 Hey everyone, I'm here with Michael Martinez of LA Compost and do you want to tell us to start where we are? Yeah, so we're located in the Legion Valley community garden in the area of Legion Valley or Frogtown here alongside the LA River. This garden used to be a parking lot and was converted into a community garden in 2014. There's over 30 garden beds. There's incredible program partners. There's a food distribution event going on today. And this is one of over 40 locations where we allow for community members to drop off at our community cooperative pubs. And so I just learned that this was formerly a parking lot and now it's this amazing garden. I think you know, it's a perfect representation of what I've learned about LA Compost over the last couple months was which is it's it's about transforming communities bringing bringing back you know sovereignty in the communities. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, and just want to say my son Diego is really excited to be here and part of it. LA Compost are tagline soil and people and we're really focused on restoring lost connections between community members, the soil that feeds us and really seeing the parallels within one another. I think just like Compost, LA Compost just adds a little bit of life and a little bit of value to the already goodness and powerful work that community bees are doing. Here in the Legion Valley, there's the LA Moss, there's Community Gardening Council. Incredible community organizers just doing solid work. And we just get to come alongside and support them in really unique ways through our program offering. So we're very much focusing on that first word of community as much as that second word, which is composting. But the two go hand in hand. I often say that the beauty of these compost piles is the diversity of imperfection and collection of the ingredients and the beauty of LA as many people have experienced are the people who call it home. So very much that human-centered focus work here in LA. That's very beautiful. So, you know, most everybody out there knows what composting is, but for people who don't, can you tell us a little bit about why composting is so important as a central part of our communities and regenerating our earth? Absolutely. So composting has been defined in many different ways. I like to use the analogy of it's like cooking. You're gathering ingredients, creating certain conditions to allow for something to happen. And what's happening is the decomposition of organic matter through microbial metabolism. It's basically heat and air in this beautiful soil food web breaking down materials. But why that's important is because when food goes to landfill, it creates a greenhouse gas called methane, which is really contributing to this climate emergency that we're in. Landfills leech into our waterways, affect our air, soil, water and the communities around it. And with composting, you're allowing food scraps to not be seen as waste or a product that needs to just go away, because it doesn't disappear, but it's seen as a resource that can be transformed and reinvested in our communities through composting, through green jobs, through green gathering spaces. And I think it's really important for us to realize that things don't disappear when we put them in a garbage can. They affect communities, they affect our habitats and our environment, and that there's a price that we are all paying when we are sending them to these certain communities, to these certain zip codes, and we can rethink and reimagine what that infrastructure looks like. Yeah, I mean, that's the big idea of this project is to help people to see how much our trash adds up and the truth behind our consumerism. And one of the most powerful things you can do to not look like this is compost. About 72 pounds, this is 72 pounds of trash, and about 30 plus pounds of this could be turned into soil to regenerate our communities. Absolutely, in addition to the food scraps that you're holding, I've seen a lot of paper products, unbleached cardboard, things that would absolutely serve as a carbon source, as that nitrogen source for our microbes to really break down and return to our soils here in a community garden or park location. So, of course, as you know, normally I compost, I love composting, I think it's one of the greatest solutions. Can you share a little bit, you were starting to touch on it, but, you know, the environmental injustice that exists with our waste systems and how it disproportionately affects different communities? Absolutely, oftentimes it's communities of color, those that are often in lower income zip codes, that have this large scale infrastructure that they have to bear the weight of. We live in LA County, where there's 10 million of us, and oftentimes the majority of that waste is sent to certain communities that, like I said, have to bear the impact of that. So, as I mentioned, landfills and certain types of waste industry infrastructures do impact our soil, air, and water, and inevitably that is impacting our community. So it's important from an environmental justice lands that we are not just sending this stuff away out of place, out of mind, because it's not going away, it's impacting kids, it's impacting the schools, the areas in which these facilities are located, and to reimagine what we can do with this material, to really look at these communities that have been impacted and seeing the ways in which they're taking an initiative, the way in which they're organizing, and combating it, and creating alternative futures by composting, gardening, redistributing food, and looking at the full story of food and relationship to, like, this journey of life. 100% on the same page, and lastly, it sounds like you're pretty excited about some of the progress that's being made here in LA. Yeah, in California, as the state as a whole, the Senate Bill 1383, which passed January 1, 2022, is really mandating the entire state of California to compost. There's some 75% diversion goals from landfill by 2023-2024, and from San Francisco down to San Diego, Sacramento to LA, there's community groups like LA Compost, really this community compost group. There's a California Alliance for Community Composters. We're really recognizing the impact and the importance, full-scale, so it's been a long time coming in, and the future is very bright in regards to composting at the home level, community level, regional level, and municipal level, and all efforts are needed, so we're just part, we're really excited to just be a small piece of a larger solution. Wonderful, so whether you are in LA or you have an organization like LA Compost, we can all start composting in our communities, we can start community compost programs if we want to step it up a notch, and we can help to mandate this as part of our systems, where composting is the norm rather than the exception. Absolutely, I always say that the beauty of composting is it's creating these microbial networks that are sharing, communicating, and supporting this larger whole, and we are mimicking that above the ground at the community level. We're establishing a human network here in LA, others are doing it across the country, but the diversity of communities, the contributions that everyone's making, is really creating this robust human network of good, this beautiful life transfer that's taking place across LA County, so appreciate your message, appreciate the space you create for these conversations to be had, and we're really excited to just continue to work with everyone else that's doing this solid work. All right, well thank you for your work, who knew that composting is such a revolution, I mean it is, I knew, but yeah thanks for all you're doing, and I'm excited to continue to see LA Compost growing and spreading. Thank you so much, appreciate your time.