Nicholas Fox - How Composting is like Baking a Cake

[00:00:10] Adam: Hello. Welcome to Green Champions.

[00:00:12] Dominique: Thanks for joining us in a conversation with real people making real environmental change in the work that they do. I'm here with Adam, our social enterprise extraordinaire.

[00:00:20] Adam: I'm so glad to be here alongside Dominique, our sustainability expert. We bring you guests who saw the potential for impact in their job or community and did something about it.

[00:00:28] Dominique: From entrepreneurs to artists, scientists to activists, this podcast is a platform for green champions to share their stories and plant new ideas.

[00:00:37] Adam: Today Dominique and I are joined by Nicholas Fox. Nicholas is the founder of Soul and Soil and is a permaculture designer focused on regenerative agriculture and sustainable living in The Bahamas. He combines skills like composting, waste collection, and regenerative property development to create practical solutions that nurture the environment.

Recently he won the US Composting Council's Annual Emerging Composter Challenge. It's an international challenge for anybody working in innovation within the fields of composting, compostable products, organics, recycling, or zero waste. If that applies to you, the links are in the show notes to apply.

So last time we got to hear from Nicholas on his journey into composting and permaculture, all the way from how he's playing Minecraft to doing projects in the school, trying to get them to do composting in this school, to actually now having soul and soil.

So today we're excited to spotlight Nicholas as our green champion, learn how he's turning sustainable practices into real world change through composting and permaculture in The Bahamas. So Nicholas, welcome back.

[00:01:38] Nicholas: Thank you. Thank you, Adam. Thank you, Dominique, for having me on again.

[00:01:41] Dominique: Nicholas, do you wanna remind our listeners how long you've been running Soul and Soil?

[00:01:45] Nicholas: I've been running soul and soil for about five years, and that timeline looks a little wonky. 

[00:01:51] Dominique: That's okay. What does a typical day look like for you?

[00:01:53] Nicholas: So a typical day looks like waking up, going out to the compost pad. Maybe turning on the wood chipper and creating some browns, because that's where the bottleneck is right now. And going out, collecting waste or getting calls from people about their compost piles, maybe looking at properties. So there's a lot of chaos in the day when people are trying to reach you.

So try to be done before 11:00 AM in terms of composting, and that's when the sun starts to get out and cut some hide, beat some tail. So you try to run and hide from it and around that time maybe take a nap and we get back to it around like 4:00 PM 

[00:02:30] Dominique: A well-deserved nap.

[00:02:31] Nicholas: The sun is brutal. 

[00:02:33] Dominique: Well, you hinted at browns. Can you give us a quick 101 for people who are new to the idea of like visualizing the composting process? Where do greens and browns come into play?

[00:02:43] Nicholas: So before we talk about greens and browns, let's talk about everybody's favorite form of cooking- baking, and we're gonna use baking principles to talk about compost instead.

So, we're gonna bake a cake today and we're gonna need eggs.

We're gonna need flour. We're gonna need butter and sugar, maybe some milk, some there's some liquid in there. And we're gonna have to use a whisk and a bowl So we're gonna picture our greens as eggs, milk and butter. And those are the things that really fuse everything together. They hold everything together and it's a foundation of life.

And our browns more like and sugar, and those are more related to cardboard and wood chips. So when you're building your compost pile, you're gonna have to have the perfect combination of browns and greens just like you are baking a cake. 

[00:03:29] Dominique: That was a great analogy.

[00:03:31] Nicholas: Thank you. It really does help when you're making a recipe or you're building a pile. There are a few ratios that you can use. The most common is about thirty carbon to one nitrogen. Or if you're using volume, you're using about four carbon to one nitrogen in volume so what that might mean to the average listener is that you're making a pile that's more brown than green that has some structure because compost, just like a good dough or a good batter, has to have a certain structure. Like your cake batter looks different from your cookie dough, and you have to strike that correct balance every time you make a pile.

[00:04:06] Dominique: I think people often feel scared about branching into spaces like this of there's one way to do it. And I think that is similar to those who like aren't as comfortable in the kitchen or aren't as comfortable baking, but when you get into it and you start getting accustomed to seeing different recipes, different people having their own spin on it, you start to learn that there's like a lot of ways you can do it right. It's just gonna come out a little bit differently.

