Jane Boehm - From Agroecology Roots to Better Food Systems

[00:00:00] Dominique: Hello. Welcome to another episode of Green Champions.

[00:00:13] Adam: Thanks for joining us in a conversation with real people, making real environmental change in the work that they do. I'm here with Dominique, the sustainability expert.

[00:00:20] Dominique: And I am so glad to be here alongside Adam, social enterprise extraordinaire. We bring you guests who saw the potential for impact in their job or community, and have done something awesome about it.

[00:00:30] Adam: From entrepreneurs to artists, scientists to activists, this podcast is a platform for green champions to share their stories and plant new ideas.

[00:00:37] Dominique: Today, Adam and I are joined by Jane Boehm. She is the Food Waste Programs Administrator at SWACO, which is the Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio. This means that Jane coordinates the Central Ohio Food Waste Initiative, that is a collaborative of businesses, nonprofits, government agencies that work together within Franklin County who represent the food, farm, education, health sectors, and they're all working together towards a single common goal, the elimination of wasted food.

[00:01:07] Dominique: This also means she's part of building the Food Waste Action Plan, which is five years in the making, which is, you know, so impressive. We're gonna unpack that on our next episode, but they collaborate with partners to reduce food waste. So, no shock. Today we're talking about sustainability as it relates to food waste, and we're gonna hear from the perspective of a key community partner in creating change with partners citywide. Thanks for joining us, Jane.

[00:01:29] Jane: I'm delighted to be here.

[00:01:31] Dominique: So Jane, how did you start caring about food waste? 

[00:01:34] Jane: Well, I grew up in a Ukrainian family. Was the first person in my family to be born in America. And I think it was a little bit ingrained. There was very little food waste. I feel like we were just like really frugal and it was just a way of being.

[00:01:49] Jane: And as I grew up, I was just always really interested in agriculture. And my first job coming out of college was working on a farm and that kind of solidified it. I loved being outside, loved working in the soil, loved being in nature. And from there I just kind of was always touching food in some way. 

[00:02:11] Dominique: Did you study the food system 

[00:02:13] Jane: I did, yeah. 

[00:02:14] Jane: So, my mom is a doctor, and so I think I was kind of pushed into biology or the hard sciences at one point, but I started poking around into different majors and I looked into, you know, marine science for like half a semester. And then I came across environmental studies, which just felt a little bit more right to me.

[00:02:33] Jane: It was a Bachelor of Arts program, so it was like a mixture of science classes and also like, policy classes when it came to environmental issues. And it just gave me like a really well-rounded kind of understanding of some of the sustainability, environmental issues at play and some of the solutions that were around.

[00:02:53] Jane: And from there, I just kept chasing different jobs that were all within the kind of resource conservation area or natural resource management. So, I worked as a park ranger. Eventually I ended up working as a zero waste initiative, kind of coordinator within a island in New York City. So that was really neat. 

[00:03:15] Dominique: How'd that happen?

[00:03:16] Adam: Yeah. Explain more. 

[00:03:17] Dominique: 

[00:03:17] Jane: So, Governor's Island is part of New York City. I think it might be like a mile and a half around. They have a composting operation on the island. it's kind of a, a really unique instance of a fairly small island. It's a park. And, New York City, every single borough, every one of the five boroughs has a composting facility, or at least they did. I think recently there's been a change, post pandemic. But there used to be a kind of small to medium sized composting facility and they were all kind of community run like by non-profits essentially, in a very kind of distributed, ground up fashion.

[00:03:55] Jane: I had worked on the island for a construction management firm beforehand. I would take walks during my breaks, and I came across this organization that had like massive composting piles, but also like chickens running around and they had educational gardens, and so started volunteering there, every now and again. 

[00:04:12] Jane: And eventually, I ended my job with a construction management firm, but, I had made some relationships at the organization. It was called Earth Matters, and the director had reached out to me at one point and told me that they wanna do this initiative called the Zero Waste Island Initiative, where they want to start collecting organics from across the entire island and just reducing waste in every way possible. And they asked me to lead the initiative because I had worked with kind of the management firm that worked on the island, and I had also interfaced with the trust for Governor's Island, which owned the park and kind of led the direction of any kind of major initiatives. And so I got to work with all of those three entities to try to make that island zero waste.

