Compost Quotes

“A young English couple was visiting with me one summer after I had been composting humanure for about six years. One evening, as dinner was being prepared, the couple suddenly understood the horrible reality of their situation: the food they were about to eat was recycled human shit. When this fact abruptly dawned upon them, it seemed to set off an instinctive alarm, possibly inherited directly from Queen Victoria. "We don't want to eat shit!" they informed me, rather distressed (that's an exact quote), as if in preparing dinner I had simply set a steaming turd on a plate in front of them with a knife, fork and napkin.”
― Joseph C. Jenkins, The Humanure Handbook: A Guide to Composting Human Manure

“There is magic in decay.
A dance to be done
For the rotting,”
― Dan Chelotti

“Thermophilic composting requires no electricity and therefore no coal combustion, no acid rain, no nuclear power plants, no nuclear waste, no petrochemicals and no consumption of fossil fuels. The composting process produces no waste, no pollutants and no toxic by-products. Thermophilic composting of humanure can be carried out century after century, millennium after millennium, with no stress on our ecosystems, no unnecessary consumption of resources and no garbage or sludge for our landfills. And all the while it will produce a valuable resource necessary for our survival while preventing the accumulation of dangerous pathogenic waste.”
― Joseph C. Jenkins, The Humanure Handbook: A Guide to Composting Human Manure

“Humanure composters can stand under the stars at night gazing at the heavens, and know that, when nature calls, their excretions will not foul the planet.”
― Joseph C. Jenkins, The Humanure Handbook: A Guide to Composting Human Manure

“Nature is never the same twice; this inconsistency requires adaptability. There are limitless problems in the world. If we think like a machine we only find ourselves with the same problems. The problems are there because we haven't adapted a solution; the only way to find a solution is to think outside the machine.

This thinking is necessary to a natural food system. There are no two vegetables that are the same, no two days of cooking that are the same, no two humans that are the same. Industrial systems give us the same ingredients every day, through all the seasons. When you put square shapes in square spaces, you don't understand the circle.

Your thinking becomes linear and you can't adapt.

When you adapt, your mind is able to make connections and find solutions to the unpredictable nature of real food.”
― Douglas McMaster

“Nature is never the same twice; this inconsistency requires adaptability. There are limitless problems in the world. If we think like a machine we only find ourselves with the same problems. The problems are there because we haven't adapted a solution; the only way to find a solution is to think outside the machine.

This thinking is necessary to a natural food system.

There are no two vegetables that are the same, no two days of cooking that are the same, no two humans that are the same. Industrial systems give us the same ingredients every day, through all the seasons. When you put square shapes in square spaces, you don't understand the circle.

Your thinking becomes linear and you can't adapt.

When you adapt, your mind is able to make connections and find solutions to the unpredictable nature of real food.”
― Douglas McMaster, Silo: The Zero Waste Blueprint

“The realization that no matter what you do, no matter how many little mistakes you make, you are still probably going to come up with reasonably good, usable compost.”
― Stu Campbell, Let it Rot!: The Gardener's Guide to Composting