What A Load of Garbage — I'm Ecstatic

by Dan Masterton

My older daughter, Lucy, has started kindergarten, full days. And one of the repercussions of her daily six-hour absence is a surplus of energy in my younger daughter, Cecilia, that busts free around 3:30pm each weekday when the sisters are reunited. So one day recently, we managed this frictious time by following Lucy’s simple request: can we play outside?

Yes.

Pretty neat to look inside!

We headed to the backyard, where bickering continued, but now in the fresh air and wide open space of the yard. After a few minutes of trying to help facilitate fun, I decided to step away to a yard job and let them attempt to mediate their own disputes. I grabbed my gloves and a bucket and headed to my compost corner.

When we moved into our this house – our first house – three years ago, I bought an inexpensive compost barrel. I had little ambition of becoming an accomplished landscaper or vegetable gardener (which is good because we have critters galore around here), but I did want to be a good steward and diligent groundskeeper.

My chief goal was and is landfill diversion, reducing our curbside garbage load while returning what we could to the earth. So once or twice a year, plus whenever we pot plants or sow seed, I dig out the humus (the decomposed matter that has become soil again) and spread it around a bit – filling in low spots, adding it to bare spots, leveling out edges, and then scattering bits over the grass. Since kids always like to play in the dirt, they enjoy helping with this part. Here’s some fun stuff I was thinking while my daughters and I played with our new dirt:

Composting is easy and simple.

Three years in, the compost bin is an easy habit. For family, friends, and guests, it’s something I selectively try to invite them to do while over at our house, gradually trying to share the habit. For me, and for my kids who get to learn from scratch, it just feels second-nature.

I scrape the cutting board, the uneaten bits from plates, the stale and moldy bread, and forgotten leftovers, and more into the bin. Add some dried or fallen branches, chunks of leaves, and some evergreen branches from yard work. Put some cardboard or clearly-marked compostable material (like shipping bags or compostable ziplock bags) in there, too. And grab my shovel to mix it all up. The rest takes care of itself!

The natural process is neat.

Eyeballing the pile is interesting. I see the inorganic bits that the wind or neighborhood critters deposited and the bits I may have missed when contributing – nature rejects fruit stickers, potted plant tags, landscape materials, and anything else we coat and layer in chemicals for whatever reasons.

Thicker branches and logs of wood take longer to break down. But smack them with the point of the shovel, and you see the decaying outer coats give way as nature works its way through the layers.

Check out the compostable ziplocks and shipping bags, and you see the bits of progress as edges fade and holes widen.

And those produce peels and rinds? Between hungry animals and nature’s churn, they go pretty quickly!

The natural process is wormy, buggy, and smelly.

Whether you're a fan of the smell or not,
it's not bad to get an inexpensive barrel,
set it up somewhere low-key,
especially if you have a yard,
and get in the habit.

Not gonna lie – the compost smell grows on you. At least it did for me. It’s oddly pleasing. Earthy.

I even think it’s neat to see the worms that pop out as you move the pile and shovel bunches about. It’s cool to see them toiling away at their punchclock jobs.

I don’t love the onslaught of insects that churning the pile unleashes. Nor do I enjoy the itchiness up and down my pasty midwestern legs.

But I can deal.

The cycle is satisfying.

It’s fun to drop my shovel into the pile, punch through some dryness, and churn up hearty, deep brown dirt – and to know that it used to be grape stems, apple cores, and banana peels just a short time ago.

And the process brings a quiet and calming satisfaction – to take that new dirt, fill a bucket, and spread it around the yard.

Then on Monday night garbage night, it’s a simple routine of dumping our compost bin out back, emptying our recycling into the collection bins, and taking what’s usually just one kitchen bag of garbage out to the curb. I enjoy how the diverted matter can cycle back to the earth instead of filling a truck and a landfill, and that this cycle continues on the land that we own and try to steward.

It’s a small way to live out justice, ecologically, and respond to the calls of Christ, the pope, and the Church.

Catholic Social Teaching is our attempt to understand Scripture and Tradition to do justice throughout our lives. And part of this is Care for God’s Creation, being good stewards of the earth as God’s gift to us.

The greatest environmental change can and will come as businesses and corporations make changes. Better standards and processes on their end with manufacturing, production, and the whole capitalistic chain will make the most significant impact. And political movements and government shifts can help incentivize and lock in this progress, with funding access, policy, and enforcement.

Yet, we as individuals, families, and communities should not wait on that alone. And we shouldn’t use the comparably smaller impact we have as an excuse to hit snooze on our own habits. To put it simply, our call is to do good and avoid evil, to be holy in that we are seeking to do good and do God’s will.

Our choices, to reduce single-use plastic materials, to be more mindful consumers, to compost, are one way we do what is right and just. One block of a neighborhood making just changes can’t lower the earth’s average temperature, but those people can be a positive, attractive model, a way to demonstrate actions and habit changes that are doable and worthwhile, and a model of goodness and justice.

While we have an excess of
invasive, sprawling weedy bits,
we also have some lovely
low-maintenance perennials,
many that bloom in fall,
and hope to add more native bits
over the next few years.

For Catholics, if we’re to live out our Gospel values, if we’re to acknowledge our call to care for God’s Creation, if we’re to heed the teachings of our Church’s lead teacher Pope Francis, then we ought to be asking ourselves about our habits. For me, as a new homeowner, it was a good time to incorporate this, and it has become a simple, enjoyable element of homeowner chores. For you, it could be a different habit, a different way to adjust your consumption or stewardship. What is a way that you can be a better steward of Creation?

If not you, who? If not now, when?