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Short abstract:

We reflect on the co-use of composting containers based on collective actions – providing for reciprocal use – whereby soil care is made to matter and kept alive. It is regenerative. It provokes a sociality, temporality, and cyclability that attunes to what comes before and after that: living soils.

Long abstract:

This paper draws on empirical research into a compost venture in Hong Kong called Soil Trust. We study the pragmatics and challenges of a kitchen-to-soil regeneration enterprise using co-remediating fermentation containers. Our analysis from participant observation, document review, and interviews shows how versatile co-use was vital for bridging the worlds between consumer and producer, urban and rural, waste and sustenance. For Soil Trust, the co-use of composting containers was based on providing for mutual use whereby soil care is made to matter and kept alive. It provokes a sociality, temporality, and cyclability that attunes to what comes before and after that: living soils.

Compost services with co-used containers for processing food waste into soil sustenance gain prominence. Replacing ‘end-of-use’ waste bins with co-usable fermentation vessels facilitates the transformation of organic matter into soil care across urban and rural parties. Once chefs collect and inoculate their kitchen scraps in the container, truckers transport them to the farm, and agriculturists empty them for composting before cleaning and recirculation.

The moving compost container brings to life the idea of co-use as a manifestation of complicity and variability. Such movements are not captured in terms like zero-waste or upstream innovation and only partially describe how these services work. The containers – designed for continuous, soil-directed breakdown – change we think about waste removal, turning it into an ecological enactment rather than an environmental burden. We explore how co-use as a distinct mediator in value creation straddles functional fixations of waste, economy, society, and ecology.