Embracing the Beauty in Decay
PLUS! How To Compost Your Food Waste
You've heard the saying, one person's trash is another's treasure. Well, for artist Nancy Macko, it's fine art. She has been creating beautiful images from what most would gladly throw out. Her photographic series "Decompositions" transforms kitchen compost into ethereal landscapes and mysterious abstractions that challenge our perception of waste and the cycles of life.
The Art of Decomposition
Nancy’s series began during COVID while quarantining in her Southern California condo. During the isolation of the pandemic, and a lot of home cooked meals, Nancy noticed the kitchen scraps piling up through a clear plastic compost bin.
"It started with the asparagus...noticing how the ends of the stems fell in perfect symmetry—like little Lincoln Logs—as they tumbled into the container. As more elements were added, the composition continued to shift. It didn't matter how much of an ingredient was added. Each part only made the whole more complex, more interesting."
What was a casual observation evolved into a meditation on mortality, renewal, and the interconnectedness of all living things. Watching the slow dance of decomposition happening on her kitchen counter, Nancy had to get her camera.
The resulting images hover between abstraction and representation. Recognizable vegetable matter—onion skins, apple peels, cauliflower florets—transform into surreal landscapes and mysterious formations, calling to mind everything from Dutch master still life to abstract expressionism.
I had the opportunity to see the work first hand, from a recent gallery show, and the light, the diffusion, and the drama made some of the pieces feel painted rather than captured with a camera lens.
The Food Waste Crisis
Nancy’s work is both breathtaking and timely. We're getting buried in solid waste. According to the EPA, nearly 40% of all food in America is thrown away—approximately 119 billion pounds annually–equating to about 130 billion meals, and more than $400 billion.
This waste isn’t just taking up space. It’s also contributing to climate change. Some 8–10% of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions come from our discarded food as well as 58% of landfill methane emissions according to the EPA.
Nature's Solution: The Composting Process
There is a natural—and Nancy might say, elegant—way to solve this growing problem. Her photos hint at the beauty inherent in the process. Long before humans walked the Earth, Mother Nature perfected the art of decomposition through a symphony of microorganisms that feed on organic matter, breaking it down into simpler compounds. All that eating generates heat, which is why active compost piles can reach temperatures of 120-160°F. After weeks or months, even the most complex organic materials are transformed into a stable, loamy soil, rich with organic building blocks like nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, so that the lifecycle can begin again.
This ancient system works flawlessly whether we participate or not. Yet somewhere along the way, humans decided to "improve" on nature's design. In a misguided attempt at tidiness, we began interrupting the planet’s inclination to recycle by burying our organic waste in landfills—entombing banana peels and coffee grounds in oxygen-starved environments where decomposition slows to a crawl or stops all together. These garbage dumps have become accidental culinary archaeological sites, preserving decades old hot dogs and happy meals as monuments to our misunderstanding of nature's most fundamental process of renewal.
Luckily, Nancy's photographs remind us that the decomposers haven't given up on us. They're still there, still willing to do the work. They're just waiting for us to get with the program.
Progress and Challenges
There are lots of small scale and pilot compost programs trying to make organic alchemy the norm, rather than a nice to have. Some are going straight to the source, like LVL Farms, (the focus of my article Waste Not Want Ham). This Nevada-based pig operation is feeding thousands of hogs on food scraps from Las Vegas Casinos. State and local governments are trying to segregate the waste stream. California’s SB 1383 requires the sorting and processing of organic waste before it hits our landfills, hoping the for-profit compost industry will grow if the supply is there. Massachusetts has gone further, actually banning food waste all together for the biggest producers. And there are NGOs like LA Compost applying non-profit models and cutting edge science in order to tackle food waste head on.
Yet, despite the clear benefits, and all of these public and private efforts, composting remains underutilized. As of April 2023, only 3.7% of residential food waste in the U.S. was composted. We simply need to shift our thinking about organic waste as a resource rather than garbage.
Starting Local
In my community, there is a local initiative that diverts thousands of pounds of food waste annually. Our community non-profit, Sustainable Claremont, established a pilot residential program in the backyard of a Quaker meeting house. The 50+ participating families drop off their food waste, and in return, receive as much high-quality finished compost as they can shovel home. The program is so successful that it processes about 10-12 tons of food waste annually. For my $50 annual fee, I receive the equivalant of hundreds of dollars in potting soil, and my fruits and vegetables are now fueled by waste produced in my neighborhood. The entire program costs less to run than buying a new iPhone.