But also with baking, when you're making bread, for example, like the humidity of the environment you live in, the season you're in can affect how that dough behaves and reacts. But that also feels really akin to composting of like you can teach somebody a really good recipe, but it depends on the soil they're dealing with and the environment they're in. So I guess just a really good analogy for the fact that there is so much to learn, but trying it yourself and being willing to trial and error is a big part of baking and composting.

[00:04:58] Nicholas: Yeah, and I did not know that about bread. I learned something new today, so thanks. 

[00:05:02] Dominique: Sourdough world taught me that if it's like summertime versus wintertime, you like let it rise for different amounts of time because it's like colder. I won't pretend to be a pro, but I know enough that temperature is relevant.

[00:05:14] Adam: I love it. And if you need the Green Champions sourdough starter, now we know where to get it from.

[00:05:19] Dominique: Yeah. Yeah. But you do agree with that of like we have to be conscious of like where we are, and I'm sure your recipe looks a little bit different and creates a different product than somebody in California or somebody in Alaska that is trying to reuse their resources and build strong soil.

[00:05:36] Nicholas: Definitely. My compost could look very different from someone on the same island just because we're using different resources, I might be using spent brewer's grain, they might be using pig manure. They might be using a very palm tree, heavy carbon source where I'm using cardboard and pine trees. So all of these different factors, like the cooking time and the size of the pile really does dictate how your compost comes out.

[00:06:02] Adam: Man, this is really cool. And you said you've been running Soul and Soil for over five years, what's the core mission behind the company?

[00:06:09] Nicholas: So the mission is to just make composting as accessible as possible to the Bahamian population and that takes the form in education as well as these residential and commercial pickups. So there's a lot of people on this island, population density is really high, and we do have things like I've mentioned in the first episode, pollution and improper land use. So there's a lot of applications for compost, but there are a lot of communities that need some form of proper waste management, they could really benefit from a composting system.

Fortunately, when I first started out, I had basically interned in a space called the Incubator for Collaborative Expression, short name ICE. And I had to say ICE last, 'cause I didn't wanna say ICE first, given that everything that's going on in the States. Yeah. So a very famous artist allowed me to use some space to develop composting and try and get composting access to the community. It was centrally located in the heart of town next to one of the largest food stores on the island. And a part of that mission and that space was to grow food for community members and we just give that food away. And I had all of the resources to my disposal to create bigger, better composting systems. And I had some really crazy ideas.

[00:07:26] Adam: Well, before we get to those crazy ideas, like what's the composting landscape like in The Bahamas? 

[00:07:30] Nicholas: Right now there are about four people who compost on a commercial scale. There are a lot of backyard composters and there are a lot of people who are interested in composting. There's maybe five. The landfill counts or they have composting equipment, so they kind of compost. There's Green Systems with Ginny McKinney who has the largest actual composting facility in the country. There's Anchorage Forestry, which does more of a coconut husk grinding, brown waste soil. And there's another person who slips my radar every time but they have posts on Instagram, and I know they're Bahamian, but I don't remember their name and I can never find them to call them.

[00:08:10] Adam: So you're, you're leading the charge in composting in The Bahamas. 

[00:08:13] Nicholas: I'll say, socially yes, I definitely aspire to scale up and these things are coming. I will briefly speak on a part of the journey of entrepreneurship is dealing with uncertainty and running and just making sure you run your own race because there have been points in time where, you have friends who are in established industries and they're excelling really fast and I'm just kind of meandering along. But I do remind myself that compost is in fact a slow process. So it takes time, especially when you're starting from the ground up.

[00:08:46] Dominique: Yeah. And I relate to that feeling a lot of watching my non entrepreneurship peers, and their careers progressing in like a different format. Entrepreneurship is really tough for that. You feel like you're sometimes like walking into the abyss, but you're going somewhere and you're doing really awesome things.

How would you say that the composting landscape has changed since you started? Like What has your impact in The Bahamas in the composting space looked like?

