237. Composting as a Cultural Shift with Ben Parry of Compost Crew

About this episode

Ben Parry discusses the transformative power of composting and its role in changing our cultural relationship with food waste.

This week, in honor of International Compost Awareness Week, we're joined by Ben Parry, CEO of Compost Crew — a small but mighty business in the DC metropolitan area helping thousands of households and businesses turn their food waste into something good for the soil. Ben's story is a quiet revolution in itself: a journey from renewable energy to regenerative soil, from powering the grid to feeding the ground beneath our feet. In this conversation, we dig into how composting is transforming what we throw away into a vital resource, the very real challenges of scaling community-based systems, and what it takes at the household, neighborhood, and policy level to shift our cultural relationship with food waste. Ben shares Compost Crew's growth from a small food-scrap hauler with a handful of customers to a regional force serving thousands of homes, the partnerships with local farms that bring composting full circle, and his vision for a future where dropping your food scraps into a compost bin is as ordinary as not littering on the highway. It's a hopeful, grounded conversation about the patient work of building better systems one bucket, one alley, one farm at a time. Main topics…

People in this episode

Host: Lady Farmer

Guest: Ben Parry

Topics covered

• composting
• food waste
• community engagement
• sustainability
• local food systems
• regenerative agriculture

Keywords

• composting
• food waste
• sustainability
• community systems
• regenerative soil
• local farms
• waste recycling

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Compost Crew

Places: Washington, DC

More episodes of The Good Dirt: Sustainability Explained

• 238. Food As Our Deepest Connection to Nature with Jill Demers of ReWild Ranch · June 6, 2026 · 1h 12m
• 236. From Mary: Earth First Gardening with Melanie Cotillo of Lazy Dirt Wildflower Farm · April 24, 2026 · 1h 14m
• 235. The Cost of Slow Living: How to Align Your Values Without Burning Out · April 3, 2026 · 1h 0m
• Mary & Emma: Rethinking Slow Living · March 20, 2026 · 28 min
• 234. A Conversation with Janna Hockenjos of Earth Friends —and an Announcement! · August 22, 2025 · 1h 14m
• Encore: Creating a Backyard Microfarm with Leah Webb, Author of "The 7 Step Homestead" · August 15, 2025 · 1h 4m