Composting: the birth of Funky Frida

I started a composting program at the Texas WIC state office partially to encourage my coworkers to keep organic material out of the landfill and partially to feed my backyard compost piles. In the process of encouraging participation, Funky Frida was born.

 The compost collection program started at Texas WIC in August 2013 and so far has collected quite a bit of material. Each week, Texas WIC staff contribute about 50 pounds of organic material, like apple cores, banana peels, coffee grounds, and other food scraps. That averages about 2,600 pounds each year!

I originally started by keeping a coffee can at my desk and pulling scraps out of the garbage or encouraging coworkers to leave their peels with me.

Soon, I was asked to give a presentation on composting during a "Lunch and Learn." There was so much interest in composting, I proposed that we start collecting organic material that anyone could take home to compost or drop off at a nearby community garden. It's a model that works well courtesy Compost Coalition Austin, where I've been volunteering since 2010.

To encourage ownership and personalize the collection buckets, I decided to hold a naming contest for a character. The name suggestions came, including Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced Bouquet) and Funky Compost Dina, a play on the song Funky Cold Media by Tone Loc.

I wasn't too fond of the word "funky" because it reinforces a negative perception of compost as being stinky, but it was by far the favorite. After some discussion, the name somehow changed to Frida. Texas WIC's Funky Frida was born.

Frida lives in the break rooms of Buildings 2 and 8. A total of about 8 Frida buckets rotate through the lunch areas collecting organic material.

Unfortunately, few people want to help empty and clean Frida. That means just about every weekend I'm scrubbing buckets.

The trade off is that I harvest about 2 or 3 wheelbarrows of wonderful compost every few months, which makes my garden very happy. In 4 month's -- the time it takes the material to break down -- I'm keeping about 800 pounds of organic material out of the landfill. That tiny bit of trash shown in the lower left corner of this photo, mostly plastic, is all that goes in the trash.