Holly Hughes discovers a community of composters known as the Cork Urban Soil Project (CUSP) who are giving us hope for a greener future …
Main Image; Virginia O’Gara of the Cork Urban Soil Project (CUSP)
“Food waste is not a pollutant, it’s a treasured resource,” Virginia O’Gara, one of the founders of the Cork Urban Soil Project (CUSP), tells me. We are speaking in those strange, twilight days that signal the end of the festive season, when all kinds of waste but particularly food waste, lurks in every fridge and cupboard.
We buy, we consume, we throw away, we start again. A familiar pattern. One that fills me with a certain measure of hopelessness as no matter how much I try to manage leftover food with waste-free hacks, there still remains a mini mountain to be disposed of. Cork City households produce around 30 tonnes of food scraps every day. And, since most of us living in urban spaces have neither the space nor time to home-compost, roughly 60 per cent of this organic waste is being incinerated or sent to landfill where it emits toxic methane emissions that accelerate climate breakdown. So my feelings of hopelessness are justified.
Luckily, the Cork Urban Soil Project is in the business of cultivating hope. The first experiment of its kind in Ireland, CUSP is rethinking the value and fate of urban green waste, turning would-be food scraps into high-quality compost that can be used in socially and environmentally beneficial ways, from growing more nutritious food in urban micro farms, to supporting tree planting schemes (Micheál Martin recently planted trees in the city’s new Marina Park using CUSP’s soil), reducing the impact of flooding and erosion, improving water quality, and remediating polluted soils.
The idea for CUSP came from Virginia’s experience running community food company, MyGoodness. Even with MyGoodness’s meticulous optimisation of every available food scrap and resource – drinks are made from harvested rainwater, leftover vegetables find new life in pickles, preserves, and ferments – a seemingly unusable byproduct was always left over.
“How could we work together to create a simple solution to everyone’s problem which is that human beings create waste?”
Understanding that every human activity has an output, Virginia and her team began to wonder how this could be transformed into an input; how waste could find new life in our human system of “produce, consume, discard” and in a way that could benefit and unite communities. “How could we work together to create a simple solution to everyone’s problem which is that human beings create waste?” This led to the realisation that it’s not waste that is the issue, it’s the centralised system designed to “take care” of it.
“Waste only becomes a pollutant if it’s put into the wrong piece of the design,” Virginia tells me. And our food waste – sent to landfill and incinerators – is being put in the wrong place. It is being forced down the chute of a linear system that can’t recognise or utilise it for the gift that it is. “What we wanted to do was take that linear system and turn it into a closed loop,” Virginia says, “Where our output could actually become an input and waste wouldn’t be seen as a pollutant but as a treasured resource.”
To do this, CUSP invested in the help of a Joraform aerobic biodigestor. This is a machine that can turn the green waste of up to 100 households into high-quality compost in just four weeks, all while using the equivalent energy of a ten-minute blow dry. Best of all, its sealed and compact design addresses many of the composting issues urban dwellers fear. Namely, rodents and a lack of gardening space’s objectives.
This is integral to CUSP, which is dedicated to creating a waste solution that is convenient, accessible, and easily replicable for others. As Virginia tells me, “we’re trying to create systems that are easy, understandable, and convenient for everyone who lives in Cork City, so we can celebrate compost instead of disdaining it.” Since CUSP began in 2018, there has been much to celebrate. Using the Joraform to compost MyGoodness’s food and packaging waste, CUSP has turned almost 13 tonnes of would-be rubbish into over six tonnes of highquality compost since August 2021. This is actually only half of what the Joraform can produce when working at full capacity.
The resulting compost has been used in CUSP’s 15 raised beds to grow a selection of vegetables, flowers, and herbs that have become staples in the MyGoodness kitchen, completing the closed loop system envisioned. And, while the tangible success of CUSP’s composting scheme is clear – establishing sustainable food production from waste products, boosting Cork City’s biodiversity with varied plants and vegetables, and cultivating a powerful resource in the fight against climate change and food poverty (compost soil can retain over four times its weight in water which is crucial in flood prevention) – it also fertilises something other than soil: hope.
Since it began, CUSP has provided a haven for anyone seeking an alternate way of doing things, or even a moment of respite from urban chaos. “I have met so many more people since the garden was planted,” says Virginia. “We’ve met so many great community groups – even corporations are talking to us about designing circular systems.” CUSP’s neighbours have come on board too: the Franciscan Wells Brewery fuels the biodigestor with used beer mats while Rebel City Distillery donates its leftover botanicals to add “a special diamond to the compost machine”. Strangers have offered to lend a hand, and community members have assembled, Avengers-style, to source, build, and tend to this project, proving how successfully CUSP has achieved what it set out to do: to “build a community through compost” and deliver hope to those who need it. After all, as Virginia eloquently tells me, “Hope is probably the only renewable resource that we actually have.”
CUSP is designed to be easily replicable by many reading this. Yet, whether this piece inspires you to volunteer, begin your own composting initiative or do nothing at all, I hope that it reminds you of this fact: that hope is the most important thing. With it, “we can create the world we want to see ourselves.” And it’s not skill that is needed. Not vast amounts of money or expertise. It’s simply the curiosity to try. @holly_hughes_words
