How does YIMBY work?
YIMBY aims to make composting accessible by emphasising local reliance over individual efforts.
Currently there are thirteen compost ‘hubs’ in Castlemaine. Each hub is run by one or two volunteers.
Each home composting hub connects between 10-20 households. The volunteers collect neighbours' food scraps weekly, take all the scraps back home to the hub and turn the scraps into nutrient-rich compost using the ‘hot compost’ method.
Most compost volunteers find they have to build these relationships with their neighbours from scratch.
Compost scrap Credit: Carmen Bunting Photography
Backyard composting … linking people who want to compost with people who don’t.Joel Meadows
Resilience, community and climate change
Resilience is one of those words that gets bandied around when government agencies talk about how we are going to cope with the impacts of climate change. How can a composting scheme build resilience?
The Australian Local Government Association as “socially connected and has infrastructure that can withstand disaster and foster community recovery.”
The YIMBY model emphasises community connection and sustainable, human-centred, infrastructure.
Lucy Young says that “the key issue that YIMBY composting is trying to respond to is disconnection… disconnection from each other, disconnection from the cycles of nature, our disconnection from where we live.”
Lucy Young Credit: Carmen Bunting Photography
The YIMBY model also reframes organic waste as a resource - something that local communities can use to make nutrients that can go back into local soil. It challenges the being introduced by local councils across Australia.
"It’s great that we’re trying to recycle more and use organic waste. But often that seems like just another big truck coming and collecting what are essentially resources from our community, and taking them away." Mikaela Beckley
Meet Mikeala Beckley, a YIMBY composting volunteer
For former nurse Mikaela Beckley has volunteered for YIMBY.
Each week Mikaela collects kitchen scraps from seventeen of her neighbours.
Her preparation involves grabbing her compost collection buckets, sourced from the local KR bacon factory.
Mikaela Beckley Credit: Carmen Bunting Photography
When Mikaela goes to each house, she swaps a bucket full of kitchen scraps she collected last week with a new, empty bucket for the next week. This way, there's always a steady supply of stuff that can turn into compost going from people's homes to the composting hub.
"Every week we record how many kilos of kitchen scraps that we have each collected before we put them into the compost pile… and that’s just to keep a tally of how much we’re keeping out of landfill, and we’ve just passed the 15 tons, 15 thousand kilos of kitchen scraps - with primarily ten composters, you know, that’s amazing!" Mikaela Beckley.
Why don’t you spend your time doing something you’re driven to do and let them [your neighbours] benefit from the resources that you can give them.Mikaela Beckley
The ‘shame’ of not composting
Mikaela actively recruits new participants, approaching neighbours who may not be composting.
Sometimes, Mikaela says people feel embarrassed or guilty.
"There’s possibly a bit of shame saying that you don’t compost, and that you are not doing it well… It’s like we have to do it all - we have to have a career, we have to have a family, we have to make sure we’re doing everything right for the environment.”
Mikaela Beckley making compost Credit: Carmen Bunting Photography
"The YIMBY model is like - let’s not rely on us all individually to do everything, there will be someone near you that loves composting, that’s willing to make the time to do it..."
Composting is a skill
YIMBY maintains a continuous hot composting method, where you need to keep the compost heap at least 55 degrees celcius for effective composting.
Co-founder Lucy Young explains that YIMBY can’t be responsible for having large piles of smelly scraps accumulating anywhere. So they measure the temperature of their compost at least once a week.
“If our composters are not getting up to temperature, we can problem-solve with them. Maybe there’s too much nitrogen or too much carbon or it’s got too damp, or they haven’t been well and they need some help. Whatever help is needed, we’ll make that happen. The monitoring is important, and the supporting is important.”
Joel and Mikaela giving workshop Credit: Carmen Bunting Photography
Relocalisation is one of the big ideas that underpin YIMBY. It’s about communities having more control over their economies and governance and being better equipped to look after their own essential goods and services.