[00:09:11] Nicholas: I'll start from the time I came home which was December 2019, and I had just recently decided that I'm gonna give composting a shot, a proper shot. And the world went into chaos during the pandemic, and I was home on lockdown for many months at a time. There was a point in time where I had just started taking composting seriously. I had started my permaculture design course and I had a friend who started bringing food waste to me. And that would've been the beginning of the pilot project, so that would've been Soul and Soil V1, where we had about 30, 40 clients who gave us waste. That really did catch the eyes of a lot of people, unbeknownst to me.

The landfill at the time was reorganizing or rebranding themselves. So now they're the New Providence Ecology Park where they recycle and care about the environment. And they had a show called Waste Talks, which would've been a really good podcast name. And they had this really nice comedian host a show and he and I talked for about two hours. They posted that and that had been seen around the world. This lady in British Columbia, she had recognized me and things just kind of kept going up from there. I ended up having a team of four, an engineer who worked at the landfill and a crazy marine biologist and someone who shared just as much passion as me. They were helping me grow and scale this composting vision. And that was all in two years.

But things quickly fell apart, and I'm gonna try and truncate it. kind things kind of fell apart. Everybody had to go their separate ways for work. And I was at the landfill, not really pursuing the composting mission. But we were understanding how the landscape of food coming into the country, the entire waste cycle, so from import to garbage. There was a huge opportunity to learn because we didn't understand the scale that we were working with.

 We found that we weren't ready for the scale or the scale for it. Which really made me rethink my impact when we started educating people instead.

[00:11:09] Adam: that's a big step, to be able to say in a small enterprise that's growing, "wait a minute, that's not where we're at yet. Here's where our focus needs to be."

[00:11:17] Nicholas: I've taught about 15 classes about composting, and basically teachers will call me to come in and we say, "Hey, this is what composting is. This is how you can make an impact. Change starts with you. And now that you have this knowledge, you can feel better about climate change. You can feel better about going out into the world and knowing that you don't have to be the stereotypical doctor, lawyer, or accountant. There's so many avenues for you to explore."

And arming Bahamian youth with that knowledge, I think does a beautiful thing in the country. A mother and a daughter came up to me one day and she made me cry. She said, "Thank you so much for just doing this composting thing. My mom and I started a garden together and we have a compost. And that's all from your videos." And I don't really think about the impact they have on the individual life. But when I do hear it, it's like, Wow. That's incredible. Like I'm just doing it because I like it for the most part.

[00:12:14] Dominique: And that's really reassuring for the days when you do feel like you're running in circles. So I'm glad you've seen that. And I think it's obvious why you're getting that response, but I'm happy you're able to see it. You also mentioned a bit about there's not formal composting regulation in The Bahamas. 

[00:12:30] Nicholas: Correct. 

[00:12:31] Dominique: And it's maybe not being discussed as urgently as we'd like to see. But what is it like to work in that kind of environment? So like how are you strategizing around incentivizing these things when they're not regulated? And I can also add that where I sit and the work that I do, it's also not regulated, but I'm curious how you approach that.

[00:12:51] Nicholas: I'm definitely working with the people who wanna work with me instead of trying to lead the horse to water. If the horse is thirsty, it'll drink. So, there are a lot of people who are interested and are willing to pay for sustainable services. 

One of the resorts has had a mini farmer's market for their staff and they've invited me, this is the second year that I've been out there, and the staff, it's about 3000 employees who are walking through a corridor. And a quarter of them are interested in composting. And without even too much of a sell. Like, "Hey, you want fertilizer for your plants? It's organic." "Yeah. How do I do that? Hey, do you wanna contribute to the environment?" "Yeah. How do I do that?" And sign up and we'll send you a WhatsApp. And just the reception is that now we have the options, we have the choice. So that's really cool to see that people are just eating it up.

[00:13:40] Adam: How do you think this can grow as like an industry across the Caribbean? Like what would it take to grow composting as a viable industry across the Caribbean?

