Interview with Lauren Turk

Transcript

[Sheldon Young]
Welcome to the No Footprints podcast brought to you by Alfa Laval. I’m Sheldon Young.

[Jason Moreau]
And I’m Jason Moreau.

[Sheldon Young]
And we’re here to talk about impact and to share the efforts and people behind making sustainability real, real deal, Jason, real deal. That’s what we’re here to bring you.

[Jason Moreau]
Yes. Nothing but.

[Sheldon Young]
Thanks Ed McMahon. I love it. I love it. So my friend, um, what’s new in your world?

What is the sustainability thing that you brought to share with us today?

[Jason Moreau]
I have a really fun story. I liked this story. Um, I think it’s the, it’s sort of what you always talk about, which is, you know, sometimes sustainability can, can happen in the place.

It’s not a new thing. It’s maybe re-imagining something that’s already existing. So they it’s in Tennessee.

So it’s taking two existing things and making each one better. So we have a lot of cattle grazing pasture here in the U S and we also have solar farms, um, both of which take up a lot of acreage. This story is about a test to see, could you essentially overlay both of those things on the same acreage?

So you have your typical beef cattle. I mean, it’s like a half ton animal and you can’t, so one, you have to make those solar panels like, okay for the cows. Right.

Um, but if you raise them up a lot, that’s a lot extra more materials for the solar panels. But essentially what this test was, was they raised it just a little bit, but then there was like a computer program that adjusted the angle of the panel. So the cows could fit underneath them.

Um, and they, you know, you’re moving them around the pasture land anyway. For yeah. And so, um, but, but basically it’s what the study is finding is that it’s, it’s actually making the, the, the land underneath since it’s shaded better for the cows, better for the grass.

Um, and then it’s giving the farmers, the ranchers and extra income source. Um, like sometimes more than the beef. So, um, I just really liked that story.

Cause, uh, innovation, right. Sustainability, but in two sort of like, you know, it’s almost like the future and then the past sort of like really overlaying in a nice way. So I just thought that was a good story.

[Sheldon Young]
Yeah. I it’s, it’s similar, like a concept of putting park, like solar panels over parking lots. I’m like, why doesn’t every exactly lot have a solar panel over?

It makes no sense to me. Like it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s useless space except for parking. You put panels over it, you shade the cars and you get power from it.

I mean, it feels like a no brainer when I don’t know why I would just haven’t seen widespread adoption of it.

[Jason Moreau]
So yeah, I guess with typical installations of solar panels, you’re doing like gravel and stuff like, like they’re, they’re not really concerned with preserving the, the ground underneath, you know, in terms of it being, you know, feedstock for an animal, so, oh, this makes more sense.

[Sheldon Young]
Are you saying like with the tilting? Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah. Yep. Yep.

Exactly. It’s on a sense. Yeah.

Very cool. Very cool. I like that one.

Uh, yeah. So I am, what did I bring here? I found a really interesting site online versus this is kind of a two-parter here.

Um, one is I was doing some research recently and I found this really interesting site, uh, called refed.org. And, uh, the, the whole concept is solving the problem of food waste is kind of what they do. And in it, there’s this little AI driven search engine that you can basically ask it whatever you want.

And it kind of will collect and aggregate information and data, impact calculators, there’s all kinds of stuff on it. So if you’re into that space, that food waste or food, um, your food waste area, it’s got all kinds of interesting numbers and data and, and, and articles and all that, and it aggregates it based on an AI. So it’s like you, it’s like, it’s almost like talking to chat GPT or whatever, whichever one you use and it kind of aggregates and brings it all to you.

And so refed.org, that was really cool. I just wanted to share that for people that are maybe looking for more info in that space. Um, the other thing I saw, this actually relates to our guest today.

Look at me connect the dots. There I go.

[Jason Moreau]
Very nice.

[Sheldon Young]
Um, uh, so our guests yesterday is talking about composting. Well, I just read an article from June that in California, that’s actually where our guest is. Um, there’s basically a 90 acre, $140 million composting facility open basically in the Mojave desert.

That takes, yeah, it takes like this. Uh, it takes a green waste from Southern California and essentially processes it there, uh, keeping it out of landfills, which we talked about on, on, not, not spoiler alert. We talked about why you want to keep it on landfills.

I won’t give away that the punchline on that one. Um, and so it’s what I actually read further into it. There’s actually laws in California now that demands 75% of green waste is kept out of landfills.

So that’s what kind of driving it. So it’s like, okay, where are you going to put it? Where are you going to put it?

Where are we going to put it here is what we’re going to do. So I thought it was really interesting and it kind of tied really well. And so, uh, but the fact that they’re building these massive facilities to kind of manage that and, and doing the composting thing is kind of cool.

I thought I was going to need.

[Jason Moreau]
I think that’s very cool. I think it’s a good use of that particular space. Right.

Cause I would imagine that the heat and the climate in the Mojave actually like helps everything break down and compost even faster.

[Sheldon Young]
And so in a dry retirement, I would assume, right?

[Jason Moreau]
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that’s very cool.

[Sheldon Young]
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So I’m interested in learning more about it. Uh, okay. So with that, our guest today, uh, very excited.

I met her at climate week last year. So, uh, one of the many people that we connected at and, um, uh, decided to use at the region house, which I think we’ve talked about on the show before and just sat down talking. You’ll, you’ll hear our story, how we met when we talked about your doctor in the interview.