Focusing on the local is an approach to climate adaptation that is becoming increasingly mainstream. Suzanne Dunford, Manager of Sustainability and Resilience with Waverley Council in Sydney, says that we need to change our systems slowly, through small projects that are led by local communities.
LISTEN TO
YIMBY: Community composting for connection and climate action
SBS Audio
05/05/202423:08
Guests in this episode of Everything We Need
Lucy Young, Joel Meadows, Mikaela Beckley, Susan Smith, Suzanne Dunford
Credits
Kyla Brettle: Research, recording, editing and sound
Jane Curtis: Story editor and consulting producer
Music: Rob Law with Uncle Paul Chapman on yidaki
Photography: Carmen Bunting
Produced with support from the SBS Audio team, Caroline Gates and Joel Supple
This program was originally produced by to support the , a coalition to regenerate Mount Alexander Shire.
Transcript
This podcast was recorded and produced on the lands of the Dja Dja Wurrung and we pay our respects to elders past and present - thanking them for their Care of Country- and extending respect to all First Nations People listening.
Mikaela Beckley: I’ve just got to grab my buckets, which are out on the porch.
So, we use these buckets that the bacon factory have used to make their honey ham and they only use these plastic buckets once…. And then we clean them out, put our YIMBY sticker on the lid and then we’re set to go.
YIMBY is short for ‘yes in my backyard’ - which is a neighbourhood composting scheme Mikaela Beckley volunteers for
Mikaela Beckley: Every week we record how many kilos of kitchen scraps that we have each collected before we put them into the compost pile… and that’s just to keep a tally of how much we’re keeping out of landfill, and we’ve just passed the 15 tons, 15 thousand kilos of kitchen scraps - with primarily ten composters, you know, that’s amazing!
It’s easy to see that YIMBY is kicking goals for the environment by reducing greenhouse emissions from landfill - and that’s reason enough to be a volunteer …But what else is Mikaela Beckley doing - when she composts.
I’m Kyla Brettle and this is ‘Everything we need.’ a climate podcast about.... making change in our lives for the better.
With stories about people who are not just getting climate ready at home - but helping to prepare their communities for climate impacts - and rethinking what we all need to thrive, now and into the future
Resilience is one of those words that gets bandied around when government agencies talk about how we are going to cope with the impacts of climate change.
So it’s this ability to absorb change, find workarounds and roll with the situation - and still keep our systems ticking along in a more or less recognisable way - it’s everything that comes before breaking point…
Like when we can’t live in an area because it’s under sea level… Or when when rail infrastructure stops working because temperatures are too high
So what does a resilient community look like - and how can something like composting scheme help us become more resilient…
Kyla Brettle: What? Do you do it by hand? Do you not go in the car?
Mikaela Beckley: No, We always walk - or ride your bike, that’s a really important part of our YIMBY model. Is we want to be a really community based alternative to the truck and bin system. It’s great that we’re trying to recycle more and use organic waste - but often that seems like it’s just another big truck coming and collecting what are essentially resources from our community, and taking them away.
Mikaela and I are walking along the suburban streets of Castlemaine - a central Victorian town about an hour and a half drive north of Melbourne.
Mikaela Beckley: So we are just stopping at our first house - Wally lives here - I’m collecting bucket of kitchen scraps and then I leave him a nice clean bucket for the week ahead…
Each week Mikaela collects kitchen scraps from seventeen of her neighbours….
Mikaela Beckley: Another family just gives me their bones bones because they didn’t want to put it in their cold composting
Mikaela Beckley: Into Marion’s beautiful garden, - Oh, this is nice, Marion often cuts me a little article out of The Age, -so she’s give me a little article on artificial intelligence to read…. And I’ll just put an empty bucket there.
Mikaela processes all these scraps in the backyard of her regular quarter acre house block - I can see a couple of one-metre square composting bays - surrounded by buckets of green waste
Mikaela Beckley: I’ve got coffee from the Dove, the cafe over the road, some leaves we all collected last Sunday at the Chewton oval… we had a big leaf collection.
