Learning Happens After You Put Your Hands In

There is a moment that happens again and again in our work.

Not during a talk.

Not during a slideshow.

Not when someone reads a definition of compost or soil health.

It happens later.

It happens when someone opens a food waste bucket for the first time.

When they smell fermentation rather than rot.

When they touch compost that is warm, fibrous, and alive.

When soil stops being abstract and becomes something felt.

That is usually when the learning begins.

Soil is not an idea. It’s a relationship.

A lot of environmental education still assumes that if people are given the right information, behaviour change will follow. But soil doesn’t really work like that, and neither do people.

You can read about microbes, carbon, nutrients, and ecosystems. You can even memorise them. But until you encounter soil directly, that knowledge tends to stay theoretical.

This is why one of the most common questions people arrive with is also one of the most revealing: is soil living?

Scientifically, the answer is clear. Soil is not inert matter. It is a dynamic, living system made up of bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes, arthropods, plant roots, and organic matter interacting constantly.

We explore this in more depth here: Is soil living?

But what’s interesting is that people don’t usually believe this until they’ve experienced it. Until they’ve seen compost steaming in winter. Until they’ve noticed how soil structure changes over time. Until plants respond differently.

Knowledge lands differently once it is grounded in touch.

Why eco-friendly gardening starts below ground

Another phrase people often search for is how to make an eco-friendly garden. The answers online tend to focus on surface-level swaps: peat-free compost, pollinator plants, reusable materials.

All of those matter. But they miss the deeper layer.

Gardens become regenerative not just because of what is planted, but because of how soil is cared for. Soil biology determines water retention, nutrient cycling, disease resistance, and resilience to stress.

An eco-friendly garden that relies on imported inputs, sterile growing media, and synthetic fertilisers may look green, but it remains ecologically thin.

By contrast, gardens built on living compost, local organic matter, and microbial diversity tend to thicken over time. They hold moisture longer. They support insects and fungi. They become places where learning happens slowly and visibly.

This is why community composting is not just a waste solution. It is a soil education system.

You can read more about our approach here: Bristol Living Compost Project

Composting as a way of knowing

When food waste processing happens far away, responsibility dissolves. It disappears into bins, lorries, contracts, and metrics.

When composting happens locally, something else happens:

• food waste becomes legible

• smell becomes information, not fear

• decomposition becomes visible, not hidden

• soil becomes familiar, not mysterious

This is not accidental. Anthropologist Anna Tsing describes how ecological understanding often emerges through attention and participation, not instruction alone. Similarly, soil scholar María Puig de la Bellacasa argues that care is a form of knowledge, not something added on afterwards.

In practice, this means that composting systems that invite people in tend to produce different outcomes than systems designed purely for efficiency.

This is why we don’t treat our compost hub as just a facility, but as a shared infrastructure of learning.

After the hands go in, the questions change

Once people have handled compost, the questions shift.

They stop asking whether soil is living or non-living in an abstract sense.

They start asking what their soil needs.

They ask how long regeneration takes.

They notice seasonal rhythms.

They recognise that soil health cannot be rushed.

This is also where guilt tends to soften.

Composting stops being about doing things perfectly and starts being about taking part. Participation replaces performance. Care replaces compliance.

We’ve written about this shift here: Composting Is Participation, Not Waste Disposal

Learning that sticks

Research across environmental psychology and education shows that sensory, embodied experiences are more likely to produce durable learning than information alone.

So when we say learning happens after you put your hands in, we are not being poetic. We are being precise.

Soil asks to be encountered.

Compost asks to be handled.

Food systems ask to be participated in.

And when they are, understanding follows.

Want to experience this for yourself?

Reading about soil is one thing.

Touching it, smelling it, and working with it is something else entirely.

If you’re Bristol-based, our volunteer opportunities and workshops create space to encounter soil as a living system, not an abstract idea.

You don’t need expertise.

You don’t need perfect practice.

Just curiosity and willingness to take part.

👉 Bristol Living Compost Project