Air quality issues are seemingly difficult to rally support for. Maybe because it’s hard to visibly see the problem, difficult to witness improvements on the problem, or simply because there’s a lack of physicality that one could hold sentiment for. Because of this, NGO’s that strictly focus on air quality in Milwaukee are difficult to come by! But getting creative and thinking a little outside the box, while following the theme of my previous posts, I’ve come to realize that composting plays a large role in air quality!
So, I present to you Compost Crusaders, a Milwaukee NGO concerned with recycling of organic materials in a responsible fashion. Their goal is to divert 50-75% of organic material for the landfill waste stream.
So the real question, how does reducing organic materials in landfills relate to air quality?
As the EPA says,
« Organic waste in landfills generates methane, a potent greenhouse gas. By composting wasted food and other organics, methane emissions are significantly reduced. » (http://www2.epa.gov/sustainable-management-food/reducing-impact-wasted-food-feeding-soil-and-composting)
So, organizations like Compost Crusaders, despite not being directly related, works with the social aspects of air quality issues. Composting is an activity than can be advertised, branded, trended, sold to the public as an environmentally friendly initiative. It’s seems difficult to gather support for air quality, but composting has a side that appeals the public.
Like I discussed in my previous post, the Sierra Club is a huge advocate for composting to address landfill gas issues. The Sierra Club does not support burning of landfill gas, and emphasize that efforts should be devoted to reducing organic material in landfills instead. But, I do think both burning landfill gas and composting are important methods for handling landfill gas and the air pollution it causes. Landfill gas, specifically methane in this case, diminishes our air quality and contributes to global climate change, but is a widely complex issue that requires both government and social action.
The Compost Crusaders’ efforts are drastically different than those of the EPA in targeting landfill gas issues. The Compost Crusaders are taking a collaborative approach, that could also be defined as a network mode of governance. They are community orientated, and their goal is to work with schools, restaurants, grocers, and municipalities to promote organic recycling. In addition to community collaboration, they also work with other organizations in Milwaukee to fulfill and promote their goals. Kompost Kids (another composting NGO), City of Milwaukee Recycling, US Composting Council, the EPA, and Natural Milwaukee are other organizations that also work towards composting efforts. This network of organizations has the scope to influence various sectors of society to join composting efforts. 
A NGO such as Compost Crusaders that targets a social problem (the act of composting) is in some ways more effective than the EPA command-control regulations. Because they are a local organization, they have more opportunity to gather local support, as voluntary composting is more appealing than strict regulations such as ones the EPA must administer to achieve progress. In the case of the Compost Crusaders, participation is 100% voluntary. No one is forced to compost, adding a sense of social progress to involved community members. I think this is more successful and powerful in terms of changing social mindsets of the community. When people have the option to make change and do something good, support spreads a lot faster than legal obligations.
Check out these links to find out more about Milwaukee composting efforts:
http://www.milwaukeerecycles.com/
https://teamster.org/sites/teamster.org/files/6310GreenhouseGasReportrevisedlowres.pdf
It's interesting that there's so few NGO's pertaining directly to air pollution. The non-point-source nature of most air pollution likely makes it less practical for NGO's to tackle, as well as the physicality issue you mentioned. In any case, methane pollution is an often overlooked contributor to climate change. John Oliver had a great segment on food waste on Last Week Tonight a while back. Clearly something serious needs to be done about this.
ReplyDeleteHere's a link to the episode I mentioned:
https://youtu.be/i8xwLWb0lLY