Dirty Photo/Josie Luciano
Kyle Isacksen estimates that he’s kept 15,000 pounds of food waste out of the dump.
Two dozen people pack into Kyle Isacksen’s living room. They’re there in response to the homesteader’s latest email—a bat signal for the deep green community to come together for a special project. It’s a compost pile for Reno Sculpture Fest that should be “inspiring and easy to build.” Someone suggests a labyrinth. Another thinks a simple pile framed by palettes makes the most sense. Everyone agrees that informational text is a must. Isacksen and his wife, Katy, started their urban homestead, the Be The Change Project, with their two sons nearly five years ago. Modeled after Gandhi’s philosophy of “radical simplicity,” the family lives off the grid, below 16 | RN&R |
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the economic poverty bracket, and just south of Hug High School on the east side of Reno—in the middle of the city. The family relies on their half acre plot to grow their own vegetables and raise small livestock for much of their food. Since moving in, the Isacksens have started something of a movement on their block as several neighbors have followed their lead, letting lawns turn brown, planting food forests in their yards, and participating in a gift economy. It’s a process Isacksen describes as “just a change in habit.” Over the years, the Isacksens have spearheaded a number of community projects, including an RTC-sponsored mural, a neighborhood
One man’s trash is another man’s compost sculpture tree guild give-away, and a handful of natural building workshops. Their latest project, Reno Rot Riders, is arguably the most ambitious. It’s a compost collection service powered by Isacksen’s own bike and trailer. Although he’s currently the only rot rider of Reno Rot Riders, the project is named for growth. “We’d love to have scores of riders eventually, going out every day, gathering up this food waste, bringing it short distances to these composts or compost sites where they’re made into compost and enriching the soil,” he said. Even on his own, Isacksen has made a small dent in diverting restaurant waste from landfills. He makes pick-ups at five downtown locations each week, hauling three bins at a time in his custom-built trailer. Over the last seven months, he estimates that he has clocked almost 500 miles and diverted 15,000 pounds of food from the dump. The precedent for success with bikepowered compost collection is well documented. Pedal pushers make their rounds all over the country—from one-person operations like Resoil Sacramento to longtime multimember cooperatives like Pedal People in Amherst, Massachusetts. Compost Pedallers of Austin, Texas, has made such an impact on their region—diverting 500,000 pounds of waste from landfills—that they are currently partnering with the city to develop new waste management policies.
On the right footprint Isacksen is going with a simple design for the sculpture. With the help of a few friends and a neighbor’s driveway for staging, the group builds four bins, each progressively smaller than the next to illustrate different stages of decomposition—from raw material to finished
compost. The final bin measures one cubic foot, a 75 percent reduction in size from the original pile. Isacksen seals the wood with linseed oil and lines each bin with chickenwire. So far, the biggest challenge for Reno Rot Riders is the question of where to deliver compost materials. Although Isacksen speculates that the operation will eventually establish “dozens of compost locations all around the city,” there’s not yet a huge market for the flipside of food waste pickup. But maybe there should be. Compost makes up for what Nevada soils lack, namely humus. Though most soils contain 5 percent organic matter, Nevada soils only have 1 percent, a number that—when coupled with a lack of moisture and concentration of nutrients at the top of the soil profile—often results in soil that is lost to wind and water erosion. That’s where home- and city-wide composting can make a difference. Though broad-scale land management practices yield bigger results on the vast swaths of rangelands that cover the state, smaller-scale action in high impact areas is equally important. Perhaps the most significant impact of compost production in populated areas is climate impact through waste diversion. According to the EPA, food and yard waste account for 24 percent of garbage that ends up in national landfills. In Northern Nevada, 5 million pounds of garbage is hauled to the Lockwood Regional Landfill every day. And once food waste goes to the dump, it is essentially sealed off from oxygen, making an anaerobic environment that leads to methane—a greenhouse gas 23 times more potent than carbon dioxide. That’s a lot to offset. But at least some people are trying. Commercial operations like Full Circle Compost and RT Donovan divert a combined total of 65 million pounds of organic
