The Smell of Return: When Waste, Hunger, and Presence Collide

By Josh Singleton | Founder, The Neighborhood Garden Project

It doesn’t smell good. Sour, earthy, strong. Most folks turn away from it. But for us, it means something different. That smell—it's not waste. It’s the start of something being made new.

We use buckets from Happy Earth Compost. They collect food scraps from homes and businesses and take them to get turned into compost. That compost eventually becomes the soil we plant in. And no, we don’t manage our own compost pile. We used to think we had to, but we realized it wasn’t our main assignment. Composting still matters to us. We just knew we didn’t need to own every part of it to play a role in transformation.

At our first garden, we used about 145 yards of compost to fill the beds. That’s more than 240,000 pounds of stuff that didn’t end up in the trash. Old banana peels. Coffee grounds. Wilted lettuce. All of it was given a second chance. And we’ve used that same soil for years. What took months to make has been bearing fruit year after year. That’s how renewal works when you don’t rush it.

There’s a lot of fear these days about waste. People try to save everything. But sometimes, that urge to hold onto it all—it doesn’t come from care. It comes from fear. Fear of not having enough. Fear of wasting what could help someone. And that’s real. Especially for folks who’ve gone without. But what we’ve seen is that if we hold onto everything, we miss what it could become.

We’ve learned that presence means letting go. If something’s no longer useful, it’s okay to release it. Not into the trash—but into the process of becoming something else.

Years ago, I worked in a farm in a nice neighborhood. We had a compost drop-off for residents. It looked good on paper. But people brought in things we couldn’t use—plastic bags, full meals, even utensils. The pile turned into a mess. Rats came. The smell got worse. What started out as a good idea became more about making people feel helpful than actually helping.

That taught me something. Just because something looks good doesn’t mean it’s stewardship. Real stewardship isn’t about being seen. It’s about doing the quiet work of care. Ego can’t hold compost. Because compost isn’t pretty. It’s slow. It’s smelly. It takes time. But in the right hands, it becomes life.

I’ve also been in food pantries. Most of the produce from grocery stores was past its prime—bruised or starting to rot. It was what the stores couldn’t sell. What’s leftover after the profits are protected. That’s what ends up in the hands of people who are hungry. And while it’s better than nothing, it still sends a message. “You don’t get the good stuff. You get what’s left.”

Even the meetings meant to “solve” food issues can miss the point. I’ve seen meetings where the people being “served” are clearing the tables, not sitting at them. They’re scraping plates, not being asked what they actually need. They’re treated as helpers, not as equals. Not as family.

And that’s why I believe we have to approach all of this with the posture of Jesus.

Jesus didn’t rush to fix people. He sat with them. He saw them. That moment at the well, He didn’t show up when it was convenient. He met the woman when no one else would. Noon. The hottest part of the day. She came to draw water alone because of shame. And Jesus met her there. Not to shame her more, but to restore her.

That’s what we try to do in the garden. Be there when people show up. Not with all the answers. But with presence. With a willingness to sit, to listen, and to let God do the work. Just like compost, it doesn’t look like much at first. But something new is happening under the surface.

Sometimes that looks like a compost bucket. Sometimes it looks like someone sitting alone on a bench. Either way, our job isn’t to fix. It’s to stay close. To be present. To trust the process God has written into creation—that nothing is wasted, and that even what looks dead can feed something alive.

That’s what we’re trying to live out. Real restoration. Real presence. Not the quick fix. But the slow, faithful kind that smells like death at first—and ends up tasting like life.