Seattle’s Innovation and Leadership in Climate Equity Panelist Q&A: Joycelyn Chui
By Yordanos Tesfazion
Joycelyn Chui has nearly a decade of experience in bridging sustainability solutions across communities, policies and environmental science. In 2020, she co-founded Restaurant 2 Garden, a hyper-local composting project that helps businesses in the Chinatown-International District turn their food scraps into compost. Through Restaurant 2 Garden, Joycelyn has fostered strong relationships at the Danny Woo Community Garden by providing gardeners with high quality fertilizer and helping them navigate the ins and outs of composting in an urban setting.
Joycelyn is on the panel for our upcoming Earth Day event at Town Hall Seattle! Learn more about her and her work ahead of the April 22nd event:
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What’s the story behind bringing Restaurant 2 Garden to the Chinatown-International District?
When I was an Outreach Specialist for Environmental Coalition of South Seattle (ECOSS), I did a lot of outreach and education within the Chinatown-Internation District (CID) because of my language skills. In addition to English, I speak Cantonese and Mandarin. So naturally, I was serving businesses in the CID area to support them in doing more recycling and composting. That outreach and education was also in response to a city ordinance that required everybody – including businesses and residents – to recycle and compost. My job was to support the businesses with any technical assistance to help them increase that behavior of recycling and composting.
Through my work, I saw how much food scraps or organics waste was discarded in the back kitchen of restaurants when prepping for service, including post-consumer waste as well. I talked with my friend Lizzy Baskerville, who was the Garden Manager at the Danny Woo Community Garden at the time, and she had shared that gardeners really love compost giveaway days. The compost from the giveaway days is donated by nonprofit entities and the city and they’re extremely popular at the community garden. The pile of compost would be gone within hours. There absolutely was a need for it. Lizzy and I thought, “well, there’s a demand and there’s a supply. Why don’t we supply organics waste and combine our efforts by composting it locally at the community garden?” We also recognized that composting can be very manual and labor-intensive. Lizzy and I applied for grants that would fund that labor since Lizzy had other garden maintenance priorities.
That’s kind of the genesis of Restaurant 2 Garden, it really came to be from knowing and talking to folks who worked in the CID. We had a successful pilot project on site at the Danny Woo Community Garden – all we did was recognize the demand and provide the supply. It’s important to note that the CID has over 100 food service businesses that includes cafes, full-service restaurants and grocery stores. Because of the density of food service businesses in the neighborhood, there is so much organics waste and food scraps, making it a great location to kickstart this type of project that was trying to decentralize organics management.
There was also this component of bringing the practice of composting closer to home. When I was working with business owners, they understood and knew they were required to use the green bins, but there was a disconnect because once the bins get picked up, they don’t know where it goes or what happens to the waste. Restaurant 2 Garden makes that process a lot more visual. It shows business owners who utilize the community garden that the food scraps they throw away in the green bins don’t just magically disappear but instead, go through a long process to break down and become nutritious soil amendments, compost.
I think we naturally emerged within the CID. We didn’t really pick the CID; the CID picked us.
At the ECOSS PINKAPALOOZA Block Party, you credited your father as being the person who inspired you to become an environmentalist. You also learned about the natural life cycle of food waste from your grandmother. How did your upbringing influence the path you took in the work you’re doing today?
I grew up in Hong Kong which is a giant concrete jungle. It’s almost like New York City; when you think about Hong Kong you think about the stock market, not the outdoors. But in fact, we actually have a lot of beautiful parks, beaches and playgrounds. My father would take me and my brother to beaches a lot and tried his best to connect us to the outdoors. Going outside with him reminded me that there was something beautiful within the city beyond the skyscrapers. He’s also a marine enthusiast and goes out to swim, dive and snorkel. He has an absolute love for marine environments so naturally, my brother and I grew to love the water as well. He really inspired us to be outside, appreciate silence and what nature has to offer.
And my grandma, she has such a green thumb while also being an amazing cook. When she cooked, she would have this little stainless steel mixing bowl at her side. Everything that she cut up that didn’t belong in the dish like onion peels, eggshells and other food scraps would go in that bowl. Although we didn’t have a garden, we had a rooftop with potted plants and put the organics waste and food scraps in the soil of the potted plants. She would tell me that the waste was “feeding” the soil, and of course, young me didn’t quite understand what that meant. However, she repeated that to me every time I saw her transfer food scraps from the cutting board to the potted plants, and over time I began to understand the process.
As I grew older, I was like “OK, that’s the natural cycle of food waste. It decomposes and goes back into the soil.” But back then, I understood it as us taking the parts of the vegetables that we don’t eat, those parts still being nutritious, and feeding it back to the plant that grew us the vegetable. The process made sense to me in very simple terms, and it just clicked as I grew older because I grew up seeing my grandma practice composting in her own way.