But, uh, bringing you here today and I’m excited to talk about it. And, uh, her passion or personality, all about that around composting. And so let’s go, uh, see how that goes.

What do you say, my friend? I think let’s go. About 40% of food in America is thrown away.

That means about 60 billion pounds of nutrients end up in landfills annually. Our guest today, Lauren Turk founder and CEO of CompoSTARS decided to do something about it. Lauren is passionate about eliminating vicious cycles and she spent her career using human centered design to create practical community scale action.

If you ever wondered what it takes to move from good intentions to measurable impact. Lauren can show you how it’s done and we’ll learn how today, Lauren, welcome to no footprints.

[Lauren Turk]
Thank you. So great to be here.

[Sheldon Young]
Yeah, we have a lot. I was, we were just talking, uh, I met Lauren last year at a climb, uh, climate week in New York. Just got chit chatting in Regen House, which is a great spot for you.

If you’re going to go to climate week, check out region house. It’s a really, really great. If you’re in that particular, that food world, uh, and agriculture and stuff like that, it’s really the place to go.

And we met there and just got chit chatting. I said, you’d be great in a podcast. And a few months later, I remembered, I said that and reached out and here we are.

[Lauren Turk]
You know, and you meet lots of people at climate week and there’s not always a follow through. So I was thrilled to hear from you. And it was just so cool at region house.

I believe I grabbed a truffle, um, and sat down next to you on the couch and we just struck up a conversation and that’s the beauty of gatherings around shared interests, like regenerating climate, improving the world, improving climate solutions, et cetera. You just never know who you’re going to sit down next to and meet and what leads to what. And it’s important to, to go to these spaces and to just be open because that’s what allows for amazing things to grow.

[Sheldon Young]
For sure. For sure. It’s speaking on amazing things.

Tell us about your journey a little bit. So you’re in the world of compost, right? Yes.

And I’m looking at like, how do you get in that kind of world? And I’m curious about your journey. So just give us a little bit about how you got there.

[Lauren Turk]
I will. Yes. I, my mission is to advance composting, to normalize compost culture.

That’s the mission of compost stars. It’s also my personal mission and it runs deep in me. I, both my parents worked when I was young, so I had the real pleasure and privilege of spending most of my time with my grandma and my grandma.

Who’s 91. She just turned 91 on June 6th. Hi, Gram.

She’s been gardening forever. I mean, she’s stewarded this, this huge garden. It’s like 40 feet by 40 feet.

It truly is massive for 50, 60 years. And so I grew up with her gardening and one of my jobs that I actually did not like was taking out the food scraps to the compost pile and this is what she would call old world values from the old country, you know, in her day, everybody composted, she has memories as a kid of like her grandpa burying food scraps near the garden and fertilizing the soil and growing food. And I feel lucky that I grew up with that example.

And it’s actually, when I went to kindergarten, we learned about landfills. We learned about, um, waste management and I, this is one of my first memories, I raised my hand and I asked the teacher, like, what about the compost pile? And the teacher looked at me like, there is no comp, what are you talking about?

There’s no compost pile, you small child. And I was like, what are you talking about? And it just, I, my kindergarten brain, I got so upset.

And it was this like watershed moment for me really have been preoccupied with the systems society has created that are pretending we operate in a linear world, but life is literally not linear. Life is, life happens in cycles, seasons and cycles. And that’s how the planet evolved to be what we’ve inherited to give us all of this abundance.

Nutrients are cycling from the Sahara desert to the Amazon rainforest. Every year, trade winds are bringing 27 million tons of dust that brings the phosphorus that’s essential for the soil of the Amazon to be the rainforest that it is. So it’s like, when you think about what makes life happen, it’s these cycles being completed.

And I’ve just always been so passionate about that. Um, and so that’s like my, my origin story, the kind of emotional addition. And then there’s the practical side of it, which I can also get into if that’s okay.

Um, well, I, I lived, I was, I lived in LA for eight years and while I was there, I’ve always been very entrepreneurial. So I started a music and technology education nonprofit. I was making music myself.

I was consulting, um, with an innovation agency that I was the first hire of this agency. So I, I was doing all these things and at the same time I felt like I was on the edge of burnout and that I wasn’t creating the impact I wanted to. And I’ll never forget, I was at South by Southwest, which is a conference in Austin.

And it originally had a lot to do with just music, but it has evolved into so much more than music. There’s climate solutions, there’s technology, uh, like tracks that you can go on. And I found that I was just drawn more and more to future of cities, environmental topics.

And I met someone named John Paul Farmer, who’s one of the coolest people I know. He, uh, he was like the first, he was a, he was the CTO of the city of New York. He’s an incredible, um, incredible public servant and, and business person.

And I brought to him my predicament of, I feel like I’m not making the impact I want to make in the world. And he was like, well, here’s a framework to think about where you’re putting your energy, measure it by enjoyment, impact, and probability of success. So I audited the music nonprofit I was running.

I audited the, the way that I was showing up in my music career. I audited everything. And I realized that what was missing for me was to be working in climate solutions and to be putting most of my time there.

And when I thought about it, I was like, waste is a design flaw. And so I related it to design thinking and all the consulting I had been doing. And I was like, oh, this is a place where I can really help.

This is a place where I can help close loops, convince people, be a communicator about the power of composting. And at the time I was in LA and there was no composting in LA, there was no green bin program, which now there is. There’s a law called SB 1383 that mandated statewide composting.