And this is where we are going to start the pile today…
This is one of my composts that’s just finishing off in there
Kyla Brettle: I can see it’s got a little blanket and everything
YIMBY uses a continuous hot composting method that can break down almost anything
Mikaela Beckley: Citrus, onions, all the things that you are told. From today, I’ll put this stuff in and it will get up to 55 degrees. That’s important so that the compost is processed nice and fast. And we also need it to be at those temperatures to select for all the beneficial microbes that survive at above 55 degrees…so you can see that that’s hot, you can see the steam coming off it and you can see that is some of the food scraps from last week, breaking down….
Mikaela Beckley: A finished compost should smell like an old growth forest, it’s like that earthy beautiful smell..
Mikaela is a qualified food soil lab technician and she’s look at this stuff under the microscope…
Mikaela Beckley: It essentially looks like a slightly muddy drop under the microscope - and it is teeming with life - there’s nematodes, amoebas, bacteria, fungi, rotifers, it’s a thriving community in and of itself and one we can easily forget because we can’t see it with our naked eye. We don't even know, let alone forget. And the thing that fascinates me the most, is that we are nothing without healthy soil.
You can not buy a compost that is so alive and active and has the whole food soil web thriving in there.
You know, compost is amazing because it introducing organic matter into the soil that makes it retain moisture better, retain nutrients better,
Another composter, every second batch of compost she texts her contributors and says come and grab it - I’m not quite at that stage, I still use all my compost, but that’s very generous of her.
YIMBY was started in 2020 by Joel Meadows and Lucy Young. Both of them live sustainably and have been involved in climate action for many years.
Joel Meadows: I’ve been with it since its inception.
Lucy Young: I thought, I really want to do a compost project
Joel Meadows: We had a four person meeting in this very house.
Lucy Young: We were all actually thinking the same thing
Joel Meadows: With a concept around getting food scraps out of landfill - super small scale, super local, super low carbon input, carbon output approach.
Lucy Young: So it was like a one hour meeting where we just laid it out
Joel Meadows: Backyard composting but done at a particularly high level - of linking people who want to compost with people who don’t - that’s, I think what got me excited.
Lucy Young: And I envisaged myself being a person on the bike, going around collecting these buckets - I just thought, it just makes sense on so many levels
[Ring ring - add bike with bell]
YIMBY works by sharing high level composting skills with lots of keen composters like Mikaela, and helping them to run micro processing hubs at home - so not just keeping the knowledge limited to one or two people
Lucy Young: So most community composting initiatives are more centralised, they might be a community garden where all of the scraps are taken to and all of the processing happens there.
Each of YIMBY’s thirteen composting hubs do things a little bit differently.
Joel Meadows: It can kind of look in each street how it needs to look with those people
Kyla Brettle: So it’s like you are wanting the system to be small and stretchy and going to fit whomever is going to play with it.
Joel Meadows: Yeah, it’s not too prescriptive, but it’s prescriptive enough to know that we are going to meet our epa guidelines.
At the moment YIMBY is too small to draw the attention of the environmental protection authority - or the health regulators - but Joel and Lucy are not taking any chances.
Lucy Young: We can’t be responsible for having large piles of smelly scraps accumulating anywhere…. So they measure the temperature of their compost at least once a week - so if our composters are not getting up to temperature, we can problem solve with them - go around there, maybe there’s too much nitrogen or too much carbon or it’s got too damp - or they haven’t been well and they need some help - so whatever help’s needed then we’ll make that happen - so the monitoring is important, and the supporting is important.
How many have we done so far, I’ve lost count - I say we….
Mikaela Beckley: You’re carrying stuff too. We’ve got 15, so two more to go
The other important part of the YIMBY model is that each home composting hub connects between 10-20 households…. Most composters find they have to build these relationships with their neighbours from scratch.
Mikaela Beckley: And this is one of my new households - I just signed Ray and Angie up….
