Everything a natural ecosystem produces is cycled, from soil, air, or water through plants and animals and then back to soil, air, or water again. When soil, water, sun, and seed conspire to produce a tree, it grows and grows, storing organic matter and nutrients in its body, housing animals and insects in its branches, providing shade and shelter for surrounding plants.
When the tree dies, woodpeckers break it up digging for insects, insects burrow through the decaying wood, and as the wood is broken down by fungi, it returns to the earth to become soil. The soil grows another tree. Around and around it goes. There is no waste, only cycles of reuse. Everything is food for the next part of the cycle.
Rejoin the cycle. Somewhere along the timeline of human agriculture, we began breaking the cycles of reuse into linear chains, and seeing the materials at the end of the chains as waste. Manure from farm livestock was no longer cycled back onto farm fields and thus became a waste product to be disposed of. The fields then needed fertilizer, which was made in factories and became an additional expense for the farmer. Excess fertilizer ran off the fields and caused pollution in nearby waterways and groundwater. With cycles of reuse broken and waste products rampant, problems began to multiply.
When we focus on turning “waste” into food, we are resurrecting natural cycles that have been disrupted. Following the tenets of permaculture, we can provide for our own needs while participating in and supporting the great cycles that are so essential to natural ecosystems. We can work with this cycling and do the work of growing soil, and thus the plants and animals we rely on.
Compost Everything. One of the easiest ways to convert waste to food is by composting, which captures the organic matter in food scraps, prunings, lawn clippings, and other plant debris. Organic matter is an essential ingredient for building rich soil, which in turn produces the crops we consume. In almost all circumstances, more organic matter is called for. Is your soil too clayey? Add compost. Too sandy? Add compost. Just plain depleted? Add compost.
Be on the lookout for other sources of organic matter that might be flowing through your community as “waste.” Arborists and companies that clear trees away from power lines often have truckloads of wood chips looking for a place to go. Fallen leaves (often bagged up by the side of the road), pine needles, and woody brush are also usually available for the taking. They can be added to your compost or chopped and used as a mulch that will decay in place, providing organic matter over the long term, while at the same time helping to increase soil life, reduce evaporation of water, and cool the ground in summer.
Utilize Humanure. In most homes, the fertility of our own human waste is taken away, whether to a municipal waste treatment plant or into a backyard septic system. Although it’s an uncommon practice in our culture, this “humanure” can be a fertility source instead of a pollution problem. Simple systems to compost and cycle humanure, urine, and graywater (household water, such as that from the laundry or bath, that does not contain serious contaminants) can save large amounts of water and energy and contribute to the self-renewing fertility of our land. Projects to demonstrate and document the benefits of cycling human waste are important. The Rich Earth Institute in Brattleboro, Vermont, demonstrates the use of urine as an agricultural amendment, closing the loop of pollution caused by the high nitrogen in urine. Instead of polluting water resources, it’s improving the production on croplands.
When I first was learning about permaculture, I was tending an orchard in the Pacific Northwest that had been planted in challenging clay soils. The extreme rains of winter gave way to scorchingly hot, dry summers; the soil was either too wet or cracking dry. To assist the fruit trees, we dug trenches in the clay soil— 4 feet wide, 2 feet deep — leading across the orchard and toward a small stream. We filled the trenches with woody debris and logs and backfilled them with compost and soil. When the winter rains came, the trenches helped drain the excess water from the adjacent clay soils, funneling it to the stream. The woody debris soaked up some of that water and slowly released it through the summer. The decaying wood in the trenches also created a nutrient reservoir for the trees to root into. Over time, the trenches, woody debris, and plentiful mulching began to shift the balance toward a more even, fertile soil.
This kind of system is called hügelkultur — roughly, “mound culture” in German. Wood is stacked on the ground (or in shallow trenches), and a layer of soil or compost is shoveled over the top. The mound becomes a raised garden bed, and the plants growing there can take advantage of the slow decomposition of the wood, which holds moisture and slowly releases nutrients. This sort of setup takes “waste” woody materials and uses them to build the soil, helping us provide for ourselves while regenerating soil fertility.
