Although I would like to believe the expression, “Everyday is Earth Day”, until it is, we can at least go as far as wishing you a Happy Earth Week. In celebration of Earth Week here at SweisKloss, we have started office composting. Most of us either bring lunch to the office or order in and eat here together, or even make lunch here. We use ceramic plates and stainless cutlery instead of using disposables, and we use kitchen towels instead of paper towels. We wanted to do more to decrease our office footprint, so now our food scraps are being diverted from the waste stream. All of our veggie peels, cheese ends, chicken bones, paper napkins, etc., now go in a bin that gets emptied into a Santa Monica municipal composting bin.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, food waste is 20% of what Americans send to the landfill. The is an exorbitant amount of waste, both of food and of space! On the flip side, composted material (food scraps, garden debris, anything organic) is so valuable it is often referred to as “Black Gold” by gardeners, farmers and vintners. There is clearly an imbalance here that the economy and politicians have not yet been able to fix. In the meantime, again, we can do our part. Being more thoughtful about taking and eating leftovers, being more creative about using the food we buy so that we waste less when we cook, and composting the scraps are all good habits to build.
To help our clients build and maintain these habits, when designing and building homes we add features that make composting easy. One such feature is a composting container recessed into the kitchen counter so that scraps can simply be slid from the cutting board into the container. The container has a charcoal filter to abate odor and a lid; it virtually disappears in the counter.
Have you made any changes in your habits in honor of Earth Day? Let us know, we love inspiration! And if you haven’t yet, there is still time, after all it is Earth Week.