[00:04:59] Adam: Very cool. Yeah. What surprised you about that when you got into that work?

[00:05:05] Jane: well, a lot of things didn't surprise me about it. Which was that it was really hard to get everyone on board Some of the tough things to work through were, you know, how do we meet the aesthetic needs of the island, with what the island managers wanted the visuals to look like? They wanted to have a very like clean looking, consistent signage across the island, which makes a lot of sense.

[00:05:30] Jane: But collecting food scraps can be complicated. You need additional explanatory language sometimes. Sometimes it's really helpful to try out things that aren't perfectly refined and implement things quickly just to see if they work. 

[00:05:47] Jane: in that work and pivoting over to like what you do now with SWACO? What do you feel like is like Jane's superpower? 

[00:05:54] Jane: I really enjoy working with different stakeholders, which I get to do in my job pretty consistently. Currently, whether it's businesses or schools, within any of those settings, there's always multiple stakeholders who have kind of conflicting needs or concerns. So in the case of schools, we have a schools work group happening, and I won't get too much into that, but you know, there's custodians who have time pressures and they have certain responsibilities, and you have students who really care about certain initiatives and you have teachers who kind of care, or maybe you really care, but also have other responsibilities that they need to take care of.

[00:06:31] Dominique: And so getting everyone to buy into a certain idea, like diverting food scraps or donating food at the end of lunchtime can be really difficult because there's all of these other responsibilities and needs pulling these different entities apart, or in their own directions. But trying to build agreement and consensus among all of these stakeholders to work towards something together is really fun. Okay. 

[00:06:56] Dominique: Describe your role at SWACO. Tell us a little bit more about what you do now.

[00:06:59] Jane: So I do a little bit of everything. Really, really broadly. I work on food waste reduction projects and programs. That includes prevention, donation, and composting. I work with businesses and schools, kind of communities as a whole, as well as developing resources for like the individual resident.

[00:07:24] Dominique: No big deal.

[00:07:25] Jane: Yep,

[00:07:26] Dominique: That was just all of it. That was all the places we see food waste.

[00:07:30] Jane: It can be difficult to organize my time, but it's really fun to be able to work across stakeholders too.

[00:07:39] Dominique: Do you feel like you're most often educating on the problem or deliberating over solutions? I'm sure both happen. I'm just curious which one is more prominent.

[00:07:50] Jane: So in the first couple of years of our work as an organization around food waste, we were focused a lot more about awareness building. Now we've really shifted. There's just been so much attention to food waste on a, I think a national level, especially after the pandemic. There was just a lot of awareness about waste and how that food could be used towards better purposes, like feeding people who are hungry. And so, now I always start conversations with some metrics that help people understand why it's a problem and care about the topic. But we spend most of our time talking about, well, how can we make a difference 'cause oftentimes people are already bought in.

[00:08:29] Dominique: That's good to hear. 

[00:08:30] Jane: Yeah.

[00:08:31] Adam: Well, I'm very curious. What are these metrics that you use to describe?

[00:08:35] Jane: Yeah. 

[00:08:35] Dominique: Scare us.

[00:08:37] Adam: Yeah, I'm very curious about these metrics. 

[00:08:39] Dominique: I have my tissues ready.

[00:08:41] Jane: So, as you guys know, SWACO operates the Franklin County Landfill, and every couple years, I forget whether it's every five or so, we actually do a waste characterization study where we take a sample of what's coming in and we break it out to, you know, what's compostable, what's recyclable. We have like five or six different categories within like what's compostable and what's recyclable, and so we really know the makeup of our streams and what's coming into the landfill. 

[00:09:08] Jane: So the single largest category are food scraps. And that's 15% of everything that comes into the landfill, which is equivalent to a million pounds a day. 

[00:09:17] Adam: Wow.

[00:09:17] Adam: So if anyone's interested in actually seeing the scale, I mean, to be on a landfill is mind boggling. I mean, it's also impressive to just see it from the road, which you can do. But to get a landfill tour, get on a bus, and drive through the landfill and see just the amount of material being brought in is astounding.

