YIMBY HAS A NEW WEBSITE!! to find out more or to register your interest, go to:
www.yimbycompost.com
YIMBY: Yes in My Backyard, Building community, compost and resilience.
Yes In My Backyard (YIMBY) is a community-run backyard composting project based in Castlemaine, Victoria. YIMBY is a dedicated group of volunteers, and partially paid employees of The Hub Foundation, who coordinate the program.
YIMBY has three purposes:
- Closing the loop on (re)cycling food organics in our local community.
- Building community resilience by connecting people in neighbourhoods.
- Growing our local capacity to grow local food, through building the capacity of our soil.
YIMBY values community-led solutions to global problems and trust that, with support, communities are more adaptive and responsive when we work together.
To our knowledge there is no other program like this in Australia.
After the successful pilot project, we aim to double our efforts in 2023 and are in the process of training 14 new composters who will recruit another 140 new households.
HOW DOES YIMBY WORK?
- The YIMBY team attract and train composters
- Composters connect to neighbours and sign them up to become weekly organics contributors to their compost ‘hub’.
- Food scraps are collected weekly from non-composting households, data is entered to central data base (weight of food organics and temperature of compost).
- The food waste is hot-composted to EPA standards in the yards of dedicated, trained and well-resourced (volunteer) composters, compost health is monitored remotely by YIMBY team by reviewing data.
- Composters are supported with regular check ins and resources as needed.
- High-quality compost produced is used to grow food in backyards.
Building Community resilience through YIMBY climate action.
“Extensive research reveals that resilient and prepared communities are more likely to withstand the negative impacts of natural disasters and that strong social capital correlates to a more effective recovery.” (Australian Local Government Association 2022)
Our community composters, are community connectors, supporting our composters, supports the wider community.
WHAT OUR COMPOSTERS SAY
Sometimes, when I’m feeling low, or just can’t decide what to do, I go to my compost, check how it’s going, check the temperature, stir it up, it’s a welcome break from all the other stuff going on, I never imagined when I agreed to be part of YIMBY that this would become my mental health time!
During the last floods, I was able to text everyone on my list, ask if they were OK, it felt so good, knowing we could reach out to each other’
When I was sick with COVID, my composter noticed I had not out my bucket out, they texted me, found out I was sick and subsequently offered to do some shopping and baked me a cake!
I’m sharing the produce of my very productive garden in my neighbourhood
I became a YIMBY composter to improve my soil, I didn’t realise how much more I would get from growing my connections in my street
I love seeing the (YIMBY) buckets lined up in the street on bin night, I feel warm inside, knowing that we are all working together to do good things