Initially we go around to our neighbours and door knock and just see what they’re doing, whether they’re composting …
and we’ve found that one of the most important things is to like tell them very quickly that you are a neighbour, because they think you’re trying to sell them something!
And I think one of the challenges that we have is that there’s possibly a bit of shame saying that you don’t compost, and that you are not doing it well….
It’s like we have to do it all - we have to have a career, we have to have a family, we have to make sure we’re doing everything right for the environment….
Mikaela Beckley: And I guess the YIMBY model is like - lets not rely on us all individually to do everything, there will be someone near you, that loves composting, that’s willing to make the time to do it, and so, why don’t you spend your time doing something you’re driven to do and let them benefit from the resources that you can give them
Kyla Brettle: Yeah, I’ve heard the term being locally or community reliant - as opposed to self-reliant
Mikaela Beckley: Yeah, I think there’s so much in that…
Lucy Young: Relocalisation is about people reconnecting where they live and really doing what it is to serve life, in place.
Relocalisation is one of the big ideas that underpin YIMBY.
It’s about communities having more control over their economies and being better equipped to look after their own essential goods and services.
It’s a counter-action to not just the problem of climate change and our increasing greenhouse emissions - but other side effects of a globalised economy…
Lucy Young: Disconnection…disconnection from each other, disconnection from the cycles of nature, our disconnection from where we live, people are often connected - like in Castlemaine, more connected 100 km away in Melbourne in their offices…. And also, disconnected from ourselves, what it is that sustains us in life - and the impact that has on our climate.
Mikaela Beckley: Alby - my dog’s just running into the neighbours block, sorry, he’s deaf, so I have to yell…
Kyla Brettle: What really triggered your interest in all of this?
Mikaela Beckley: Working as a nurse for so long, I just noticed that I’d always just come home and be like just drawn to go and look at what’s happening in the garden, what’s growing and - there’s lots of studies that confirm it that we just feel better when we are outside and connected with what’s living around us.
So, I’m having some time off nursing and getting more into growing vegetables, preserving seeds and composting - and then just connecting in that how fundamental these skills are, like they are real life skills, like how to deal with your waste and see it as a resource that you are just actually recycling - and then you are feeding yourself, and your neighbours - and it’s a beautiful thing, actually - like it’s made me look at the world differently….
Kyla Brettle: I guess, like you were saying, it’s a way to get to know who your neighbours actually are.
Mikaela Beckley: Yeah, and I feel like I don't leave the house now without saying hi to someone, or getting a wave from someone that’s YIMBY related.
So we are at Susan’s who is one of my compost contributors, just say hi….
Susan Smith: So I’m Susan and I always composted, but not very successfully, and when I moved here there’s not enough sun or room and I had messy compost, so, when I heard of YIMBY, I thought oh, great!
Kyla Brettle: What do you feel are the benefits for you being a donor of the compost?
Susan Smith: I like to feel I’m contributing, and influencing other - for instance, the woman next door I told her about it and now she is YIMBY person. And, the connection with Mikaela and that was lovely too.
Kyla Brettle: Must be quite nice that you’ve got more connection
Susan Smith: Oh yes, I said to her one day, I don’t want to get COVID, who’d look after me and she said to me - I’d come round - so I thought, ‘fabulous I know I can call you now’, so that was really warming, yes.
Mikaela Beckley: To be a known entity within your community. That’s a powerful thing to have.
This project got up and running during COVID and just situations like if someone didn’t put out their bucket I would text them and say - are you okay, - and they’d say, I’ve got COVID - so then, instantly, within my neighbourhood who is sick and might need support and I could just text and say, I’m going down the street, do you need anything - and another situation was - in the floods - another composter texts all her contributors to check they were okay - that’s what resilience is.
