met, I'll send you at least research and find out where I can get your needs met and find the information that you're requesting. So Facebook, Instagram, our website, even Google Business. Just call us up. Even hemp. Oh, hemp. That's another huge market.

Hemp market. South Carolina is getting that going. So there's a lot of exciting things in the world of composting. If you have any ideas or want to help support it, sign up and follow us and get in touch with us if you have any ideas or know-how to help or talk to businesses and find out. Then of course, the Composting Council website, I believe it's compostingcouncil.org, or you could do a search for US Composting Council based out of Raleigh. They are a huge resource, and their website has a lot of information from business to consumer.

FM:

Fantastic. Well, we'll definitely put that in the show notes. Also, we talked about legislation. I do know that Senator Vincent Sheheen, who's a South Carolina Senator, is putting something forward in legislation to get DHEC to look into what it would take to make composting part of our waste management cycle (S 1022). So I'll look up that house bill because it has been mentioned in previous interviews.

CT:

Yeah. Actually, just got one from the North Carolina example. They are proposing their legislation. I had the privilege of standing in or listening in on the Composting Council's legislative environmental affairs committee meeting, and one of the gentlemen from North Carolina actually shared that bill with me, and I've been reading through here lately, again, with intention of starting our own chapter and trying to get people in our statehouse to try and get those legislation similar. I mean, you don't have to be the same, but again, looking at different state models, but-

FM:

Well, my thing as well, all this stuff takes time. If we're not talking about it now, I mean, it's just decades and decades and decades away. So even I think... So even the bill that I believe is being put forward by Senator Sheheen says to have research completed by 2030. So that's 10 years from now. So I think we all need to be galvanized.

CT:

2030 and 2050 seem to be the dates that federally, everybody's trying to... I mean, I know California is going to have done a lot sooner than that. But there are goals of 2030 and 2050. Even 2020, 2030, 2040, '50, so on and so forth to reduce the amount of food waste. There's a lot on the... I mean, the Composting Council website even has some, I believe. But the number one thing is to increase the awareness, the economic impact, the environmental impact, the social impacts that wasted food has. According to EPA, it's the number one thrown-away thing. Wrapping up, inspire people, individuals, communities, businesses, organizations, schools, colleges. It's endless. Educate them about composting. A little tidbit here. Throwing away one egg actually wastes 55 gallons of fresh water.

FM:

How can you throw away an egg?

CT:

DHEC Don't Waste Food SC. They got it from savethefood.com. 1400 jobs are created for every 1 million tons of material composting. According to the Department of Commerce. Then the average family of four spends average $1,800 a year on wasted food. So I mean, there's so many positive reasons to get into this, and there's so many resources just by reaching out and talking about it. It's what I'm hopefully taking care of here with you.

FM:

Yeah. Well, I appreciate it so much, Chris.

CT:

Oh, no. Appreciate it.

FM:

We could talk for hours. I know we can, but-

CT:

Yeah. Time limit. But yes. To find out more, we have the website. You can email me. Even if it's something that you think is silly, just reach out.

FM:

Yeah. If we have some movement in South Carolina and business is picking up and we get some momentum, we'd love to have you back on the show to talk about where we are now, and then we know where we are future.

CT:

If anybody reaches out to you, send them my way, or I'll send you yours.

FM:

That sounds good. Thank you so much, Chris.

CT:

Absolutely. Thank you for having me.