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Hi! Happy weekend.
A few weeks before Thanksgiving, I emailed a few freelancers to see if they had any seasonal pitches. Writer Gabi Mendick—who has previously written about a Cary bakery selling Filipino sweets, the Green Flea Market, and small-batch local ice cream churners—responded with a pitch: Durham’s pilot for curbside compost pickup. Food waste wasn’t exactly what I had in mind for holiday food pieces (I was thinking more along the lines of “Alison Roman”), but the pitch was intriguing.
You can now read Gabi’s story here and in print next week.
A few things I learned: Food scraps are the most common landfill material—and Sampson County, the largest landfill in the state and where Durham’s waste is deposited, ranks #2 in the country (!!) for methane emissions. Other places around the country have begun food waste collection services, including California, which mandated such a service. This all may sound radical as a municipal effort, but we live on a planet in its death throes. Recycling was also once considered radical.
For the past year or so, I’ve been using a janky backyard composter (free via the neighborhood listserv…it collapsed today from a rusted stand). While my results are also janky, forcing myself to be conscious in the kitchen feels like a behavior that translates broadly. It’s empowering to transform waste into something generative—and in a world full of bad news, that’s not an opportunity we often get.
Of course, not everyone has the time or space to compost at home; hopefully, this collection service will become permanent, citywide, and make composting more accessible. Read Gabi’s story for the full rundown on the pilot (and how to get involved) and revisit some of our previous coverage on reducing food waste: On Cary’s drop-off service, the local community fridges fighting hunger, and the Cary kitchen scraps blog with a cult following.
So many people in our communities are working hard to fight climate change and fight for the collective good. Like Carrboro! Thanks for reading; more below.
Gorgeous kitchen scraps begin their journey in a compost container at City Hall! Photo by Angelica Edwards.
elsewhere in the culture section
If you missed it, here’s our Thanksgiving rundown with local chefs (applicable for other holidays, too). The professional running scene gains a foothold in the Triangle. What goes down at the annual Iron Pour. Talking with Nate DiMeo, host of The Memory Palace. Raleigh rock venue Kings celebrates 25 years and, with an ownership change, stays the course.
Finally, a beautiful profile of Daniel Levin—experimental local cellist, arts director at the Durham Charter School, and musician who experiences “strange audiovisual phenomena, such as playing long open tones and seeing a “yellow chamber” spreading like an artery through his arm.”
Links
No local links this week, but here are a few pieces I read over the holiday that stuck with me: A first-person account of being homeless by Patrick Fealey, a former arts journalist, in Esquire. This is a must-read for many reasons, not least of which is that it is damn good writing.
The wrenching story of an IVF mixup, which is exactly what it sounds like. A fascinating read on food deserts, which were largely created—wait for it!—by the great deregulations of the 1980s. Finally, this is an unorthodox piece to link, but this amazing piece on an 18th-century Black intellectual, a painting, Halley’s comet, and biographical reconstruction reads like a thriller.
— Sarah Edwards —
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