But in 2019, when I was in this inquiry there was only one game in town called LA compost, which is a nonprofit who who facilitates community composting in various ways, but their main thing is they collect food scraps at farmer’s markets. So I always like to say that this one line from Mr. Rogers has also stuck around in my head for a lot of my life. Where they say in a in a crisis or if there’s a problem, look for the helpers.

So I looked for the people who were part of the solution. LA compost is part of the solution. They were one of the pioneers of the solution in LA.

So I start volunteering with them and I’m at the farmer’s market weekend after weekend helping collect food scraps that people were bringing. And that was where a light bulb went off for me that we weren’t actually completing the loop, completing the cycle of feedback and information for people. So here’s these folks that are bringing their food scraps to the farmer’s market, but the interaction kind of ended there.

It was like, you know, see you next time. Like, thanks for bringing your food scraps. I was like, what if we told people the impact they were making?

[Sheldon Young]
Right.

[Lauren Turk]
What if we could make visible and actionable all of that information and tell the story of impact? Because a lot of people just don’t know how amazing composting is. And there’s not a lot of storytelling around it.

There’s not a lot of, yeah, exactly. And so I was like, even here in LA when we’re, this is like the most passionate people you could imagine. People who are saving their food scraps all week, bringing them to the farmer’s market, those people don’t even know the impact they’re making.

So LA compost was really generous and trusting and let me do my thing and iterate, and I started doing, you know, user surveys, interviews, asking people questions, do you want to know your impact, et cetera, people said yes. I started doing these weekly email blasts to everybody who wanted to know their impact and gave me their email. And I would share the collective impact of the group that week.

And I would wax and wane about how amazing composting is and people would write back to me and thank me. And then eventually people started telling me they wanted to know their individual impact, not just the collective. And so then the pandemic happened.

And so it was like, you know, the everything falls away moment. And I gathered a team and we built the MVP app for tracking compost and impact and making visible and actionable, all of that, um, all of that data, all of those points of climate actions.

[Sheldon Young]
And that’s really how it started. What is the MVP app? You said something there.

I didn’t know what it was.

[Lauren Turk]
Yeah. MVP just means minimum viable product. So it’s like the, the most lean version that we could build.

And, um, it was so exciting because the hypothesis proved true. People were so excited to see their impact. People were taking screenshots of their personal impact stats.

And, you know, some people posted it on Instagram, shared it with their friends and we saw the numbers go up. We saw more people come through word of mouth and that theory of change. But so much gave me so much hope for how to scale climate solutions instead of going after everybody and knocking on every door.

It’s like, if we can really celebrate the people who are part of the solution right now and make that more fun, make that more meaningful, make that as rewarding as possible, then it starts to grow itself.

[Jason Moreau]
It’s pretty amazing. I listening to that story, I’m. So I do have a composter in my backyard and I am, I’ll say a reluctant user, which is probably a horrible thing to admit.

So like, so I’m maybe like in the middle, I’m somebody who’s a little familiar, but maybe not as like dedicated as the people you just described coming to the farmer’s market every week with their weekly scraps. So what would you tell me, like somebody who’s maybe a little familiar, but like, what, what should I know? Like, what, what am I missing?

Like, how do I, how do I make that switch to like, make it more of a, either a habit or like see it as more of like, I, I really need to like be dedicated about doing this.

[Lauren Turk]
I think it comes down to knowing how good it is. So that’s kind of what I was just alluding to, but we can get into some of the numbers. So, well, before we get into the numbers, this is one of the most mind-blowing things I know about soil.

You know, you’ll hear people say like soil is alive. It truly is a, but a single handful of soil has more microorganisms in it than all of the stars in the Milky way galaxy, think about that. That’s how alive soil is 5 trillion microorganisms in a single handful of soil, that’s like 50 times more stars in the Milky way galaxy.

So the vastness of the aliveness of soil is just like hard to even compute. Right. And so to bring it back down to something more, um, palatable, I guess.

Take like a banana peel. If you, if you hold a banana peel or an apple core in your hand and feel the weight of it, that’s about the same amount of emissions that you prevent from being emitted by putting it in the landfill. It’s almost a one-to-one ratio of for every pound of food you keep out of the landfill, you keep about an equivalent amount of emissions, um, from the atmosphere, because when you put food scraps together, nature’s perfect.

Intelligent process does its thing. It starts to break down into soil and it preserves the nutrients of that banana, um, feel of that apple core. And it, it preserves those nutrients into the soil and then that soil can grow more life.

Right. And so that’s the beautiful cycle that continues, but we completely disrupt that cycle. When we put food in the landfill, those nutrients are lost forever to a landfill never to be brought to the cycle of life again.

And we have done this for so long that we actually have a soil health crisis. We’re, we’re losing, literally losing soil. The ground is sinking every year because we haven’t been bringing the nutrients back to the land.

And the thing about compost, it’s like, yes, it avoids methane emissions from happening if you don’t put food in landfill, which is where it does not belong, like banana peels and apple cores don’t belong next to plastic bottle caps and chips and broken pieces of a computer and I mean, computers don’t even belong in landfills anyway, but it’s like things that have been alive, want to live again. And that is how nature actually works and perpetuates itself. But then when we make compost and we make soil, the story gets even better because compost is like a vitamin for soil.

