Cats Who Compost

Photos by Hannah Hall

Ella DeBode was astounded when she took out the trash for the first time in her Copenhagen apartment while studying abroad with Northwestern in Fall 2019. There were six different bins to sort food and material waste. Responsibility for your individual impact was the way of life. 

DeBode, now a Northwestern senior, created Cats Who Compost a year later in Fall 2020 to help reimagine the environmental impact of Northwestern students. It was her first time living off-campus in the fall, and this responsibility came with processing her food waste. “It made me reevaluate my own impact,” said DeBode. She researched compost pickup companies in the Evanston and Chicago areas, but there was no cost-friendly option for college students. 

Northwestern Senior Ella DeBode started Cats Who Compost with Hillel to help end food waste in on and off campus communities.

This inspired her to create a free weekly composting program for students living on and off campus. She first turned to Hillel, the foundation for Jewish campus life, because she had been part of their community since her freshman year and they had offered composting programs in the past. Hillel agreed to cover the needed funding for Collective Resource, an Evanston composting company, to pick-up the compost weekly. The Cats Who Compost collection bin sits behind the Hillel building on 629 Foster. Collective Resource conducts its weekly pickups on Thursday mornings, but the drop-off is available 24/7. Free Cats Who Compost buckets will soon be available for students to pick-up and use to collect their compostable waste.

As noted by Collective Resource, composting food waste can help reduce the amount of methane entering the atmosphere that contributes to global warming. Collective Resource takes the food scraps and combines them with grass, foliage, and cardboard in the right moisture and heat to create compost abundant in nutrients.

Collective Resource, an Evanston-based composting company, picks up the compost every Thursday to take to their processing facility.

DeBode is thankful for Hillel’s support in this project, and she hopes Cats Who Compost will engage the entire Northwestern community in sustainability conversations. She is excited to pair her Jewish faith with her commitment to the environment but also emphasizes that this is for everyone, regardless of religious affiliation.

In the fall there were about 12 students who participated in the drop-off. DeBode’s goal is to grow this number through educational guides, speakers and virtual events. In 2012, sustainNU worked with Northwestern Dining to create a composting initiative to filter through food waste. The program composted landscape and dining hall waste, which composed around 15 percent of total Northwestern waste in 2016. Northwestern University Real Food (NURF) also piloted a compost program in Norris University Center in April 2019. They composted 400 pounds of food waste throughout the 4-week trial. These on-campus initiatives have been crucial to improving sustainability at Northwestern. Now, Cats Who Compost helps push composting to the forefront of the off-campus community. 

It’s time to build new practices around processing waste. A household can reduce 30% of waste through composting. According to the UN Environment, the world produces two billion tons of trash annually. In the United States alone, 30-40 percent of produced food becomes wasted food. Through collective appreciation for how an individual can either harm or restore the earth, we can learn how to live more intentionally. 

On a Thursday morning in February, food filled the entire bin. You can compost food, leaf clippings, and much more. See Collective Resource’s guide for the full list.

Use this guide from Collective Resource to begin collecting compost.

“There are so many things that we just throw away because of habit,” said Debode, “or because we don’t take the second to Google if it is compostable.”

Overwhelmed by the amount of food waste you process? Don’t know how to begin collecting compost? Collective Resource has an extensive guide that outlines what can and can’t be tossed in a composting bin. Tape this guide above your trash and compost collections to hold your household accountable for sorting waste.  

For first-time composters, DeBode recommends gathering weekly food waste in a gallon Ziplock bag. It can easily be stored in the freezer to eliminate odors and will not take up space in the kitchen. She also suggests buying compostable trash bags to start a separate trash can for compost. Worried about the smell? Charcoal filters, which can be found on Amazon, will help. 

COVID-19 taught us all how to be more aware of our personal impact in our community. 

The bin sits behind the Hillel building on 629 Foster. Especially as spring weather approaches, add a weekly walk to your routine to drop off compost!

Although there has not been sufficient infrastructure for off-campus composting in the past, DeBode’s Cats Who Compost program can now hopefully make composting more accessible and affordable to students. So, start small to rewire your habits, and collect the food waste at the bottom of your sink each day in a Ziploc bag. The global negative impacts of climate change can seem overwhelming, but composting food waste is a small change that you can begin to control. 

Follow the Cats Who Compost Instagram and Facebook (@catswhocompost) for updates about collection pick-up, events, and community dialogue. Interested in learning more or joining the Cats Who Compost Team? Contact Ella DeBode at elladebode2021@u.northwestern.edu. She would love to grow her team!