the clean plate club: part 1

hellooooo! i’m so excited to present a collective series of something i’ve become so passionate about. i’m starting the clean plate club series as a way to make sustainable eating & sustainable food practices like composting less intimidating and more normalized. the idea behind this series stemmed from my dad prompting me to take the next step and purchase a composting machine after i had been talking (& complaining) about how we waste a lot of food and could easily live more sustainably. “the clean plate club” refers to reducing and eventually having zero food waste.. it’s all either happily consumed or put back into the earth to become new, healthy soil! sustainability can look like so many things: composting, eating less meat and more plant foods, limiting the use of single waste plastic and so much more. the first and major part of how i’ve been incorporating more sustainable practices into my life that i’ll be writing about is (drumroll please)… composting!

the silver container above is the place where we store all of our food scraps before bringing it out to the compost tumbler. any organic matter can be composted: some common food scraps for us have been coffee grounds, orange peels (we make a lot of juice), kale stems, carrot tops, and egg shells.

the food scraps goes into the black compost tumbler that we layer with “brown materials” like cut up cardboard or leaves, and then close the tumbler door and turn it a few times. this allows for the carbon and nitrogen to mix and eventually create a proper breakdown (this is the only science-type part, promise!!!). getting my family involved with this process has been so rewarding. we always get pumped up for earth day, and love going to beautiful places, but to be able to actually make a positive impact on both the earth and our food system makes me feel very grateful. it’ll take a few months for the compost to fully breakdown and become nutrient dense soil, but in the meantime i’ll be updating you all on how it’s going! shoutout to my parents — thank you guys for taking care of my precious compost while i’m at college :)

*hope you guys find this interesting / helpful / inspiring / fun. stay tuned for more tips & tricks on living more sustainably and loving our mother earth.

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with love ♥️,

sydney