[00:13:49] Nicholas: I think definitely like government involvement or the guidance of entities like the USCC. Fortunately, we don't have to reinvent the wheel. I think laws that govern the body of compost, the USCC, are pretty, pretty good. I mean, keep your facility clean. Don't let things spontaneously combust and have good management practices.

That project that I was working on, you do need some form of involvement from the government or a unifying body, like the community composting coalition to come together and start something like this.

Like I had mentioned before our call, Trinidad seems to be on that wave of developing this national composting program because there are things that I can't see that you may see, because we all have our different strengths.

[00:14:34] Dominique: Yeah, that's an interesting thing. I'm curious, we're talking a lot about The Bahamas, and for some listeners who maybe don't have a strong sense of like the sustainability conversation happening how unique is The Bahamas in its structure to the Caribbean islands and how connected are some of those communities?

Geographically, The Bahamas isn't in the Caribbean,We're in the Atlantic Ocean, not the Caribbean Sea, but we are good friends with our Caribbean brothers and sisters. Also, The Bahamas is an archipelago, so we're a chain of islands all separated by shallow waters, and we have ferry and air transport. Air transport has seen a revolution, so islands are way more connected than they used to be but we still have a long way to go. And if you think about it, every island needs major infrastructure. They need power plants, they need hospitals, fire stations, roads, landfills or places to recycle that waste. And some of these islands, to be frank, just have not really seen much development since the sixties or pre independence.

[00:15:35] Nicholas: I think our cultures do see a deep harmony in the land. There are different words for it, there's different practices for it but there is this sense that you do live in a slower place and you can just go to the beach. They're the little things where you have this beautiful landscape and you just wanna stare at it after a long day of work, watch the sunset.

So I think that's what I notice more than anything that very excited for seasons more than anything where we know certain fruits are bearing. 

Okay. So from your perspective, what is the biggest barrier that keeps people from composting? So when thinking about like people are connected to nature, they do have some understanding, but what is that one big barrier that you are working to overcome with listeners and anybody who will look to you and ask, and then how do you break that down?

I think land, proper land is one of the biggest deterrent to not only me composting, but others because we live on such small lots of land and you're probably living in land that floods most of the time. You don't want to compost or composting will attract stray dogs, rats, invasive raccoons. Sometimes you might get a crab by the compost pile, but I'm cool with them. They're cool with me. So land is one of those things that you don't really realize, like if you're gonna be composting a lot, how much space that takes up or if your neighbors are gonna smell that.

One of the biggest things you learn in compost school in the composters course is that facilities really do get shut down for smell. And I've experienced that firsthand. There was a time where we had about 20,000 pounds of brewer's grain in my backyard. I had it under control, but one of the neighbors were, they were doing renovations and they burst a sewer pipe. So the sewer pipe, you know, smelled really bad. And somebody said, "It's the compost guy. His crap stinks." So the Department of Environmental Health came and shut me down and I had to protest that.

[00:17:32] Adam: So sometimes it's not even your fault. People just point their fingers. Now you've described Soul and Soil as aiming to make the planet better by at least 1%. That's a really powerful message. Like how do you help people see the impact of small changes?

[00:17:45] Nicholas: A lot of that influence about small changes, I'm still realizing that today where 20 something odd years ago, my mom planted an avocado tree and I remember that soil being kind of poor. And I've only added compost maybe two or three times to this avocado tree. And this is our third year with avocados, and year one was two avocados whole. It's a 20 foot tall tree, and it only bore two avocados. And this year, after a little bit more of adding compost, there's about 50 or so avocados on the tree that are ripening.

So once again, I remind myself that compost is a slow process and you might not see the changes everyday. But if you look back, when you do look back, hindsight is 20/20 and you see that you've walked all of these steps. And sometimes I really do forgetthat so much happens in a year where if you're not really paying attention, it can slip by. But the consistency of just staying true to the goal has shown me that you do get there eventually.

[00:18:50] Dominique: Yeah, I'm glad I have to hear you look back and to notice some of those milestones. We also haven't even touched on the fact that we first met at the Compost 2025 conference and you won an award. 

 Do you wanna share a bit about what that experience was like?