"The great thing about composting is the same thing that is great about tree planting,” explains Stuart Woods, Executive Director of Sustainable Claremont. “There are so few direct actions that we can do as individuals that have tangible, clear and measurable impacts. You plant a tree, and you can see it grow. You can visit it. If you compost food waste, you can see it turn into something that you can plant your veggies in. Literally all of us can do it in our own backyards."
Finding Your Own Way
If you don’t have a local municipal or non-profit option, there’s always composting at home. I have a tumbler composter that I keep cooking when I can’t make it to my neighborhood drop off. A few turns a week, and it churns out plenty of topsoil for my flower beds. Although, it does require a bit of baby siting.
The magic of composting happens when I can maintain the right balance of ingredients. Every DIY composter has their secret recipe. But most folks seem willing to share. Know that you’ll probably have to fine tune things for your own system, climate and location. With my tumbler, I aim for a ratio of two parts "browns" (carbon-rich leaves, small twigs, cardboard and paper) to one part "greens" (nitrogen-rich kitchen scraps and coffee grounds). I also generously sprinkle in my secret compost fairy dust of pine shavings and chicken manure from the backyard coop.
If you layer these materials properly, keeping the pile as moist as a wrung-out sponge, and turn it every one to two weeks to introduce oxygen (like spinning The Big Wheel on the Price is Right with my tumbler model), the pile should maintain efficiency, stay above 110 degrees, and convert food scraps into soil in a few months, without excessive odor or pests.
"Everyone thinks composting is stinky, and get pests like cockroaches and rats and coyotes. It's always the first thing," Stuart explains. "If done right, the smell is not an issue. Anyone can figure out how to compost, and it's less complicated than you might think. But it's a process of learning to get it right."
From Stewards to Students
In the end, composting offers me more than just a practical solution to the waste crisis—it presents an opportunity for a profound philosophical shift in how I relate to the Earth itself. As Nancy's images beautifully illustrate, what I've discarded isn't simply "gone" but rather transformed through nature's own artistry. Instead of believing I need to "clean up" or manage nature's messiness, I need to lean into participation in the system that's been working perfectly for millions of years. My kitchen scraps don't need my intervention—they need my trust. When I stop trying to sanitize and control the process of decay, I can witness the magic that happens when I embrace nature's way and let the perfected choreography of decomposition unfold as it's meant to.
I recently read a quote in an article by author and activist
that best articulates the greatest lesson I’ve learned from composting."When I turned from being a steward of the land to being a student of it, everything changed," said Steve Charter of Charter Ranch.
Charter was talking about managing cattle in his fields, but what if we applied this wisdom to all facets of environmentalism? What if we stopped trying to manage nature and started learning from her? What if we leaned into the beauty of the microbial breakdown of things, celebrated the messiness of this divine cycle, and appreciated that nothing is truly wasted when it's returned to the land? Perhaps then, like Nancy finding wonder in her compost bin or Stuart getting his compost to smell sweet, we can all become students once again—transforming our relationship with Mother Nature from one of extraction and disposal to one of regeneration and renewal.
Want more detailed resources for home composting? If you’re a subscriber, check out the Step-by-Step Guide below to start your very own home operation and watch the black gold start piling up in your raised beds.
If you’d like to learn more about Decompositions, visit here. To inquire about the works or to acquire a copy of the accompanying catalog, contact Nancy at beenance@gmail.com. You can also check out a talk that Nancy gave at Scripps College in January 2025.
Compost Resources
LA Compost: A nonprofit facilitating community composting across Los Angeles County (lacompost.org)
CalRecycle – Organic Materials Management
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Composting Resources
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Composting Initiatives
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Step-By-Step Home Composting: Setting Up Your System
For those ready to embark on their own composting journey, I've prepared a comprehensive guide that will take you through every step of creating your home composting system—from choosing the right method for your space to harvesting your first batch of "black gold."
Composting at home is simpler than most people imagine, requiring just a few basic elements. The process begins with choosing the right system for your space—whether it's an enclosed bin for urban settings, a tumbler for ease of turning, an open pile for those with ample yard space, or vermicomposting for apartment dwellers. Find a partially shaded location with good drainage, and gather basic tools like a garden fork and kitchen collection container to set you up for success from day one.
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