Table2Farms is working to expand the scale of composting projects across the United States to reduce methane emissions, regenerate soil, and inspire organizations and individuals alike to compost. The organization recently launched two pilot programs in Phoenix, Arizona and New Haven, Connecticut. Table2Farms hopes to mitigate the effects of climate change and create a world where everyone understands how composting contributes to a circular, no-waste system.
The organization believes that the first step in achieving this vision is to support composting projects that already exist. “What Table2Farms wants to do is help the people that are already composting, all these community composters, scale up,” Bridgett Luther, Founder of Table2Farms, tells Food Tank.
Marketing and selling compost can be a challenge for composters. To help them overcome this difficulty, Table2Farms developed a technology called Quality Assurance Testing. It will, according to Luther, “test the soil at the end to assure that it’s not full of contaminants and that it’s got all the healthy microbes that you would ever need. That will be a game-changer for all of these community composters if they can sell their compost at premium [prices].”
According to a 2022 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report, landfills are the third-largest source of human-caused methane emissions in the U.S., generating more than 17 percent of the country’s methane emissions. As Luther tells Food Tank, not only does composting drastically reduce the size of landfills, it also generates nutrient-rich soil that cultivates healthy produce. She emphasizes that it is essential that people understand how all of these pieces are connected.
Luther explains that Table2Farms is creating an app that will count how much waste is collected, where it goes to be composted, and what that compost is then used for. “Maybe at some point, we’re going to have a branded Table2Farms bag of compost that you get from your hardware store. You could just click on it and say, look, these are all the good microbes that are in there and they’re good for this, this, and this.”
Luther’s inspiration to start Table2Farms began during her time as the Director of the California Department of Conservation. One of her many responsibilities in this role included running the CalRecycle program, where she oversaw a 20 percent increase in beverage can recycling.
Luther visited San Francisco and met with the director of the recycling center in the city. He told Luther that if people put as much time and effort into composting as they did into recycling, the country would be much further ahead in combating climate change. This sentiment stuck with Luther as she went on to found and direct Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute, further focusing on circularity and sustainability.
When she left that position, Table2Farms was the logical next step, allowing Luther to use her expertise to scale up composting across the U.S. “We’ve got this huge opportunity to start a national movement around composting,” she says.
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Photo courtesy of Edward Howell, Unsplash