[00:09:38] Adam: How do we find a landfill tour? Like how do we actually sign up for that? 

[00:09:41] Jane: So if you go to swaco.org, we have our landfill program, you can just sign up for a landfill tour. Easy as that.

[00:09:52] Dominique: Well, let's just go back to this for a second. That is 500,000 elephants, 

[00:09:58] Adam: 500,000 elephants of food waste per day, 

[00:10:02] Dominique: Every day. And that's not even like nationally, like that's just here.

[00:10:07] Adam: Wow.

[00:10:07] Dominique: Like what percent of Ohio is that?

[00:10:09] Jane: It's only Franklin County. Well, that's not exactly true. So there are places right outside the county that will bring their materials to us. I anticipate that a very large percentage is from within our county. 

[00:10:23] Dominique: 

[00:10:23] Dominique: I'm also curious how unique is SWACO in the way that we manage our landfill 'cause I think it's so interesting. First of all, like I think a lot of listeners have never spoken to someone who works for the landfill, but we talk about it all the time and we all impact our local landfills every single day.

[00:10:40] Dominique: Can you share like how unique it is that we have an organization that cares about reducing the landfill? Is that common everywhere?

[00:10:48] Jane: It's not common. So I believe that we are the only solid waste district. So I'll start by defining that. 

[00:10:56] Jane: So solid waste districts were created by state statute in the 1980s to basically address the fact that the environmental concern about dumping waste because you know, at one point it was acceptable to dig a hole anywhere and put trash in it. And, so solid waste districts were created in order to reduce reliance on the landfill and also manage waste safely. And so there are, I believe there are 51 solid waste districts in Ohio. So some solid waste districts encompass multiple counties.

[00:11:31] Jane: Our solid waste district is I believe the only one that also operates a landfill, and that's really unique. Most other solid waste districts get funding from, I believe the state and the federal government in order to do largely programming and education about reduction programs and actually doing some kind of recycling as well.

[00:11:54] Adam: We get a lot of our funding from the landfill itself. And so what's really unique about our organization owning the landfill is that typically landfills are held privately. And so our goals are very much in actually reducing reliance on the landfill. So even though it brings in a lot of funding for us as an organization, our ultimate mission is to really reduce how much is coming in So, quick question. 

[00:12:19] Adam: So coming from Governor's Island to Columbus, Ohio, what surprised you in terms of two different places, two different populations in terms of food waste?

[00:12:28] Jane: Nothing. 

[00:12:29] Adam: Nothing? 

[00:12:30] Jane: Nothing. The various audits that have been done of landfills or of kind of curbside trust around the country are really consistent actually. And about 30% of the materials that are going into the landfill are compostable. They're either paper products, tissues, there's a bunch of cardboard, unfortunately going in, that's actually not even part of the like 30%. But yeah, it's really consistent around the country. So the studies that I had been familiar with that were New York City specific, were really similar to what we found here in Ohio.

[00:13:02] Adam: Very cool. Now you mentioned how you had studied environmental science and explored a bit at the beginning of your career. Is this somewhere that you thought you would end up?

[00:13:10] Jane: I didn't really know where I was gonna end up. my first job out of college was as an AmeriCorps worker at a farm and kind of educational organization called Frostburg Grows in Western Maryland and the Appalachians. And it was a farm, it was an organization that was connected to the university. The farm was located, we had high tunnels. It was situated on a previously mined site that had been used as a FEMA parking lot for years. And the whole idea of the project was to do high intensity agriculture in hoop houses on reclaimed land that couldn't really be used for anything else. And that was a really awesome project that was very focused on agriculture, rural community vitality and I just loved everything about it. it was a really small organization and I had a lot of responsibility, which is great, but also a lot of autonomy. It is probably one of the things that I did that's most related to why I care now. 

[00:14:14] Jane: why Columbus? Like that's a big shift to move from New York City into Columbus, Ohio. 

[00:14:20] Jane: So I'll get to that question. But behind that decision was a road trip that I took from New York City to Portland at one point, I was going to Portland to do some kind of like neat program that was really focused on like multidisciplinary work with landscape architects and designers and environmental scientists working together on kind of environmental design solutions. I had five weeks to get there though.

