Meet Danny and his compost app Peels
Let's see if we can get all your piles on there.
I first met Danny ages ago when we worked together at the same company. Later, as both of our tenures wound down—he was moving back to Australia, me to California— we ended up collaborating on a climate-focused project together with another co-worker. This was my first glimpse of understanding just how much Danny really cared about the environment, which I thought was wonderful. (Of course.)
Flash forward to a few months ago, and I was zero percent surprised to see him announce that he’d created his very own compost app, Peels, meant to help connect people with food scraps to any nearby compost pile. I love two things about the fact that he did this:
One, the sheer accessibility. Anybody can list their compost heap, even if it’s in their backyard. Anybody with food scraps can easily load up the map and take a peek around, to see where their nearest drop off—or new friend?—could be. Two, he’s actually building something to create the type of world he wants to live in.
I’ve lately been suffering from complaint fatigue. Yes, it is very easy to point out all the ways our world is wrong and that life can be hard.** It feels much harder, and more rare, to see somebody simply throw their hat in the ring to say: “Okay, here’s a way things could be better for us and I’m going to DO something about it.”
Hats off to Danny! I was so happy to see this project that I reached out to him and asked for a short interview, in addition to popping my own community compost onto his map.
Our chat included below.
Introduce yourself!
Hello, I’m Danny from Coolum Beach, Australia.
I grew up in a composting house where taking the scraps out to the tumbler was just part of the routine. Seeing how things worked in ‘the real world’ was a shock. Dinner scraps stuffed in a stinky, dripping-wet and oxygen-deprived garbage bag like a nightmare lasagna.
I largely kept my feelings to myself after this reality-check, assuming I was the weirdo for being irked by it. That’s why I love people like Cass and newsletters like The Rot; they see the senselessness in it too.
I mean, I might still be a weirdo but at least there are a few of us.
Describe Peels for us <3
Peels is a website that connects people with food scraps to others who compost. It’s a volunteer project and open source, so anyone can contribute. We’re primarily active in the USA and Australia, but also growing in the UK and New Zealand.
Most places I’ve lived in or travelled through don’t yet have municipal food waste collection, and many of my past housemates needed time to acclimate from stinky garbage bags to Bokashi or worm farm experiments.
These days I can’t get enough compost of my own. It also does better with diversity; the more of other people’s scraps I can add, the better.
What made you think of the idea to kick up this app?
Peels isn’t totally original. Another website, ShareWaste, did something similar to Peels until it abruptly closed last year. I was reluctant to take it over (yes, I tried anyway) or make what would ultimately become Peels because of that general app exhaustion I think a lot of us feel.
A bicycle trip from Bristol to Budapest convinced me to take a crack at Peels. An aptly-named website Warmshowers reminded me that indie, small little digital tools can still be wonderful. Kind locals along the way (found through Warmshowers) hosted me on their sofa or let me camp in their yard. More often than not we’d share a meal or go out on the town.
Anyway, ShareWaste left the gap but I’m not sure I would have filled it if it weren’t for that Warmshowers experience.
What do you hope to accomplish with it? (What does “success” look like to you?)
I’d like most people who open the Peels map in Australia and the USA to see at least one composter nearby. Other countries (and languages) would be great too, but we should probably focus on where we already have a promising foundation, for now.
Australia and many other countries have committed to kerbside food scrap collection at a national level. We also need to figure out how community composting (and by extension Peels) can complement these industrial systems, and not get sidelined by them.
So I think success is two-fold: 1) continue to fill the “connect food scrap donors with compost hosts” gap well into the future, and 2) better support local compost communities as waste systems evolve.
Want to share a few of your favorite Peels profiles here?
My guilty pleasure is checking which profiles popped up on Peels overnight. Here are a handful of my current favourites.
Ernie from Singleton (a regional town here in Australia) runs a program called Soil Sisters as well as the local community gardens’ compost program.
Shellworks, is a company in London, UK that makes ‘truly home compostable’ packaging (out of plant biomass), and came up out of the blue.
Scrapdogs is a food scrap collection service in Maine, USA that also works with schools, offices, and industrial food producers. They also have public drop-off points.
Although all of the above are community compost drop-off points, most compost hosts on Peels are actually local residents. Kirrily in Broome, Western Australia, for example opens up her yard to food scrap drop-offs.
I love featuring hosts, so please let me know if you end up making your own listing!
Do you have your own compost at home? If so, can you tell us a little bit about it? (What kind of set up do you have and how do you take care of it?)
Of course! I’ve gone through the cliched stages of a growing compost addiction: the humble tumbler, the worm farm, the open pile, and the homebrew of compost, Bokashi.
I’ll show off my proudest compost project from a few years back; the Dr Elaine Ingham ‘hot compost’ method.
How can people participate with Peels? What’s the next best step you’d like them to take?
I would love for you to make a compost listing on Peels. If you’re worried about getting overloaded, that won’t happen for a while. If it ever becomes too much, you can temporarily hide (or permanently delete) your listing in a few taps.
The more composters on the map, the more local municipalities take Peels seriously. The ones that take it seriously promote it to their residents as a food waste option, which in turn often means compost-curious residents make their first step towards composting.
If you’d just like to follow along, that’s great too. You can sign up to get the newsletter. Or, if you’d like to contribute in any way (we’re all volunteers), please reach out.
** Because this is the internet, I want to be incredibly clear that I am not dismissing legitimate harms and hardships that people face as “things they complain about” in any way, whatsoever. I would never do that! I’m talking about how easy it can be to let small things going wrong add up and overwhelm you. Love you.