Carrying Compost to Union Square

by  Donna Schaper

Why do I bother on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, sometimes Saturdays to carry a little bag of coffee grounds, egg shells, lettuce leaves and the occasionally interesting vegetable butt, to Union Square? I live on East 18th Street in New York City and I work at Washington Square. It is on my way. I put the compost-wannabe in a plastic bag and carry it the three blocks West and two blocks South while also carrying my backpack and usually some other oddball necessity. I bear my burdens judiciously, trying very hard not to overload my arms and back. I keep one hand free for the compost and load up the other with the preposterous item of the day. If we’ve had a party and there is lots of compost (never meat leavings), I get someone to carry the other bags.

When I get to the Union Square Farmer’s Market, the bucket is there – admonishing care for the earth and showing outcomes. There are demonstrated three gradations of soil – good, better and best. My garbage becomes her dirt. The woman who staffs the compost site is usually cheerful and clearly has other customers. Most people take food away from the market, others and I bring it in. Without us, the others wouldn’t be carrying food out. With us, the soil has soul.

Why Bother?

I know there are very few of us – nine bags at most when I get there about 10 a.m.

We can hardly call this a movement in a city of millions of people eating food, drinking coffee and cracking eggs. I know I could put my leftovers into my garbage and that the city would tote them off. My doorman would even take the garbage cans out. All I would have to do is take the garbage to the can. I don’t need the extra miles.

I also know that my petite, nearly flimsy, daily coffee and egg shell will hardly make a garden.

I even know that compost takes a year to make – and that my widow’s mite of an offering hardly creates enough dirt for a proper beet to grow in. Additional reluctance to carry these small offerings comes from getting my work clothes dirty, the rare smell, the water I use in getting clean after I bag the would be dirt.

The number of reasons not to compost include the frequent rain, cold and general irritability that comes with adding burden to the burden of being an on-foot New Yorker. Tote bags abound – and it is a daily matter to keep them light. Many of us play great games around this issue. Keeping more than one pair of shoes at the office, never taking work home (ha), reading slim as opposed to fat books. Not carrying a lot of change. All these little matters compete with the compost carrying adventure. Seriously, why bother?

Ritual Reminder

The only reason I have for bothering is that it is a ritual for me. It is a soil-reminding ritual. It is a way for me to do the earth-to-earth and ashes-to-ashes and dust-to-dust thing on a regular basis, just so it doesn’t surprise me later in life. It is also a way to be reminded of my earthiness, my great reliance on the confluence of a little dirt and a little water, without which I would cease to exist. It is also an act of miracle mimicking: how does that stuff go from white shell to black dirt? Green leaf to light soil? I like the idea of being a little part of a miracle on a regular basis.

I also like the idea of reverence for the earth that moves under my feet. I am enchanted by food. Why not be enchanted by the process of making food? How do we make food? Not by opening the package. We make food by growing it. How do we grow it when we live on East 18th Street??? We grow it by participating in nature’s miracles. We throw our contribution into the soup pot. We eat what we grow.

Befriend Dirt

Rather than being estranged from dirt, my composting escapade allows me to befriend dirt. This friendship even helps me with my radical’s self-righteousness problem, a perennial if there ever was one. I think I am so clean, so correct, so right about everything! Global warming? They should have asked me first. The War in Iraq? I told them. That is why I am enjoying the government’s failure so much. It proves how right I was.

So my ritual helps me to get dirty. Getting dirty is so much better for me than getting clean. It keeps me composted. It keeps me hopeful that my soil can yet become soul and my soul, soil.

That’s why I carry my compost to Union Square.

Excerpted from her forthcoming book Grass Roots Gardening: Rituals to Sustain Activism, coming out in the spring 2007 from Nation books.

Donna Schaper is the Senior Minister of Judson Memorial Church in NYC. She and her husband Warren live in NYC. For more information explore www.judson.org  and www.DonnaSchaper.org.