Trip Report

As usual, the weather forecast changed to cold and rainy at the last minute, but Obsidians nonetheless traveled up to the Rexius Compost Facility north of Coburg. First Sue (a recently graduated Master Recycler) gave a quick spiel about why food waste is a problem. (Did you know that 30% of the food grown or imported into the U.S. for human consumption is thrown away? And growing and processing that wasted food uses so much energy that reducing food waste has been identified as the single most effective action an individual can take to fight climate change!) Then Dan Sutton--a third generation member of the Rexius family--led us on a tour through mountains of organic matter that's becoming compost. Most of the food waste and yard debris collected by trash haulers in Eugene ends up at Rexius, where they have a sophisticated system of chipping, mixing, turning, aerating and monitoring to turn it into a wide variety of compost, soil amendments and landscaping materials for home and commercial use. Dan said Eugene residents do some things right: for instance, Eugene's food/yard waste is much cleaner and free of contaminants than that of almost any other community in the U.S. But two take-home lessons for improvement: (1) do NOT use compostable bags or utensils--they're not organic, and they contaminate the compost and (2) always remove those little sticky labels from fruit and vegetables, since they don't break down and they're too small for Rexius' equipment to sift out. Rexius has composting down to a fine art, and the tour was a learning experience for all who attended.