When you, when you apply compost to soil, that soil becomes more alive. So you have those trillions of microbes. What that means is the, the structure of the soil is stronger and it’s more porous and so when it rains, the rain comes down into the earth and develops our water table and the soil is thirsty, not just for water, but also CO2.

It literally is a sink for absorbing CO2. So now you have additional CO2 sequestered, which we need with our warming planet, with all of the fossil fuel emissions that we’re emitting in other parts of life and energy, et cetera. And that means that a place where there’s healthy soil, a place where compost has been applied is more resilient to drought, fire, and flood.

It’s able to grow healthier, more nutritious plants and foods. That means healthier humans. That means more stable weather patterns and microclimates.

And so it’s like, it’s just such a huge win, no matter how you look at it. I think once we really internalize how magical compost is and how tragic putting food in landfills is, it’s such a small switch, we just have to build the habit and the muscle memory of remembering to put food scraps all together and not in the garbage. It’s just that moment of putting the same types of things with each other.

But to go a little bit further too, that’s part of why we built CompoSTARS.

[Sheldon Young]
Tell us about that. My next question was like, what is this CompoSTARS you’ve built and how does it work and what value does it bring to the ecosystem?

[Lauren Turk]
Yeah. I mean, a lot of apps are built on these same mechanisms of like, as humans, we like having rituals, we like getting rewards, we like getting that dopamine hit, and a lot of technology exploits this, but with CompoSTARS, we’re leaning into it to help people form the habit of composting because it’s not people’s fault that they haven’t heard about composting. The system is set up to not have anybody think about composting.

Most, only 12% of households in America even have access to composting. So most people, not only have they not heard of it, they don’t have the ability to do it if they don’t live in a city that has a program or a community composter, or if they don’t have a yard, right? So that’s not fair.

The system isn’t set up well, but what CompoSTARS does is it’s like, every time you compost, if you log it, we tell you your impact and we make it a game. So the more that you do it, the higher of a level that you have, you can have streaks. So these are kind of like basic gamification techniques, but we’ve also done a lot of research with people over the last five years that we’ve been operating to iterate the product and improve it, and what we learned was one of the biggest barriers for people is wondering if something is compostable.

So if you’re trying to develop a new habit and you’re like, oh, I don’t know about eggshells, then it stops you cold, right? And so now with the latest in AI, which, you know, that’s a whole other topic that we could go deep on. But AI is really useful for solving this problem.

We embedded into the feature set that you can snap a photo of the food scraps or the thing that you’re wondering if it’s compostable, and we can tell you in a moment at the point of action, whether it’s compostable and we can, the thing that makes it also very confusing for people is that there’s different rules in different places. So like in one city, compostable bags are allowed or compostable serverware is allowed, and in another city it’s not. So we’re able to tell people definitively where they are, what is compostable, to take all of that confusion out of it and reduce those barriers to participating.

And then the last thing I’ll say, this year we were able to fund a pilot thanks to the Rising Foundation to introduce discounts on food for people who are composting. And we piloted this in LA with LA Compost and Food Access LA, which are the farmers markets. They run like a dozen of the farmers markets in LA.

And so we ran these rewards days and we’re still doing it. So we’re kind of like, say, about 80 percent through the pilot period. To see if that also helps develop the habit and if that can bring people who have, you know, fallen off composting and not done it in a while, does that bring them back?

Does it reinforce the habit? Does it make more people come? And so far, all of the signals are very positive that introducing specifically discounts on food for composting, that that moves the needle and helps develop the habit for people.

[Sheldon Young]
It’s a reward program. Absolutely.

[Lauren Turk]
Exactly.

[Sheldon Young]
Absolutely. That’s really interesting.

[Lauren Turk]
Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, it can’t just be any reward because there’s there’s lots of research out there that shows if you introduce extrinsic rewards for intrinsically motivated behaviors that can cause essentially cognitive dissonance.

But. With discounts on food for composting, it all connects to the food cycle so nicely that I believe that’s part of why it’s working.

[Jason Moreau]
Totally for gamification for good. Um, we have a health program where Sheldon and I work and I think I’m all in my points. Yeah.

80% of the time I go take a walk, like when it’s like really hot and humid as it is now in Richmond is to get the points. So yeah, I’m a basic creature. If you give me points for something, I’m definitely signing up.

Um, but I, I, I was curious cause, um, like kind of going back to your origin story with your grandmother and just sort of talking about those, uh, old world values, if in your journey through composting, are there other, other countries that have like better models, you know, where more of their population has access to it or a cultural thing? Um, I was just curious cause I think sometimes a lot of the stuff we talk about is very US-centric and we’re solving the problems here, but there’s, there’s other areas that have different concerns and, but also have served, solved some of the problem in different ways. I was just wondering if you’d ever looked outside that way.

[Lauren Turk]
Yeah, I have. And it’s, it’s surprising. Like, for example, I used to live in Paris and, um, that was before I was doing compost stars and composting, uh, you know, advancing composting in this specific way, but the last time I was there, I was shocked that they don’t have, um, the municipal infrastructure for composting.

They haven’t rolled it out. They’ve done some pilots, but, um, it’s not mainstream there in other cities in Europe, they do have, um, the, the, the green bins and the composting facilities. But I’d say the best, the best example I could think of.

