After move from Brooklyn, new resident helps Sioux Falls go greener

Not long after Deidre Appel moved to Sioux Falls last year, she discovered her downtown apartment was lacking something she was used to in Brooklyn, New York.

“I always composted in Brooklyn,” she said. “We had a lot of options … and (here) there was no way of easily composting.”

So Appel, whose background is in nonprofit management, began asking around and realized a void was waiting to be filled.

“So I got involved and dove in deep as a way to find my own solution but also get involved in the community,” she said.

It led to SoDak Compost, her nonprofit that officially launched this week. It’s a side project for Appel, who works remotely for a nonprofit as a communications adviser.

It’s starting with a pilot project, open for sign-ups in May, that has gathered about 15 households so far.

“We’ll provide a compost starter kit, which will be basically a countertop bucket, a 5-gallon bucket and some liners that will be compostable,” Appel said. “Throughout that pilot, we’ll host workshops and do outreach and try to spread awareness of the food scraps you throw away.”

Participants can drop off their food scraps weekly to start at Iron Fox Farms, another new nonprofit and urban garden at 705 S. Blauvelt Ave.

The hope is to expand drop-off options in other places at some point or even offer curbside pickup, Appel said.

“It’s really exciting for a number of reasons, including it’s the first food waste composting initiative in the city,” Sioux Falls sustainability coordinator Holly Meier said. “And because the desire for food waste composting was high from our sustainability survey last April.”

The pilot compost bin system has a weekly capacity of roughly 250 pounds of food scraps, which will be split between families and individuals. Current research estimates individuals create 3 1/2 pounds of food scraps a week and families create 8 pounds, Appel said.

She suggests keeping something on the kitchen counter to collect food scraps while cooking and then transferring it to a bigger bucket under your sink.

“If you’re worried about smells or fruit flies, it’s just matching your food scraps with carbon or cardboard … so putting your Amazon package with it will totally cut down on any worries, and every week you’ll be able to drop things off.”

Items accepted include all excess vegetable, fruit and peels; poultry, meat, fish and bones; coffee grinds and tea leaves; bread, pasta, rice and eggshells; used paper towels, shredded newspapers, paper bags and pizza boxes; and straw and wood chips.

It’s estimated up to 40 percent of food in the U.S. is wasted, she added, with much of it ending up in landfills where it produces greenhouse gases.

“You’re also wasting all the energy that went in to grow that food, the water and the energy for transporting it and paying the person at the grocery store stocking it, so it is very wasteful in that sense and also environmentally challenging,” she said.

The pilot is scheduled to last until November, when the hope is to have available compost created from the food scraps for purchase.

Pilot participants can continue to collect food scraps through winter with the hope of opening up for more participation in 2023.

So far, it has been “just bootstraps and a donate button on our website,” for funding, Appel said. Pilot participants are asked to donate, and she’s applying for grants as she continues to settle into her new community.

“When you hear New York City to South Dakota, it’s very jarring, but being downtown and still being able to walk places and having a bunch of things, it’s really quite nice,” she said. “The transition hasn’t been too hard, and it seems like there’s development everywhere you look and just a lot happening in the city, and it’s been so easy to meet people, so it’s been really nice.”

To learn more about SoDak Compost and sign up, visit sodakcompost.org.