No Time to Waste: Fighting Climate Change Through Composting
In 2016, California passed Senate Bill 1383 to address climate change by drastically cutting methane emissions. The law requires businesses and residents to separate organic waste from landfill-bound trash, enabling local waste disposal providers to process them separately. In our desert communities, green bins are provided for this purpose. But there’s another option: to save the trip to the waste processing facility and compost in place, where the organic waste originates. For you, that’s your home; for us, it’s right here, at the Zoo.
Composting is the art of using decomposition — a natural process — to create a soil amendment or mulch that is beneficial to plants. The Living Desert’s Sustainability & Behavior Change team manages our composting program, using static aerated piles where organic waste like animal manure, bedding, and food scraps (nitrogens, or “greens”) are combined with landscape trimmings like woodchips (carbons, or “browns”). The composting process can take up to ninety days and reach temperatures of 160 degrees! In 2025, we composted nearly 12 tons of organic waste on-site. The end product is used in our landscaping, improving the root health of plants while sequestering carbon in the soil. A win-win!
Students from Coachella Valley Unified School District’s Green Academy help support our compost program, gaining hands-on experience with sustainable waste management. We also share the program’s benefits with the public — at this year’s Xerophilous event in March, we gave away “Desert Doo“ to guests for use in their home gardens.
Composting is one of the simplest, most impactful things any of us can do for the environment, and it works at any scale, from a household diverting a few pounds a week to a zoo processing tons of organic waste a year. For a home composting guide, visit the State of California’s CalRecycle page (remember that meat and dairy belong in the green bin, not your home’s compost pile). And if you’d like to support The Living Desert’s broader mission — caring for and conserving wildlife, developing environmental solutions, and empowering communities to act — donate now. After all, when it comes to the Earth we all share, there’s no time to waste.