And one that really inspired me when I was first getting my hands dirty with all of this is, um, is South Korea and South Korea used to also have a very poor composting grade, like it, they landfilled the majority of their food scraps. Um, but the government got fully behind it. And so this becomes, you’ll, as you’ll hear, it’s, it really comes down to how well can you align, um, infrastructure and funding for a system that makes it easy to do the good thing, um, and removing friction.

And so very different culture, right? But what they did was they introduced these smart bins that are really funny looking, but they’re solar powered. They’re kind of like goofy and they have like a cute little mascot, but they’re solar powered and they’re locked.

And you come up to them with your like equivalent of a license, but the license there is RFID enabled. So you go up to it, it identifies you, you weigh your little bag of, um, food scraps, and it then credits to your account. And then the price for food scraps is so substantially lower than, um, putting it in the garbage.

So they have, it’s incentivizing it, but it’s also tracking and telling you your impact and you’re saving money. And then they distributed these smart bins just everywhere. And so now they have like 90% adoption.

They, they put almost no food in landfills and it was like extremely successful. And that was really instructive to me when I was thinking about compost stars and feedback loops and incentives and like, how do we realign incentives? How do we make a vicious cycle virtuous?

We have to put it back together in a way that in our context here is making it compelling to participate in this action, to participate in composting. Um, another interesting example is in Japan because gastronomy is such a big deal there, they have really specialized composting practices where like only specific types of apple cores are fed to specific pigs to get a specific taste and texture. And so you can get real nerdy and real foodie about it, which I would love to see America go there.

You know, astronomical at that level.

[Sheldon Young]
That’d be interesting. Wow. Yeah.

I can just imagine. Is this hot pocket tastes like this because of the compost? You know, it’s just like, like Americans are so different in the way that they eat.

It’s, it’s, uh, it’s funny though.

[Lauren Turk]
Totally. But it’s also so true. It’s like what you put in is what you get out, you know what I mean?

It’s like, it is.

[Sheldon Young]
Yeah. So you mentioned the 12% of people have access. To it.

I’m sure, you know, a lot of people don’t take advantage of it, but let’s say, you know, they listen to the podcast and they learn, wow, that sounds really powerful impactful. I really want to be able to do more. How can they learn about programs in their area?

If for one, if they have any and okay, then the second part will be, I want to ask you if they don’t have a program, what can they do? Um, so let’s start with the first part. Um, if they, if let’s, let’s say we suspect we have a program here in Richmond, I want to learn about it.

Can I use your app? How do I go about figuring out composting?

[Lauren Turk]
Yeah. I mean, the, you can, you can come to us and also compost stars. We want to be a resource for people to help point them in the right direction.

So you can always email us. Um, our website is compostars.com and there’s. You can subscribe to our newsletter.

You can email us directly and we can give you some resources and more on how we work, um, later, but to also answer the question directly, I’d say, you know, the, the best way to compost, if you can, is in your own backyard. If you have that access. Right.

Um, and depending on how urban you are, you know, there, there’s different use cases, you know, some folks, if they’re living more in the country and there’s like bears or other sorts of animals around, they don’t want to, they’re, you know, they’re worried about attracting animals, et cetera. There’s solutions for that. There’s like lifted composters that are contained.

Um, or, you know, there’s compost bins that you can just, you know, put in your yard that are pretty static and you basically just, instead of taking it to the garbage, you just put it into that little pile that’s, um, you know, covered in your backyard and it does its thing. And it’s very passive and little to no work, right? Like that’s what my grandma does.

She just jumps in the back and she doesn’t do much else. It just does itself.

[Sheldon Young]
Yeah. My grandmother was the same way. I remember like your story was so similar.

Mine’s funny. My great grandmother lived next door and she had like probably eight or 10 different gardens all around her little property. Uh, and, but she had a big pile that was like, that’s where all the, all the foods went, all the grass, you know, she, she took grass, she threw it in there.

Everything just kind of went in that pile. Yeah.

[Lauren Turk]
Yep. And that is the right way to do it. You do on a layer, if you can kind of the lasagna method, it’s called.

You put, um, a layer of food scraps, you cover it with, you know, some of your grass trimmings or your leaves. But even if you don’t do that, or, you know, let’s say you like mess it up, uh, quote unquote, it’s still going to decompose. It just will go slower.

[Sheldon Young]
Right.

[Lauren Turk]
Right. And it, it may not be as, uh, like alive to an extent if it doesn’t have that like perfect chemistry, you kind of want to have the amount of moisture and the amount of carbon and nitrogen. Um, you get the carbon from like your leaves and your grass trimmings.

You get the nitrogen from your food scraps. Ideally, all of those things are balanced, but even if they’re not perfectly balanced, it’s still going to break down, it’s still going to attract all of the microorganisms and bugs that you need to make the process happen, and it’s so much better than putting them in the landfill. But if you don’t have a yard, a lot of people don’t have yards, right.

You know, if you have a balcony, you can put a little bit on your balcony. Um, but if you don’t have either of those things, or either of those things aren’t possible, then you can see if your city has a program. Chances are it doesn’t because only 12% of households do have such a thing.

Um, and if that’s not viable, then look for a community composter. So this is like what LA compost was for the city of LA prior to the green bin accepting food scraps. Um, and my favorite resource for that is the Institute for Local Self Reliance.

They are this incredible organization that is a leader in advancing composting. And they have a community composter map that shows you all of the different community composters, um, and where they operate and how you can sign up. They also have a bunch of resource kits.

