 This is the Close Loop Community Compost Program. We pick up food scraps from our neighbors keeping it out of the landfill and turning it into healthy compost to grow food with instead. We do this all by bicycle, burning absolutely no fossil fuels and we grow our own sponges and harvest rainwater to wash the buckets. It's a Close Loop system and I'm excited to take you out for a ride to show you how it works. Let's go! The program is very simple and it starts right here in the community. We start by simply giving them a clean five gallon bucket and then every week they fill it with their food scraps and put it back out for us to collect. We take that bucket and we leave them with a clean bucket and we come back every single week. So instead of them throwing it in the garbage can and it going to the landfill, their job is super easy just put it right into the bucket. We take it away and what's really important about this program is that the community sees it and they learn about composting by it being a part of the community. So our program is Bicycle Powered which means we're keeping gas guzzling trucks off the road but you can do this by foot, by bike or with a vehicle and you can even put a trailer on your bike to be able to collect a whole lot of compost. So now we're heading back to the compost site. We also have a community compost drop-off site for people who are outside of our pickup zone who want to simply drop off their food scraps and take a clean bucket to come back each week. So now let's head back to where we're actually going to compost this food waste. Food waste is a big problem but composting is a big solution. Food waste is one of the most daunting issues of our time both for people and for this earth as a whole which of course we know they're completely connected but if we simply composted all of our food scraps and food waste it would be one of the greatest solutions to the problems we're in today. We compost both here as well as at different garden locations. The compost goes in. Composting can be made very complicated or very simple and really what it comes down to is you need about two times the amount of carbon sources like wood chips to the amount of nitrogen like food waste. So every bucket of food waste is about two buckets of carbon. Alright I'm not going to lie composting can be smelly and it can bring in some flies but with properly managed compost piles with enough of that carbon composting is smooth and it works really well. After about three months or so depending on where you are this food waste and this carbon matter is going to turn into rich compost that can go to the garden to grow food. So let me take you to our garden. Composting really is turning the problem into the solution. Think about it. You've got this nasty food waste that people don't want to deal with that they're throwing into the garbage can that's all stinky that goes to the landfill already mits methane. Now what's the solution? Composting it turns that problem into this beautiful solution of quality soil that you can grow food with. So this soil and that compost turns into things like these beautiful tomatoes. And these pumpkins. Talk about a good solution to a problem that we have. Now I told you that we also grow around sponges and harvest our own rainwater to make this a true closed loop system. So let me show you that. Rather than using water that comes from the city that's full of chemicals and that uses a lot of electricity we harvest our water from the sky. Rainwater. It's really simple. The water that collects on the roof goes into a downspout and then we just collect it into whatever we have. We have these totes and 55 gallon drums and then we use this wonderful rainwater to wash the buckets. But we need a little bit more than rainwater and that's where these natural sponges come into play. Now of course we don't waste this water either. This water that we use to clean the bucket we use this to grow bananas. And where did this natural sponge come from? Well we grow it right here in our yard. Let me show you. So sponges don't just grow in the sea. This is the luffa squash which grows on these vines. Now you can eat it when it's young just like a zucchini or you can leave it on the vine for a while so that it dries out and becomes the perfect sponge. We want to see community compost programs like this spreading all across the world and we're here to help you with that. We provide templates and knowledge as well as grants to start more community compost initiatives. But no matter what you do just make sure that you start composting and share this video if you want more people to start composting.