[00:14:49] Dominique: I just had a lot of time in the car by myself driving through these amazing landscapes and what you see across the country is a lot of commodity crops and I had at least some kind of relationship with kind of local agriculture at some point because I had volunteered at a lot of farms. I had gotten into kind of growing in little ways in the ways that I could in New York City. 

[00:15:13] Jane: But I had just spent so much time moving through landscapes that didn't represent what I knew to be kind of the peak of ecological health. And I just spent a lot of time thinking about that. And by the time I got back to New York City, I felt like I really wanted to go back to grad school and dig into why our really, our rural areas look the way that they did and you know, what could be done about it. I found a program that I was able to study city planning, city and regional planning, and also a little bit, get a little bit deeper into environmental studies. So, Columbus and specifically Ohio State University. I got some funding to come here.

[00:15:56] Jane: So that's honestly the reason that I did. But it was one of two programs that I was really interested in that allowed me to dig into those two topics. And specifically Agro Ecology is what I studied, which is really about the relationship between agriculture and ecology and how agriculture can be done to support ecology within that landscape.

[00:16:18] Dominique: Does that fall in line with regenerative farming?

[00:16:20] Jane: Very much so. 

[00:16:21] Adam: Yeah. 

[00:16:22] Adam: You mentioned this, like, you know, as you're driving across the country just seeing these crops that are planted, which aren't healthy can you just give a high level, like what does that actually mean?

[00:16:30] Jane: Conventional agriculture. I would describe conventional agriculture as monocropping. So you have one field of one crop. And typically large machinery is used to plant that crop, harvest it. Often heavy fertilizers are used as well as pesticides and herbicides to maximize the growth of that one crop.

[00:16:55] Jane: And that crop is typically grown as a commodity in that it is packaged in very large quantities and sold to kind of anywhere in the world. And typically that form of agriculture really impacts the land very severely. It results in a lot of erosion. It's very intensive in terms of energy use and water use.

[00:17:19] Jane: In comparison, regenerative agriculture in agroecology takes a very different approach. So the goal of it is really to build soil health. That's really where it starts. And by building soil health, you're really supporting the natural ecosystem around plants. Healthy soil can hold onto moisture. It prevents erosion by doing so. It helps plants to grow more robust root systems where they can really suck in the water that gets trapped in the soil. And so, instead of relying on intensive irrigation systems and intensive fertilizer that is synthetic and requires also a lot of energy to make and apply, you have a system that is really relying on very local inputs and is a very circular system instead of the linear systems that we have so prevalent in our industrial world.

[00:18:23] Dominique: Are there any tips to make us more educated community members and seeing that? Like if I'm driving on a road trip across the country, you just framed it as like you were looking at these rural areas and like noticing things. How do I notice if I'm passing agriculture that is sustainable or not sustainable?

[00:18:44] Jane: Yeah. That's such an interesting question 'cause I've been thinking about and observing for so long that it's so hard to know how much you've realized all at once or how much it's been a buildup. Everyone has seen conventional agriculture if you've taken a drive to a rural area. I mean, it's almost certain, especially in Ohio. I think that the coolest way to learn about more regenerative agriculture is to visit a farm that's doing it. Recently I went to a farm tour quite close by in Sunbury, Ohio. And they do farm tours two days a year. And they have an amazing system where they have animals on the land that are consuming the grasses. They have cows consuming the grasses on the pasture and their droppings are getting pounded right back into the ground and fertilizing the next crop of grass and hay. The cows are moved to the next pasture within a day or two. Then the chickens are brought in. The chickens then eat the larvae that are in the cow pies, and additionally creating their own manure, dropping that on the land and really working it into the soil with their feet. And so this is a perfect example of maintaining nutrition in the soil, in a place without additional inputs. The land isn't being fertilized and it's actually the most efficient way to recycle nutrients.

[00:20:13] Dominique: I appreciate just how much you are willing to get your hands dirty. Like you talk about like waste studies and like farming and volunteering your time when you see someone doing a cool thing nearby where you work. I think how much you know and understand our food system, it speaks to how much you've been willing to get dirty and see how it works and go out and see things. I mean, you work for an organization that runs the landfill and you've stood in the landfill. And I've also taken this bus tour, which feels like a magic school bus that takes you into the, into the landfill.

