-We have a food waste problem in LA County.

We send over a million tons of food scraps to landfill each and every year, and something's got to change because when food rots in landfills, it creates a climate pollutant called methane.

Methane gas is warming the Earth way too quickly, and so what we'd like to do is take a hard pivot.

Instead of sending that food to landfill, compost it instead.

Compost is the process of recycling organic material into a fertilizer.

Composting is a beautiful process.

It's basically just decomposition.

We set those food scraps aside, and compost is that process of layering food scraps and yard trimmings and watching that decompose, stewarding that space, and making sure we're creating a rich soil amendment that can then be applied locally.

LA Compost recycles food scraps into healthy soils.

We do that to better the environment, to better our neighborhoods, and to bolster the local food system.

This is one of our community compost hubs where folks are coming together to take climate action and process food scraps into healthy soils.

-This is the very last and final stage of the compost process that will turn this more heavy and chunky stage into a much finer ground stage that can be applied to plants, trees, and gardens.

We have some decomposers here, too, which is a great sign of a healthy compost, eating and doing their thing and producing the final material.

-During the time of COVID, a friend posted that they had seedlings available here at the garden.

I came by.

I live three streets down from here.

I was amazed at what was in my backyard.

I stepped in here, I told my dad about the space, and we learned about composting.

I was amazed that we could do this ourselves.

Together, we've been collecting our scraps.

Then we also opened up a space in our home to plant some of the crops here.

It's been beautiful to have that symbiotic relationship between our home and also our local community hub here.

-[Spanish language] -This is compost sap we already sifted.

This is the final stage of the compost.

That's going to be given to a community member.

It looks so good.

It's so rich, dark, and moist.

You can tell compost is good when it holds its shape like this.

It just adds so much more life to your soil.

-The most typical participant with LA Compost sets aside their food scraps when they're preparing a meal, and then they bring it to us at farmers' markets.

We're at 25 farmers' markets across LA County.

-When they set up the booth and told me what it was for, compost, you bring your scraps here, I'm like, "Yes," because it would sadden me when I see all this food going to waste.

I started gathering up the food from the school and also from my home, and I bring it here.

Oh my gosh.

Nothing ever goes to waste.

-All of those food scraps collected there travel a very short distance to this location, where we're able to compost and decompose all that good waste together in community.

-At this point, we are just turning a compost pile, so making sure it gets aerated and also gets rehydrated all over again.

Because we don't want our pile to just dehydrate and then just left alone.

We do, at least once a week, a flip, which includes adding the water and also aerating it.

As it gets flipped, also oxygen gets trapped in each of the layers, so it's easier for the microbes to breathe in and out.

You don't get a dead compost pile; instead, you get a live, active compost pile, like we have right now.

-Composting has been around for many years, dating way before the Stone Age.

People have been building piles and watching things decompose, and managing that to be able to grow more food.

What's different today is we've grown very disconnected from this process.

Our neighbors are disconnected from each other, and we are very disconnected from the soil.

What LA Compost seeks to do is to bring people back together and build those bonds once again.

-I think what brings us together is just that wanting to give back and longing for connection.

I think this city is so big, and a lot of the times we're moving really quickly all over the place, and this space just really allows you to stop.

You're admiring this beautiful process where you're seeing transformation of life and death and renewal and growth, so that was always really inspirational to me, too.

I'm so grateful for LA Compost because it's really changed the trajectory of my life.

-It's very, very important that no one feels left out of this climate-positive activity.

There were a lot of decades there where folks thought that environmentalism was for the polar bears and not really worried about our neighborhoods.

The wonderful thing about community composting and the movement that's been built around this work is that we're able to do something differently.

By involving people up close and personal in their neighborhoods and keeping resources here, we're able to see ourselves as part of that change.

Being connected to the process of soil and the cycle of life is not a privilege; it's a right.

We all can see how much beauty is available to us when we get this right.