By Danny White, the main volunteer behind Peels.

You’re bound to find at least one keen composter in your community. They might be your neighbour with the chooks, the person growing lush veggies in their front yard, or someone you see every Saturday morning at the community garden.

Then there are those who’d love to keep their food scraps out of landfill but aren’t composting—yet. Maybe their council doesn’t offer kerbside collection. Or they know their scraps are a valuable resource better kept local. Or maybe they just want a good excuse to meet their neighbours.

I’ve been on all sides of that. It’s why I built Peels, a free, volunteer-led website that connects people with food scraps to those who compost. Here’s what it looks like:

Go to www.peels.app to try it out for yourself.

I wish I could say Peels was an original idea. A similar platform, ShareWaste, connected the same types of people until its closure last year. Its absence left a big gap, one that’s relatively straightforward to rebuild technically but harder to sustain as a thriving community.

Peels launched four months ago to fill that gap. Now that it’s running smoothly, my focus is on two things:

1. Growing our community
2. Building resilience

Here’s what that means and how I’m going about it.

Growing our community

Unsurprisingly, Peels is growing faster in areas without kerbside FOGO (Food Organics and Garden Organics) collection. In places with (or about to get) council collection, I sometimes hear a version of this question:

Is community composting even relevant if people can have their food scraps collected by a truck and composted industrially elsewhere?

It’s a fair question. For some people—those who just want to divert food scraps from landfill —council collection is a much-needed solution. The more people use it, the bigger the environmental impact.

But local and industrial composting aren’t mutually exclusive. Put together, they create a richer approach to organic waste management, keeping valuable resources in our communities while enriching them.

Peels isn’t just about solving a food waste problem. It’s also about facilitating these sustainable communities. Compost becomes almost an excuse for community, with food scraps as the medium for bringing people together to work on something tangible.

Here are a few community hosts on Peels who embody this idea:

This community idea isn’t limited to shared spaces. While messages to residential Peels hosts often start with the practical “when” and “where”, they often quickly evolve into “I’m new here” and “Thanks for the bananas!”. I like to think there’s an emergence of neighbourhood networks, food sharing, and just more chats over the fence.

Again, here are a few more hosts on Peels whose profiles I think embody this idea, this time residential hosts:

Building resilience

It’s all well and good to foster community on Peels, but it’s important to make sure Peels sticks around for the long-haul. My approach is to increase diversity while reducing complexity.

These might seem contradictory, so let me explain.

Increasing diversity

Right now, I’m the single point of failure. If I stop working on Peels, the lights go out. There are two ways I’m tackling this: technical sustainability and community-building.

On the technical side, Peels is now open source. Anyone can view the code or contribute. The code issues an wiki are also public, making it easy for new volunteers to jump in.

Community-wise, I’m tracking where people are joining from, and connecting with waste educators and council officers where they’re not. Proactive outreach is key. Without it, local would-be compost hosts or donors might never hear about Peels.

That’s what I mean by increasing diversity. If you know anyone technical or in community organising who might like to help, please let me know!

Reducing complexity

Peels is built on the back of open source or free software. For example, Protomaps graciously provides open source mapping tiles and a free hosting service. Paid alternatives like Mapbox or Google Maps can be prohibitively expensive for volunteer projects like Peels, and I presume one of the reasons why ShareWaste shut down.

Now that Peels’ foundation is solid, I’m prioritising simplicity. Features are being simplified wherever possible, and code is written for clarity (even if it’s longer) so future volunteers can easily take over.

The important thing here is that our running costs are minimal, and code simple enough for fellow volunteers to come and go. That’s what I mean by reducing complexity.

Get involved

As mentioned, I’m looking for people to contribute to the codebase and the community building of Peels. But you don’t need to be a technical or a community organiser to get involved. If this resonates, and you compost, please consider listing your community spot on Peels!

The two biggest things I’ve learnt since launching Peels are:

1. People are more likely to join if they see others in their area already have.
2. Councils and educators take Peels seriously when it’s active in their community.

So by making a listing you’re diverting food scraps, building sustainable communities (and soils), and helping Peels grow.