CINCINNATI — I’m standing in the splash zone.
And as a compost bin is lifted over her head, Kaelee Tobin laughs. Because anything close to her is technically in the splash zone.
“It’s a little gross sometimes,” Tobin said, closing up one of the bins. “And they get very juicy in the summer.”
She hits a lever on the side of her dump truck, and the food scraps pour into the back. There's a lot of liquid.
“When I was a kid, I used to joke all the time: 'I’m going to be a trash man someday,'” Tobin said. “That’s kind of what I did.”
WATCH: Ride along with her in the video below
And every time she climbs back into the truck, Tobin puts on hand sanitizer. But she’s not collecting trash. She wants to make that clear.
She doesn’t even like calling it waste.
“That implies that it’s trash, but there’s potential there,” Tobin said.
Tobin works for Queen City Commons, a compost collection service that tries to give residents and business owners more access to compost options. The idea is to put community bins in different neighborhoods, for people who live in apartments or just don’t want to deal with the mess composting can sometimes make.
“We have 12 bins around Northside,” Tobin said. “They’re kind of in every pocket of the neighborhood.”
Each week, she drives one of the routes to collect what's dropped off. And at each stop, Tobin weighs the bins. Then, a lift hoists them into her truck. Her team has collected more than 500,000 pounds of food scraps this year.
That's why her job makes her feel hopeful, even if it's a little smelly sometimes.
Because after she collects the food, she takes it to local farms. There, people like Mel Melvin turn it into soil. He manages the Camp Washington Perennial Farm.
“Something like a third of our landfill is filled with food scraps,” Melvin said. “And food scraps break down and create a lot of methane, which is a really potent greenhouse gas.”
But the nutrients from the food scraps Tobin brought can help farmers grow better vegetables, after it's composted.
“Why throw away something that can create more food?” Melvin said.
Julia Marchese shakes her head in agreement. At the farm, Marchese tells Melvin she will be back tomorrow with thousands of pounds of pretzels. Today, she tells him Tobin collected almost 2,700 pounds of food scraps.
Then, she turns to me.
“Are you ready for a dump?” Marchese said. “You may get a little splash of food scrap juice.”
Want to sign up?
This composting program is expanding from Northside to Hyde Park and Over-the-Rhine soon. Through a grant, people can sign up for free for the first free months. For more information, visit Queen City Commons website by clicking this link.