And, um, I’m really hoping to collaborate with them this year. And next year we’ve had a couple of calls and conversations and I just admire them so much. Um, and then as it, as it regards compost stars, our, our launch strategy has been very place-based.

So we are really intentional about launching in partnership with a city, with a compost org. Um, our tools are engagement tools. So we sweetened the deal for everybody who’s composting and what we bring to these compost operators and orgs is the ability to make composting all of this action, um, visible and actionable.

So that all of the impact data is organized and all of the insights on which locations have how much activity and, um, how to run campaigns to engage people and like, which folks are new, which folks haven’t come in six months and how to engage those people and reach out to them and running rewards campaigns. Like that’s what our platform offers. And so we launch in partnership with, um, with, with partners in each place, but we’re also available for anybody to use at any time.

So if you want to sign up for compost stars, you can go to our website. You can go to app.compoststars.com and you can start composting. Um, you can use our AI tool to, uh, to have your questions answered about whether something is compostable and, um, we’re a free resource.

[Sheldon Young]
That’s great. I think that’s really interesting. I mean, uh, if, if I were to click on something, I know, I don’t know, banana peel, what information would I see?

Uh, what would it, what would it, it would say yes, compostable. Does it give me any other data as well or no?

[Lauren Turk]
No, it tells you that it’s okay.

[Sheldon Young]
Got it. Perfect. Yeah.

Excellent. Excellent. Yeah.

Thank you. My little, my little brain is like, Oh, I wonder how much CO2 that is. I say, well, you said it’s like basically pound for pound.

So based on weight.

[Lauren Turk]
Yeah. So if you were to actually compost that banana peel with us, then we would tell you how much impact you’ve made, how much, and the impact we communicated as, um, just pounds saved from landfill. Um, and then the amount of emissions you’ve avoided being, uh, put into the atmosphere, we give equivalence of that, that are, um, relatable, like how many vehicle miles that equates to, um, and then how much compost you are creating.

Because that ratio is also very, um, it’s pretty predictable. It’s a, it’s a 10 to one ratio. So for every 10 pounds of food, it becomes one pound of compost.

[Sheldon Young]
Got it. That makes sense.

[Lauren Turk]
Yeah.

[Sheldon Young]
Very cool. Wow. This has been, I don’t know, I’ve been fascinated by this stuff.

This is really interesting to me is, you know, we’re all our own little sustainability journeys. And as we, the more we can learn about, you know, this to me seems like, uh, I, I, I can do this, you know, as long as I find it, if I have a place to take this stuff, like I live in a townhouse and I don’t have a yard, uh, so I have to think about, you know, the where, but it’s like, okay, it doesn’t seem like it’s, you know, I have a little tool now that can help me. I know where to look for stuff.

Um, and this is something we can possibly do here in the household. And, uh, maybe Jason will start using his composter a little bit more.

[Jason Moreau]
I’ve been inspired. Yes.

[Sheldon Young]
Yeah. Now you can go, yeah, you got a little app. Oh, you got to get the app Jason and tell us how it worked.

Right. Okay. Uh, I will, uh, when we do the bumpers, we’ll, we’ll talk about it.

And, uh, you know, so where else, if people want to, you already mentioned your website, uh, compostars.org or com, sorry, com.com.com. Um, what else is going on in your world that you want to tell people about anything, events coming up or, or things that you want to, you want to share with the audience?

[Lauren Turk]
Well, we’re close to, I wish I could share more. Um, okay.

[Sheldon Young]
Maybe by the time the episode comes out, you’ll have more information you can share.

[Lauren Turk]
I probably will. We can definitely send it our way. There’s a, it’s, it’s funny when you’re in conversation with cities, you have to, there’s, it’s like, you can’t say no disclosures.

[Sheldon Young]
Absolutely.

[Lauren Turk]
Yeah. Um, but what I can say that I look forward to sharing soon and more broadly is just to expand the, the rewards program because we are, we’re nearing the completion of this pilot in LA with LA compost and food access LA. Um, at the farmer’s markets.

And it’s been really great. It’s been really successful. Um, I feel we’ll come out of it, proving the validity of offering discounts on food to people for composting and its ability to engage and motivate, inspire people, um, and just reward composting.

Um, so that we can advance it and have more people participate in it, welcome more people into the tent. And so, um, I’m working on more partnerships and, uh, rewards programs that could reach more people that I’m really excited about with sustainable grocers and, um, local sustainable businesses.

[Sheldon Young]
Very cool. Very cool. Yeah.

Awesome stuff, Lauren. Thank you so much for joining us. I think this was a lot of fun.

And I think, uh, uh, our listeners are going to get a little, uh, a little treat when they listen to this episode and, and, uh, a few takeaways that can, that can apply to their own lives as well.

[Lauren Turk]
I hope so. Um, anybody, anywhere who eats food and participate in one of the most high impact climate solutions out there and connect with the cycle of life by returning nutrients to the soil in whatever way you’re able to. Um, I I’ll, I’ll end on this too.

I love, I love the no footprints, um, title of, of your podcast. And it reminded me of something I thought of a couple of years ago about. You know, we talk so much about reducing our carbon footprint, all of that, but also the psychology of making ourselves smaller, I think a lot of humans don’t respond well to that and really the invitation when it comes to composting is to leave a positive handprint.