[00:20:44] Dominique: But I just think that the breadth of knowledge that you have on how we really get our food and how things really work and where our waste goes. I think that is so powerful and so interesting and like it's a full circle of how all of us impact our community. I'm curious, for wrap up today to queue us up to our next episode, which was I've deeper into the food waste problem.

[00:21:06] Dominique: You shared the problem and some of the data points around our food waste issue. And you mentioned that you work with solutions most of the time. Can you share an idea or a sense of a high level, what does it mean to work on those solutions? What are you trying to accomplish? 

[00:21:23] Jane: I think what I and my organization are trying to accomplish is an awareness and commitment to waste reduction. 

[00:21:34] Jane: I think truly one of the most powerful things that we can offer is a landfill tour. The trash can is a total abstraction. People often don't actually think where their trash goes, and I've even heard people say, "Oh, doesn't it get sorted?"

[00:21:51] Jane: And you know, I mean, I don't know, maybe in the Netherlands it does, but certainly here it doesn't. So I think one of the neatest things we can offer is that realness of actually seeing where trash goes. A lot of people think that as well, things break down in the landfill, but they do it really slowly. And that's completely not true. That's not what happens at all. I mean, things go there to die, essentially. 

[00:22:18] Jane: But maybe a more, you know, it's a really well sealed container 'cause it has to be because the things that are put in there, they contain all sorts of, you know, chemicals and stuff. And so we wanna make sure from a safety perspective that this is a really well designed, hermetically sealed container. and so just helping people see what it really is, what the issue really is, and empowering them to do something about it, I think is what we're trying to do. And when it comes to food waste, I mean, there's such a higher purpose for organics.

[00:22:51] Jane: The nutrients in them feed what you're going to eat in the future. And there's been, and I could go on, but there's been an enormous loss in soil nutrition and therefore food nutrition. If you look at the nutrients that are in food, there's just less of all sorts of vitamins these days. And that's because we've just lost so much topsoil to erosion and we're just not recycling organics like we used to. 

[00:23:18] Adam: I'm actually really curious about this. I've heard regenerative farming and I've heard permaculture farming. Are they the same thing? Are they different? What's the difference between the two?

[00:23:27] Jane: I am not an expert on that. Um, I have looked into permaculture gardening a little bit, and I think the idea of permaculture is to kind of, there's a couple of things. There's different zones of planting where the areas that are closest to your house are planted with things that you use often.

[00:23:47] Jane: The zones that are furthest away on a property, no matter how big it is, would be where you would keep your fruit trees, for example, that you only need to visit once or twice or three times a year. But you know, the herbs that you're gonna be using on a weekly basis are gonna be close to the house.

[00:24:01] Jane: And there's all of these kind of methodologies around grouping plants together. Not in a dissimilar way from like, the way that the three sister crops grow together. So the corn and the beans, and the squash all kind of use each other for support. And so I think there's a lot of thinking like that. Whereas, regenerative agriculture, I think there's a lot of overlap around the two, but regenerative agriculture is more about, kind of, I think very simply it's about having a circular system. And, kind of generating health and a healthy ecology without extraction. 

[00:24:38] Dominique: Thank you so much for chatting with us today. This was so interesting. I know next time we'll talk about what you're really doing around food waste. We'll get more into the solutions, some of the success so far too. Um, we'll focus on the positive, but also talk about this food waste action plan and what it's essential for people to learn about it.

[00:24:54] Jane: Can't wait.

[00:24:55] Dominique: Thanks, Jane.

[00:24:55] Adam: As always, our guests have found a unique way to champion sustainability. We're here to put real names and stories behind the idea that no matter your background, career or interests, you really can contribute in the fight against climate change.

[00:25:07] Dominique: You can find our episodes at thegreenchampions.com. If you wanna stay in the loop, give us a review and follow us on your favorite podcast platform. If you have any questions about climate change or sustainability, you can read just on our website at thegreenchampions.com. Our music is by Zayn Dweik. Thanks for listening to Green Champions. We'll be digging into the next step of Jane's sustainability success story in our next episode. 

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