Joel Meadows: The resilience thing is a combination of skills, connected community, knowing where our food comes from, and then better buildings and infrastructure that catches water and catches energy and stuff like that… and just the psychological readying ourselves for things not to be as we’ve through they were going to be - and being okay about that. And when other people’s truck and bin systems are not working because either the big multinationals have pulled out or we can’t fuel the trucks anymore or the roads don’t work and you can’t drive a truck down a road without breaking an axle on a pothole - at that point we go - great, we just need another however many composters across this area and we’ve got this.
Mikaela Beckley: So, we’ve collected all the buckets and now just doing the final weigh…. So that’s 46 kilos for this week…it’s amazing how similar it is….
So, this is where we start making our compost lasagne, so it’s about layering everything. So we have done a layer of YIMBY scraps, and then beautiful oak leaves, …. Just putting some of this rainwater into my watering can to use… microbes live in raindrops - so isn’t that amazing, it’s another way of getting diversity in your compost, they come down in the rain….
Kyla Brettle: The sense of a disconnect is that society just isn't set up for spending half a day - or more - each week volunteering…
Mikaela Beckley: Yeah, and I think that’s true It’s kinda sad because everyone who’s part of it knows how valuable it is - but it’s still quite a struggle to get that time for many people, because of the demands we have on our lives and our time.
Joel Meadows: And we’ve had some of our wonderful composters say, with rising interest rates, I need to take on more work - I don't have time to devote to this.
Mikaela Beckley: we don’t want people to burn out - but I find that now we are big enough that someone else will be ‘I’m really into my compost at the moment, so I’m happy to help you out and share that load’, that’s what we want to happen and I feel like we are just still working on how to make it okay to need help, even amongst our composters
Joel Meadows: It’s not all rosy, but it’s like it’s real community as in we are doing something together, it’s meaningful we like it, we like each other, we’re kind of working out how to make it work
Mikaela Beckley: And I think I spent way too long listening to the messages that I got about what is valuable and didn’t spend enough time thinking about what I found valuable…. and it’s also a nice thing - another tangible thing to do about the state of the environment too, it’s nice to actually, be physically doing something, not just worrying about it.
Kyla Brettle: Yeah, it’s an outlet, in that way.
I’m inspired by the way YIMBY offers an alternative to business as usual... a system that is locally focused and grounded in place, isn’t dependent on fossil fuels, doesn’t create waste and is about us connecting and collaborating rather than competing.
Systems that can work now and in the future.
It’s an approach to adaptation that’s being taken up everywhere around Australia - not just in my little corner of central Victoria - but even by local councils in our biggest cities...
Suzanne Dunford: you are right, it’s about systems change and I think we have to recognise that it’s all going to take a long time, that we are in a gigantic experiment. What I try to do is just chip away at small adjustments - and hope that we can build on them so that we can change the system over time - which is why I believe it should be led from the ground up, not from the top down - I don’t think Canberra has a role to tell a local community how they should adapt - I think it should be up to the community to make those decisions - and anticipate the changes that are coming.
Suzanne Dunford - Manager of Sustainability and Resilience with Waverley Council which is home to Sydney’s Bondi Beach…
So what adaptation projects are being led by communities in your local area - We’d love to hear about it - you can email us via
A big thank you to everyone who spoke with me for this story - Mikaela Beckley, Lucy Young, Joel Meadows, Susan Smith and Suzanne Dunford
In the next episode - we go north of here to the regional city of Bendigo - to meet members of the Karen-Australian community and explore how adapting to the changing climate isn’t the same for everyone.
So make sure you are following Everything we Need on SBS Audio - or wherever you get your podcasts.
Everything we need is written, recorded, edited and produced by me, Kyla Brettle with
Jane Curtis as story editor, on show notes and as consultant producer
All the music you heard was by Rob Law and production photography by Carmen Bunting
And brought to you with support from the SBS Audio - thank you Caroline Gates and Joel Supple.
This show was initially produced by Endgame Media to support the Wararack coalition to regenerate Mount Alexander Shire.
Thanks again for listening, I’m Kyla Brettle see you next time.