It’s like humans at our best. We are stewards of life. We are so smart and special.

And you know, we, we have thumbs. We can make tools. We are conscious of our consciousness and we have agency and choice and we’re able to steward the cycle of life and make a positive handprint with the choices we make, it doesn’t have to just be reducing our footprint and making ourselves smaller, it can be growing the positive contribution we make in the world.

And I think that’s humans at our best.

[Sheldon Young]
I love it. Very good. Maybe we’ll change the name of the podcast.

A big handprint. All right, Lauren, thank you so much. And I appreciate you being on.

[Lauren Turk]
My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

[Sheldon Young]
Yes, yes, yes. Lauren Turk. That was fun.

Wasn’t it?

[Jason Moreau]
It was a great conversation. I always enjoy meeting people, talking to people, uh, who are passionate about what they do for sure. And I think that comes through loud and clear.

[Sheldon Young]
Yeah. Yeah. It’s like, uh, and about composting.

Well, I loved her origin story. It’s like the superheroes, right? It was, it was have a good origin story and hers is, is, you know, I, I related very much to it as I alluded to during the, the, the dialogue, my great grandmother was a avid gardener and I spent a lot of time with her, like almost every day after elementary school, I would go to her house cause she literally lived next door to me.

And so, uh, oftentimes when I was here during the summer, she would be gardening constantly. And so I kind of grew up with my hands in the dirt and knew about the compost heap and how to use it and all the things that went with it. And, uh, to see someone that takes that, that, uh, passion they had of being a child and bringing it to their, basically the career.

Um, and you know, we, we need people that have that, you know, that’s how sustainability gets to be real as people grab onto something and just say, look, this is where I can make my mark. And, uh, I, I love that she’s done it here. It’s been really interesting to kind of hear about, uh, statistic that blew my mind, you know, that like 40% of our food is wasted.

Um, yeah, right out of the gate, you know, like, man, 40%. And again, a lot of it’s, it’s, it’s restaurant ways, it’s people, it’s whatever it is, but individually we waste a lot as well. We think we all know that.

Um, and, but it’s, it doesn’t register really until you kind of, kind of think about the, how much food that is. I found another interesting statistic, Jason, I want to share with you. Uh, and what I was, again, just researching, I’m doing a little thing for climate week, and it’s going to be like a little bit of a game show.

And if you’re listening to this and coming to the, to be a bit, you might have an inside edge of one of the questions, uh, when, if you were to take land needed to grow the food that we waste, how big do you think that landmass would be?

[Jason Moreau]
Oh boy.

[Sheldon Young]
Uh, give me, give me a, give me a, pick an area of the world. You think it would be as big as.

[Jason Moreau]
Uh, we’re talking like global waste, global food waste.

[Sheldon Young]
Um, no, it’s just the, I think it’s just the, Oh boy. The U S I think it’s the U S yeah. I think it’s just the U S that might be global.

I can’t, I can’t remember. I refer you to the question.

[Jason Moreau]
We’ll go state of Connecticut.

[Sheldon Young]
How about China?

[Jason Moreau]
That’s the landmass?!

[Sheldon Young]
That’s the landmass taken to forget. Wow. We’re wasting 40% to 30, 30 to 40%, but the landmass is the size of China.

Is what we’re dealing with to grow the food that we waste. Right. So it’s, it’s depressing almost.

Right. But, uh, again, the fact that, you know, uh, how do you at least turn something valuable out of that? It’s through something like composting.

Ideally there is no composting because we’re eating the food that we produce. But the fact of the matter is, is that other things you compost yard waste, stuff like that, but food waste in particular, it’s like, you know, you got to at least make sure it doesn’t just go somewhere and rot in a landfill.

[Jason Moreau]
Yeah. I, and I think I liked the way that Lauren put it. Um, I think she said like waste is a design flaw.

You know, she was very much a systems thinker in terms of how do we address this to, you know, this type of thing. And I also liked, you know, the story with her grandmother, it seemed like she was very aware that there’s sort of these like old school, old world like these are not new problems. They’re new problems because our current systems, you know, either make it a problem or make it a bigger problem than it once was like humans have always had to deal with garbage, but in centuries past, right, like we recycled much more than we do now food waste specifically.

I found this really interesting sentence. It was about, uh, during the 19th century, New York was dirty, but much of its garbage consisted of leftovers and scraps and other items to reuse. Sunday’s roast became Monday’s hash.

Monday’s bread became Wednesday’s bread pudding. Pigs roamed the streets, eating old lettuce and radish tops and swill children went from house to house, collecting food scraps that they sold to farmers as fertilizers and animal feed bones became glue. Old grease was turned into tallow candles or mixed with ashes to make soap.

Nothing was wasted.

[Sheldon Young]
Yeah.

[Jason Moreau]
Right. So like, we, we, we tend to think of this like, Oh, this is how it’s always been. It’s literally just a couple hundred years, if that.

Right.

[Sheldon Young]
So like, if that, I mean, I think, correct.

[Jason Moreau]
Yeah. So I think, I think we tend to think of this as a, well, I guess, what are you going to do? And it’s like, we kind of knew what to do and now we need to incorporate that into our systems.

[Sheldon Young]
Now it really is interesting. You think about it, it’s like, yeah, nothing did go to waste. Did it really?

If it’s like, no, it always had some kind of value. Uh, and I, and the fact that, you know, it’s like, we just got better at. Producing everything individually without having to do it ourselves or, or, or using a local resource.

