Have you heard of Just Good Compost? It’s a local service that collects your food scraps and turns them into high-quality compost for your gardens. There is a common misconception amongst the community, including many customers, that it is about compost. With a name like that you may be forgiven a little confusion. But did you know that it actually started as a mental health intervention?
You see, along with being the primary bucket collector, founder Will Affleck is also a professor of Psychiatry at the University of Ottawa. He specializes in Social Psychiatry, an area of study focused on the social determinants of serious mental illness and its recovery. Those who are unfamiliar with mental illness often imagine that it is the symptoms that cause the most distress. In some cases this is true, but in most cases it is not. Symptoms can be controlled. Rather, it is the social factors associated with the illness that are the most problematic. A good example is self-isolation. You will often find people with mental illness living alone without any close friends, not exercising or eating properly, unemployed and/or lacking an adequate sense of meaning or purpose in their lives. Not only do these factors feed their illness, they also significantly hinder any progress towards recovery. It is a vicious downward cycle. Patients recognize this, but sadly, without the right social support, stepping out of this loop can be overwhelming. This is the role of Social Psychiatry. As Will often quips: “I’m in the business of getting people out of their basements”.
Rewind to 2015. Will was studying at McGill, living in the Plateau neighbourhood of Montreal. Its three-storey walk-up apartments are iconic but leave little space for composting. Identifying this gap, a neighbour of his began picking up kitchen scraps in a bucket on the back of his bicycle and turning it into compost for people’s flower boxes. This sparked an idea. Wouldn’t this be a good mental health intervention? It was perfect. Patients could form friendships and be outside and physical, all while having a meaningful low-stress employment that helps the community. There was also an element of accountability: if someone was missing, other team members could check in with them and hopefully get them up and out (of the basement).
Of course, like many good ideas, it was quickly lost it in the onslaught of deadlines. Fast-forward to 2019 when Will and his wife Kelley’s son Atticus was born. He came 3 months early (26 weeks). Kelley was in Ottawa working as a midwife and Will was in Nunavut, researching the high rates of suicide amongst the Inuit. Everything went on hold. It was a wild few months, and just as the panic subsided, Covid hit. Reeling, they moved back to Almonte the first chance they could. Kelley and Will were both raised in the Ottawa Valley and they wanted Atticus to grow up close to his grandparents and cousins. More than that, it was calm.
Turns out that Almonte, like most neighbouring towns, doesn’t have a municipal compost program. Hmmm… ideas from the past began to percolate. Might this not be an opportunity to test the intervention? Will spent a few months trying to find some mentally ill people who would be interested in collecting and washing buckets. He couldn’t. Someone then suggested that he approach agencies who work with developmentally disabled folks. He did, and the rest is history. Just Good Compost now employs 32 people with developmental disabilities throughout Almonte, Carleton Place, Arnprior and Perth. Known as the “Bucket Brigade”, these team members are responsible for washing and disinfecting the buckets each week. They have a curated bucket washing playlist and there is always a ton of laughter and camaraderie. The joy and pride they get from this work is heartwarming, and the paycheque doesn’t hurt either.
The goodness from the initial pebble continues to ripple outwards. After such a warm welcome in Almonte, Just Good Compost is now picking up in Carleton Place and Arnprior. They plan to expand into Smith Falls and Merrickville next year. So far they have diverted over 250,000lbs (113.6 tonnes) of food waste from landfill. As a result, 26 tonnes of methane gas was not produced, which is the equivalent in greenhouse gases of 1,440,000 kilometres driven. Not bad for a bunch of little white buckets!
To find out more or sign up for their services, please visit justgoodcompost.com.