Who knew there was so much interest in food slop and composters? Congratulations to the sixty local households who received Earth Machines for this 3-month study. And special shout-out to the two additional households contributing data with their own gear.
In weeks to come we’ll share more about composting, landfills, food waste, etc., but this week it’s all about you. Thanks for completing your surveys. Here’s what we found out:
There are 220 participants (aka people who eat) in this study, and they range in age from 9 months to 74 years. Most households (70%) include kids. 42 of those children are school-age. Twelve of them (ages 9 - 14) are the lead project managers for their families--how cool is that?
Of the households participating in the study, 40 live in Lexington, 13 live in the County, and 9 live in Buena Vista. Two state grants paid for all the Earth Machines, with the larger award received by the City of Lexington. That’s why there are more Lexington folks in this study.
More than 80% of these households weren’t composting prior to this project, although 20% used to but had stopped for various reasons. The main obstacle wasn’t lack of will but lack of composters. Sounds like that’s true for lots of folks on our waitlist too. Now we know.
So what’s motivating your team to collect, weigh, and haul slop for 3 months?
- 95% of households want to do something to help the Earth
- 90% want to take a climate action
- 90% want to make good garden soil
- 85% want to be part of a citizen science project
- 80% want to do something together as a family
One of our favorite parts of the survey was reading your replies to the question, “what are you most looking forward to?” Enjoy this sampler… and see you next week.
- Getting to learn and spend time with my dad.
- Working together as a family to be better stewards of the earth!
- Seeing how much we can keep out of the garbage and helping to develop better habits around food waste
- Being the manager and doing it with my mom
- Learning how much waste I've been sending to the landfill that could've been productively used.
- Spending time with my kids and producing rich compost for our garden.
- Getting rid of that icky/soul-crushing feeling that occurs when I throw food scraps into a trash bag. I'm very excited to divert them to the compost!
- Seeing how much impact we can all have as a community when we all do an individual part.