My experiences with my father and grandma really inspired me to work with the environment and people so I can connect that bridge between us. I have a lot of appreciation for folks who do restoration work, but since I’m in an urban setting, this is my way of learning and teaching others how to live, appreciate the outdoors and what the environment can provide for us.
I don’t live with my grandma anymore, but there are a lot of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) elders who grow their own food at the Danny Woo Community Garden and sometimes they remind me of her. It’s very heartwarming for me!
Click below to hear more from Joycelyn about what she learned from her grandma:
Transcript: My grandma, she would wash the rice and then save the water. And apparently she found out from her family members, who all have green thumbs, that the rice water is really packed in like, beneficial nutrients and microbial activity.
But she didn’t know what’s actually in the water, she just knows it’s good for the plants. So she would save that water and then water her plants with the rice water. Later, I found out there is a lot of good bacteria on the rice. And then when you wash it, of course it’s in the water and you put it in the soil and that actually activates and is super beneficial for the bacterial community within that soil.
So I was like, wow, grandma just knew years ago and she figured it out. And now I learned this again from, you know, the science community and online. And I was like, well, I didn’t need the internet to tell me, I didn’t need, you know, scientist to tell me. My grandma knew years ago and and her family knew that too. And granted, they don’t know exactly what’s in there. They figured out it was good and it was beneficial. And so they kept doing it, and now I do it too.
The environmental justice space in our region, like many places in the country, is very white and can feel exclusive. As a result, the work of leaders and communities from marginalized backgrounds can be easily overlooked. The way you engage with and educate immigrant and refugee communities about sustainable practices demonstrates the importance of inclusivity in the field. What strategies have you found the most effective in making environmentalism more accessible to underserved communities?
Well, it actually goes back to my grandma. She’s been recycling, people have been recycling at the Danny Woo Community Garden. The gardeners and elders upcycle everything and maximize the use of items. That’s the spirit of recycling, right?
There’s so much mainstream media about why you must recycle and how to recycle. For immigrant and refugee communities, since you don’t start with much when you first set roots in this country, you just maximize the use of everything you already own. Sometimes I think to myself “who am I to teach them about recycling? They already know.” The trellises at the Danny Woo Community Garden are made of recycled material. The elder AAPI gardeners constructed them without needing to buy any new materials, and they look cool! I definitely learn from them more than they learn from me.
As far as other topics like stormwater pollution prevention and of course, organics management and composting, it takes a little bit of time to connect those practices with what they already like; that’s the trick. Some folks are fishers and love going crabbing or fishing, so when I talk to them about stormwater pollution prevention in that context, it clicks because they understand why clean water is important for their recreational activities. Also, we have a few rainwater barrels at the Danny Woo Community Garden and the gardeners understand that the rainwater it collects can be used to water their plants. I then use the rainwater barrels as a gateway to start a conversation about how that practice slows down water flow in an impervious city setting. I highlight the most obvious benefits of sustainable practices by connecting them to their daily life and interests.
With organics management and composting, gardeners understand the process because they see us practice it. When they stop by at the garden asking why it smells, we explain that we’re working with restaurant food waste and what the end goal is. It takes a couple of tries but eventually they completely understand. I mean, they also make their own compost and fertilizer to improve the quality of produce they grow. That can look like soaking beans in rainwater for weeks at a time or using the previous seasons’ vines and plant material to make their own soil amendments. Honestly, they already have the basic concept of it ingrained in their minds.
And of course, the gardeners have a range of experience. Some are social gardeners who don’t know much about gardening and others are really into it. So, while there’s a range in soil science knowledge, folks generally understand that food comes from the ground, they grow it from soil, and it can be returned back to soil. Sometimes our practices look a little different, but we all learn from each other.
So, just to summarize: the strategy I find most effective is talking to people like they’re a human being. I don’t just come to their doors and drop off an informational flyer and say “goodbye.” That isn’t effective or meaningful – you have to get to know the population you’re working with. Find out what they like to do, what they like to eat, etc. and connect those dots. Find the connective tissue within the conversations you have together.
Also, this is a given, but you have to speak their language. It doesn’t have to be English, but it can’t just be English. There needs to be some short of shared language, translated materials only work halfway. And lastly, you need to be there. At the Danny Woo Community Garden, they see us work and want to join in for some hands-on experience at our side. They really like to see the demonstration, the action. Action speaks louder than words.
Thank you for sharing more about yourself and your work with Restaurant 2 Garden, Joycelyn! Learn more from Joycelyn and other local leaders in climate and equity at our Earth Day panel at Town Hall Seattle on April 22.