Expert details what actually happens after you toss food scraps and yard waste: 'After a month, it doesn't smell like waste'

We've all been late for work, but have you ever been late because you were helping deliver compost? That's what I was doing last week — riding along with Black Bear Composting, an organics recycling company in the Blue Ridge Mountains where I live. Thankfully, as an editor at The Cool Down, "compost research before work" is a perk of the job. (And sometimes, they'll even let you get away with being a little late.)

Composting food and yard scraps is a simple and cost-effective way to supercharge your garden with healthier, nutrient-rich soil, helping the planet in the process. So, I was eager to learn more about it from Black Bear's Chief Composting Officer, Eric Walter. 

We agreed to meet on a bright, spring morning when Eric was going to be in town delivering finished compost, often called "gardening gold," as a yearly perk to customers. In fact, he pulled right up to my house in a huge truck full of tan and green bins, before dumping roughly 250 pounds of compost onto a tarp I'd laid out in the driveway.

With the first delivery complete, I hopped in the truck, and we were off for a morning's worth of deliveries. And while Eric made a dozen or so dropoffs, I got to ride shotgun and ask him a bunch of questions about the secrets of the composting process. Here's what I learned.

🥒 Why is compost so good for gardens?

Compost is made from decomposing materials like leaves, leftover food scraps, and other organic matter like grass cuttings and paper towels. Eric mentioned that Black Bear even composts oily pizza boxes. 

All these materials are added to a giant industrial heap, where they slowly break down. The end result? A super-packed, nutrient-rich fertilizer that you can add to your soil to supercharge growth for your veggies, flowers, and trees.

And people are eager to get their hands on this super-dirt: "This is our busiest time of year," Eric told me. "Everybody starts with gardens. They clean up their beds and get ready to plant their spring veggies and flowers and stuff like that."

Adding compost to your garden beds also reduces the amount of synthetic fertilizers needed — plus, Eric mentioned that compost is super-absorbent, which is great for reducing water runoff in your yard.

⏳ How long has this compost batch been "cooking"?

The compost in Eric's delivery truck was packed into bins the night before, but the composting process had been going on for about five months before this.

As a commercial facility, Black Bear can compost organic matter faster than you'd typically be able to with a backyard composter. "Part of our daily job is turning rows and adding more [organic material] where we can and then screening it at the very end," Eric said. 

If you compost your food scraps, what's your primary motivation? Improving my garden's soil 🌱 Saving money on fertilizer 💰 Helping the planet 🌎 I don't compost 🚫 Click your choice to see results and speak your mind.

Screening is "a large machine that you feed the raw compost into, and then anything that's smaller than that comes out one side. Anything that's bigger goes into another pile," he said. This prevents any large chunks of organic material from ending up in your finished compost delivery.

👃 And when does compost stop smelling bad?

"It's pretty early," Eric said. "After a month, it doesn't smell like waste."

🤯 Craziest thing you've found in a compost bin?

Eric mentioned that "for the most part, people are pretty good — but yeah, there's stuff that just ends up in there, mostly from restaurants and places where the bins are in public." The Black Bear team has found milk cartons, coffee cups, food packaging, paper towel dispensers (?), and even a stereo (!).

A lot of the missteps come down to composting know-how, Eric said. In recycling facilities, a lot of the sorting process is mechanical, and things that can't be recycled are sorted out by machines. But with composting, "it's a lot more physical," Eric mentioned. The BB team ends up having to pick items out of the compost piles.

Eric says he'd rather have customers hold off on composting questionable items until they can send him an email and get confirmation, rather than just toss them in the bin and hope for the best. 

That's because if "it's not compostable, then the challenge is that it gets broken into smaller pieces" that can sneak through the composting screening process. "So you're going to find fruit stickers, you might find little bits of plastic that just got small enough. And hopefully most of the plastic that you find is compostable plastic that is still in the process of breaking down, but there's a very real chance that it might be some actual plastic that shouldn't be there."

❓ Why did you decide to start a composting business?

Eric founded Black Bear in 2011 after years in software and website design in Chicago. One of his biggest clients was a commercial bathroom company, so "we did a lot of work with toilets and sinks and showers," he said. When he moved back east with his family, one thing was clear: "I was tired of selling toilets." 

So he made a big switch: "I wanted to do something sustainable and this was it." Black Bear Composting was born. "My wife's been really cool. …The rest of my family thought I was nuts."

Now, nearly 15 years later, Black Bear Composting helps local residents, schools (including the University of Virginia), restaurants, and even grocery stores such as Wegmans and Whole Foods reduce the amount of food waste that ends up in landfills. This is especially important because when organic matter ends up in landfills, it decomposes and releases the super-potent greenhouse gas methane.  

The Environmental Protection Agency reports that food waste is the single most common material to be sent to landfills or incinerated in the U.S. The agency also estimates that the amount of land used for all that wasted food every year totals the size of California and New York combined. 

Bottom line: Finding better solutions — like composting — for what to do with leftover food is crucial. Plus, you end up with gardening gold at the end of the composting process.

💪 How can I start composting on my own?

Step 1: Check to see if your city has its own municipal composting system, like New York City's new curbside program. 

Step 2: You can also search on Good Start Packaging to find composting services in your state.

Step 3: When you're ready to start composting in your backyard, TCD has a list of ways to start composting yard waste here. You can even start small with a box on your balcony or patio. 

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