This May, I will celebrate my three year anniversary riding an electric bicycle around Providence, collecting food scraps from neighbors to make compost with Harvest Cycle Compost. As you can imagine, the job is slightly more enjoyable in the summer than the winter, but overall, it’s the most rewarding employment I’ve ever held.
Before taking this job, I was a professional advocate for healthy oceans as a director with the ocean conservation organization, Oceana. I participated and led beach cleanups and communicated to others about why we need to protect the marine environment. I lived down the coast in Newport where it was a slam dunk to educate others about the importance of conserving the ocean where they sailed, surfed, and swam. In Providence where no one dares wade into the rivers and it’s not uncommon to see a fire break out at the Port, advocating for a healthy coastline is a bit different. But it’s just as important.
Composting and riding bikes are two activities that everyone can do to reduce the many threats the ocean faces due to climate change. One reason for this is simple: biking cuts down on harmful emissions. Emissions from cars and trucks account for about a third of all carbon emissions Rhode Island produces. Anything we can do to avoid taking a car, whether it be walking, biking, or taking public transit, helps in this regard.
Food waste is another – less obvious – source of greenhouse gases. Food waste accounts for a third of the trash that we send to the landfill, and methane, emitted by food scraps, is 80 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide over a 20 year period. In 2017, global food waste resulted in 9.3 billion tons of CO2-equivalent emissions – roughly the total combined emissions of the United States and the European Union that same year. Slashing our methane emissions is the single most powerful lever we can pull to rapidly curb the effects of climate change and avoid escalating levels of devastation. In addition, the Central Landfill is expected to fill up by 2046, so if we can transform our food scrap into compost, then we can extend the life of our landfill.
Improving the health of our city’s soil is yet another way that composting helps the ocean. There are at least two reasons for this. First, by improving our soil health, we help plants absorb more carbon dioxide. Less atmospheric carbon dioxide in the atmosphere means less gets absorbed into the ocean, leading to less ocean acidification. Ocean acidification changes the chemistry of the ocean and can create conditions that eat away at the minerals used by oysters, clams, lobsters, shrimp, coral reefs, and other marine life to build their shells and skeletons. This process is sometimes referred to as “osteoporosis of the sea.”
Adding compost to the depleted soils of Providence also helps them hold five times their weight in water, reducing the amount of runoff into our streams and rivers while also filtering out stormwater pollutants like motor oil and pet waste, introduced by rainwater flowing across impervious surfaces. Excess rainwater, and the nutrients it carries into rivers and streams, cause algal blooms as well as harming aquatic and human health.
Trucks are great for carrying lots of stuff, but bikes can be just as effective at doing the job if you have electric assist and a reliable battery – we rely on two batteries for every bike, just to be safe. Because our service area just includes Providence and parts of Pawtucket, our routes are completely doable by bike: no internal combustion engines needed. (Though an electric assist is crucial to get up College Hill with a full load of food scrap in the trailer.) In addition, I am much more able to maneuver safely around cars and find parking on a bike than if I picked everything up in an automobile.
In addition to being a more planet-friendly means of transportation, riding a bike around this city is simply fun. I love bombing down Memorial Boulevard, just as much as I like being able to pull over to help someone on Dexter Street move a heavy keg into their van, like I did recently. I look forward to emptying out compost bins at Sin Bakery and PVD Donut so I can see what they’re making. And the Pedestrian Bridge can’t be beat for the sounds and the amount of life it brings to the city. It’s always a treat to hear someone busking in a spot where there was once a bustling interstate highway.
Some parts of Providence are more enjoyable to ride bikes in than others, but overall the city is a great place thanks to all the infrastructure that’s been installed to make the streets more accessible for everyone. A couple of years ago when a temporary bike lane was set up on Hope Street, I enjoyed riding bikes around that area, but since it didn’t become permanent, I’m always on guard for cars. Across town on the Southside, the Broad Street urban trail is fantastic, except when it snows. Eventually I hope the Department of Public Works acquires the right equipment to plow this bike lane so it’s accessible year round to everyone.
The time to collect our food waste is now more than ever. Collecting food scraps and diverting them from the trash is a simple act that can reap tremendous rewards for not only our city, but the entire ocean. A healthy ocean regulates our climate, provides food, and supports everyone.
I am so grateful for the opportunity to help my neighbors keep their food scraps out of the landfill. And to those who think that it must be really cold to ride a bike all day in the winter like I do, my advice is the same that Jimmy Carter implied to the American public back in 1977: put on a sweater.
Tyson Birch is a compost hauler with Harvest Cycle Compost and resident of Elmwood.
