Grounds for Exploration: Behavior Change as the Next Frontier in Reducing Food Waste

A Conversation with Pioneering Compost Journalist Nora Goldstein, Editor of BioCycle

Nora Goldstein is the editor of BioCycle, the go-to resource for organics recycling. She also serves on the board of directors for the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, and is an advisor to ReFED. Nora has devoted her career to showcasing the connections between food, soil, compost, and energy in order to build resilient, renewable systems by leveraging these mutually beneficial domains.

“I really think Mill has the potential to improve collection economics of curbside programs and increase household participation. It also has the potential to deal with one of the nastier parts of food waste composting…Mill and other innovators like community composters…tie all the pieces together to bring home the message that soil health matters, methane avoidance matters, reducing trash collection impacts matters.” - Nora Goldstein, Editor of BioCycle Magazine

You’re the Editor of BioCycle. How did you get involved in composting and organics recycling? 

My father, Jerry Goldstein, founded BioCycle as the journal, Compost Science, in 1960 as an offshoot of Organic Gardening and Farming Magazine. He saw parallels from the principles related to composting organic waste from gardens and farms and using the compost to build healthy soils, and how the practice could be applied to other organic waste streams. In 1978, he acquired Compost Science, and created our family company, The JG Press, Inc., just as I was getting out of college. I had plans to pursue a Masters degree in urban and regional planning, but my parents wanted me to join the new business. The publication’s name was changed to BioCycle — thanks to my Mom’s insistence — which is short for biological organics recycling. 

You started working at BioCycle fresh out of college, as a History major! How did you get up to speed on composting and organics?

One of my early assignments was on composting toilets, which you sometimes see when you're on a hike or camping. I knew zero about composting toilets, and did I care? Well, I didn’t think I did. But I had to do this deep dive to really learn what composting was. I learned through writing and reading about it. There was a Senior Research Editor that had been working with my father since the beginning of Compost Science, Dr. Clarence Golueke, who was at the UC Berkeley Sanitary Engineering Research Lab. And he is known as “The Grandfather of Composting”, and wrote one of the first books on composting principles. Clarence really held my hand. I could ask him any question, no matter how dumb. 

Composting is one of those practices where you start to see parallels everywhere. Like, wow, it could really do this or it could really do that. At the time, sewage sludge from all the major cities was being dumped in the ocean, and it was starting to wash up on beaches and become a real issue. It was a waste in need of a solution, and composting was a fairly easy way to get started with managing the biosolids. Over time, a new industry developed. There were policy, regulatory, urban planning, behavior change and economic components, and then the soil health angle. So it became much more than just writing about composting toilets, it became about how all these pieces interconnect. 

What is it like being an Editor in today’s journalism climate? 

I think the biggest challenge we have is the character count limit for everything. Which means sometimes reporters are forced to cover the biggest bang message in a short amount of space, when in reality these are complex topics that take more time to explain. The other challenge, especially for a digital publication, is there is so much competition for people’s time and attention. 

How do you view BioCycle’s mission or responsibility in the journalism ecosystem overall? 

If you go back to our archives—they digitally go back to 2004—we have more “How To” articles on just about anything!

But the other piece I think is really important is the role we play in not being afraid to take on some of the more difficult challenges. For example, an article we ran the other day on the analysis of New York City’s curbside program (Is New York City Getting Curbside Organics Done?) is data-heavy. Supporting people who are willing to put in that work is hugely important. Let's talk about what happened, how it happened, how it was addressed, and how it was solved or could be solved.

What is the most interesting or innovative thing happening in this space right now that no one knows about?

I’m moderating a panel session next month at the New York State Organics Summit essentially focused on increasing participation in residential food scraps collection programs and mitigating contamination. One novel aspect our panel will discuss is program architecture — how best to achieve the desired behavior of sorting food scraps and keeping out contamination. How does this new practice fit into the household, into their day-to-day routine? This concept goes beyond just distributing carts and countertop containers to roll out a collection service to designing programs that meet households where they are.

It reminded me of conversations with Mill in the early days, conversations around form factor and capture rates and new ways of thinking about household engagement. We have to think about the flow overall around different kinds of kitchens, and different kinds of layouts. 

The program architecture point is really interesting and innovative to me because I’m fixated on the fact that we have all these [municipal] programs, and we’re still hardly diverting any food waste.

So are you saying the problem is not that we don’t have effort or money behind the programs, it’s that we haven’t figured out how to get people to participate in their kitchens? 

Yes, exactly. This just resonates with the work I’ve done over the years, and why Mill’s integration of form factor with human behavior considerations is so important. 

So let’s talk about that. How did you get involved with Mill? 

I got involved through Dr. Sally Brown who was a very early advisor. Initially I actually shut Harry [Tannenbaum, Mill President and Cofounder] down, because historically there’s been so much snake oil in food dehydrators and their claims, and I didn’t initially recognize the uniqueness and the willingness of the team to learn. Sally was calling me and I kept pushing back. But one day she called me and said, “Get off your high horse, just talk to these people.” 

And the rest is history. I’ve never had the opportunity to work with a Silicon Valley company and witness how a consumer product goes from A to Z. It’s been a really fascinating journey. And exciting! 

How can new technology like Mill integrate into existing industries? What is the potential for impact? 

I really think Mill has the potential to improve collection economics of curbside programs and increase household participation. It also has the potential to deal with one of the nastier parts of food waste composting, which is when the food waste arrives and the truck empties and you see all this juice gushing out and splattering. You can resolve that, because the moisture isn’t there anymore! And then the footprint of a composting facility can change. There are ways to do this pretty efficiently, if you can prove it out. 

One thing I’ve come to realize is that food waste is such a small blip on the regular person’s radar. You know, they just aren’t aware it’s an issue. And so the challenge is how do you get on their radar, and explain the cascading, beneficial effects of diverting food waste from the landfill, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and building healthy soil. Mill and other innovators like community composters provide pathways to facilitate achieving those beneficial effects. They tie all the pieces together to bring home the message that soil health matters, methane avoidance matters, reducing trash collection impacts matters. 

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.