And so it’s all mass produced.

[Jason Moreau]
Right.

[Sheldon Young]
You aren’t able to find a home for things like you said, like making candles or soap or whatever. You don’t, nobody does that. Right.

Right. And so it’s just the stuff that was used to that now becomes waste and you use other resources to create those things. So, uh, it’s really interesting.

It’s, it’s a kind of a fun stuff, kind of a fun, interesting angle that you mentioned. I’m like, yeah, we used to kind of use all that stuff. Like bacon grease got collected in the little can and used to, to make something.

Are we able to grease other things? And wow, you’re right, Jason. I think, um, uh, as we, how do we kind of return to that?

You, we’re not going to obviously probably return to that completely. I think people’s future comforts are going to be a challenge to, to repurpose, but correct, but you need to systemize.

[Jason Moreau]
You need to systematize it at, at that like industrial scale. And Lauren actually mentioned this when I asked the question of like what other countries might be doing a better job. And she named checked South Korea.

And so I went, I went down a little rabbit trail and here we go. No, no. I mean, it’s pretty phenomenal.

I mean, early nineties, they were recycling next to, I mean, like zero food waste. And today it’s almost a hundred percent.

[Sheldon Young]
Wow.

[Jason Moreau]
Um, they recycle something like 13,000 tons of food waste a day. I think it’s like 5 million, um, pounds. Uh, and they, they turn it into a 30% is turned into compost.

60% is turned into animal feed. And they’ve started in recent years and decades. Uh, another 10% is turning it into biofuel to heat homes.

And it’s, um, no, everybody, like everybody does it. Like it just like, and it took, you know, decades, you know, to sort of like get people on board, you know, answer their questions, right? Like, you know, how do I do it?

What’s it going to cost? Right. Is there just going to be like a, a dumpster of like rotting food next to my apartment building?

Right. Like, I mean, so like, these aren’t like people who are like composting in a big open field, like, you know, a farmer would these like, they’re doing it in cities. And so the model is there.

It’s just, you know, what’s our, what’s our appetite to try and get it done.

[Sheldon Young]
Yeah. Yeah. Interesting.

Interesting. Well, that’s a Lauren’s certainly, you know, taking the, the concept of like gamification and trying to play on the things that, that do make Americans kind of engage. And so I think that the app she has in the, in the tool, do you get a chance to play with the app at all?

I tinkered with it a little bit. Just to, I couldn’t, again, I only looked briefly, but it was more focused around. It was kind of a list of things.

And I, did she say she’d released the scanner, like snapshot food? Was that coming?

[Jason Moreau]
I can’t remember at the time of the recording, I think it was coming. I don’t know if it’s in the app yet or not, but yeah, she was sort of leveraging. Yeah.

Yeah. Image recognition and AI to tell people, is this, is this something I can compost or not?

[Sheldon Young]
Yeah, for sure. I think that’s going to be really cool. Yeah.

So Lauren Turk, thank you for joining. It was, it was a ton of fun to have her. She got a couple of things coming up.

Yeah. A couple of things to mention that’s coming up for her. Um, anyone that joins CompoSTARS, uh, during August.

So this is coming out early August. And so hopefully people will hear this and maybe chime in automatically entered, uh, to win $20 in grocery cash. Okay, cool.

Nice to compost food, scrap, give back winners will be contacted by email in September. So if you’re, I think it’s largely going to be California, I think where this is, is, is really implemented, but if you’re in that area, so make sure to check it out. Um, they also, she’ll also be at the California resource recovery associations, annual conference and trade show, San Diego, August 31st to September 2nd.

So interested in creating change, networking and doing work in this space. It’s a great conference to attend to make sure you find her. If she’s there, that’s it, Jason.

That’s all I had. Um, another riveting episode of No Footprints.

[Jason Moreau]
Uh, I think so.

[Sheldon Young]
People are going to just clamor for this and listen to it five, six times. I think I would do, I don’t know about you, but, um, if you did like it, make sure you follow like subscribe, share with your network, friends, all children. I don’t care.

Anybody wants to listen to this thing? It’s a friendly show. Um, make sure you get them on board.

Uh, check out our website. We got no footprintspodcast.com, or we’re going to have some episodes. We’re talking about put some YouTube stuff up.

I know we’ve created a couple of little pieces that might be getting out there soon. So if you’re in the YouTube realm, look for some clips and we’ll give you a little teasers. On snippets.

You may actually get to look at us visually. Look at that. Jason.

It’s a feast. It’s a visual feast. It’s a face like golden corral of visuals.

[Jason Moreau]
Uh, I won’t say what 40% of the visual feast goes to waste after the feast that needs to be composted.

[Sheldon Young]
Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, but anyways, if you have ideas, uh, topics or guests, you can reach out to us at nofootprints.podcast@alfalaval.com with that, my friend, I say we go compost some leftovers. What do you think?

[Jason Moreau]
I think so. We got to make it happen.

[Sheldon Young]
Let’s do this.

Our guests come from many industries and companies as we’re talking about how the world makes sustainability real. Our company Alfa Laval is a global supplier of process solutions.

So it’s very possible that the organizations our guests are with may use Alfa Laval or even our competitors’ products. This does not mean that we, the host or Alfa Laval are endorsing any of the companies, guests or the specific ideas that we discuss.