Nothing goes to waste

When Carl Pierce and his wife moved into their Las Cruces home, they did what countless homeowners do. They planted. It didn't take long to discover what southern New Mexico gardeners have known for generations.

"This is clay," Pierce said with a laugh. "This is hard clay dirt."

That stubborn backyard became an unexpected reminder of why Las Cruces Utilities had begun chasing an idea that, at first glance, seemed better suited for Oregon than southern New Mexico. Composting.

For years, Las Cruces has collected green waste — tree limbs, grass clippings and other yard debris — and turned it into mulch residents could haul home. But a few years ago, the city's Elevate Las Cruces strategic plan challenged Utilities to think bigger, making landfill diversion and environmental sustainability priorities for the department.

The question wasn't whether compost worked. It was whether it could work here.

"People didn't think we could do it in the desert," Pierce, the deputy director of solid waste, said.

Three years later, communities across the Southwest are beginning to ask how Las Cruces did exactly that. The answer didn't begin with a citywide program. It started by slowing down.

"We've been working on yard waste collection for right around 20 years," Solid Waste Manager Phil Glasson said. "A little over two years ago, we acquired the grant to start food waste and actually make organic compost."

A USDA grant allowed Utilities to build the infrastructure before collecting significant amounts of food waste. Instead of open compost piles, the city installed enclosed, solar-powered aeration containers that circulate oxygen through the material while helping retain precious moisture that would otherwise disappear into the desert air.

The technology solved one of the biggest challenges of composting in southern New Mexico.

"The number one fear people have" is odor, Pierce said. "You can stand next to the compost pile, and it smells like fresh forest earth, not garbage."

Inside those containers, food scraps are blended with shredded yard waste. Carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and water do what they have always done. The difference is that Glasson has spent the past three years figuring out how to make that process work in a climate where summer temperatures regularly climb past 100 degrees.

"There is no set recipe for making organic compost," he said. "What works in Boston might not work here.”

Glasson has traveled to national composting conferences, worked with experts around the country and tested nearly every aspect of the process, from moisture levels to pH, continually refining what works in the Chihuahuan Desert.

The city's first large partners were Casa de Peregrinos and Roadrunner Food Bank, which now provide between 2,000 and 3,000 pounds of food waste each week. That steady stream allowed Utilities to perfect the processing side before asking residents to participate.

Only then did the city launch a 14-week pilot program involving 42 households. The pilot wasn't simply about collecting food scraps. Utilities wanted answers.

Would containers become a nuisance during triple-digit summers? Would neighbors complain about odors? Could residents separate food waste without contaminating the finished compost?

Instead, the program produced encouragement. Contamination remained remarkably low, and many of the calls Utilities received weren't complaints at all. They came from residents asking how they could join.

That deliberate approach has become one of the program's strengths. Rather than rushing toward expansion, Pierce and Glasson have focused on understanding each step before taking the next. Additional state grant funding is now helping Utilities explore neighborhood collection sites that could someday make participation easier while continuing to gather the information needed for future growth.

For Pierce, the work has never been just about reducing what goes into the landfill. Every pound of food waste buried underground eventually produces methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Every pound turned into compost becomes something useful again.

In Las Cruces, where water is as valuable as sunshine is abundant, compost also changes the ground itself. Instead of shedding irrigation water, healthier soil holds it.

"Compost acts like a sponge," Pierce explained in a follow-up to the interview. "It dramatically increases the soil's water-retention capacity."

That brings him back to the backyard where this story began. The hard clay he discovered after moving to Las Cruces doesn't simply become easier to work. It becomes healthier. Plants need less water. Gardens become more productive. Residents who once threw food scraps into the trash can eventually pick up finished compost — free of charge — and return those same nutrients to their own yards.

"We're taking a waste and making it into a product," Pierce said.

Glasson sees it a little differently. People picture rotten food, he said. Then they see the finished compost.

"They can't believe that at one time that was some rotting apples and potatoes."

Perhaps that's why other desert communities have begun paying attention.

Las Cruces didn't invent composting. It simply refused to accept that the desert couldn't do it.

By taking its time, asking the right questions and proving each step before moving to the next, the city has quietly become a place where others are now looking for answers.