[00:19:06] Nicholas: That experience was, I wanna say unforgettable, but I mean, even now, I look back at it and I can't believe that it happened. Like it, it's almost like a fever dream. I was on 10 the entire time I was at the conference. Just the vibes and being in a place like Arizona, I have never been in a biome like that before. So that was also just a whole new feeling for me that these places you see on TV and online are way more beautiful in person.

But going to Arizona and knowing that I had a mission to partake in this competition, not knowing that I would win, especially once I saw the other contestants, I'm so bad with names, but this lady who had the human composting business, I was like, "Oh, she's gonna win for sure."

[00:19:52] Dominique: For listeners that is not composting run by humans, that is a composting initiative that is focused around composting human remains. Just wanted to clarify in case somebody had the wrong idea. 

[00:20:04] Nicholas: Well, we have two more rapid fire questions for you.

[00:20:07] Dominique: First one, What do you have on the horizon project or partnership wise that you're really excited about?

[00:20:12] Nicholas: Right now there are two things that really excite me, and one is in the form of these decentralized market gardens that are gonna start acting as hubs for community garden and workshops where you have farmers who have these skills and we realize that we lack not only assets, but manpower and people are hungry for change. So we're gonna start marrying these wants and desires into this beautiful community led effort.

For example, I had recently helped a school in $5,000 in a green competition where they had to choose and design a sustainable future project for their school, and they chose composting, and they reached out to me to guide them to, I guess, victory. The students are definitely gonna be that pilot, and I'm gonna guide them to making the first school led compost system, and we're trying to get compost in all the schools. Soul and Soil, we all believe that the children are first. The children, they're the ones that guide the message. They're the one that carry the message. I know as a child, if you ask your parent to do something or why aren't you doing this? They have a little bit more compassion with their children.

[00:21:24] Adam: That I think is very inspiring. For listeners who are inspired by your work, where should they start? Like what's one practical step that they can take to live more regeneratively no matter where they are?

[00:21:35] Nicholas: I wanna say get involved with the composting. There's so many reasons why, I could give you probably a hundred reasons why you should be composting, but they're just small things, such as supporting local farmers. Start planting your mini orchard when you have your native fruits in your countries. Dry your seeds and save your seeds and don't be afraid to give seeds as a gift to somebody because now you're inviting them to grow life and feed themselves. And start talking to your community members because you might find that you guys are a lot more like-minded than the world would have you believe.

[00:22:10] Adam: Well, that's fantastic. We're so glad that we could have you on today. It was fun just kind of hearing about Soul and Soil and your journey, kind of everything you've gone through, building that up, the hardships and kind of what the environment looks like in The Bahamas.

[00:22:23] Nicholas: Thank you, Adam.

[00:22:24] Adam: How can people connect with you and be an advocate for what you're doing?

[00:22:28] Nicholas: So you can connect with me on social medias, so TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, they're all dacompostking. And you can find my business page on Instagram and Facebook at Soul and Soil Composting. If you do wanna get in touch with me privately, you can hit the Soul and Soil WhatsApp at 1242-455-6858.

[00:22:59] Dominique: Thank you again, Nicholas. This was really fun. I'm very grateful that we got to capture a bit of your storytelling and I think the analogy of composting as baking is going to sit with me forever. So I appreciate that and I think that was such a good explanation of this topic. And for anybody listening who wants to learn more about composting, I just wanna echo, Nicholas's content is so good. He puts out a lot of videos and he is really educational on his platforms, and that is part of why he's been successful so far. So check it out.

[00:23:29] Nicholas: As always, our guests have found a unique way to champion sustainability. We're here to put real names and stories like Nicholas, behind the idea that no matter your background, career, or interests, you really can contribute in the fight against climate change.

[00:23:42] Adam: You can find our episodes at thegreenchampions.com. If you wanna stay in the loop, give us a review and follow us on your favorite podcast platform. If you wanna support the podcast, you can donate on our website as well. If you have questions about climate change or sustainability, you can reach us on our website at thegreenchampions.com.

Our music is by Zayn Dweik. Thanks for listening to Green Champions. We'll dig into another sustainability success story in our next episode.