Photograph:  John Gustafsson/AP

Like thousands of people around the world, my April travel plans were no match for Eyjafjallajökullo, a smallish volcano located in the far south of Iceland.  I’m in Iceland now for a Balaton Group meeting and thanks to an enthusiastic soil scientist, I find myself  standing in a pasture not far from  Eyjafjallajökull. With its sleek, gray sides and surprisingly flat top, Eyjafjallajökull is far from the ugly, menacing volcano I expected.

I’m struck by the vibrancy of this place:  a  herd of Icelandic horses grazes about 200 feet down the riverbed and what must be hundreds of sheep roam over the hillsides down the road.  Thick vegetation covers the pasture and Icelandic birch trees line the roads. Even the soil I stand on has a bounce to it.

If you remember, the eruption of Eyjafjallajökullo created a massive ash cloud that eventually forced most of Europe’s airspace to close for five consecutive days, canceling almost all flights to and from Europe.   My family and I were not at all pleased by this turn of events.  When we had to explain why we weren’t in Scotland (where I was supposed to attend an IFF World Game), I had to explain, “We were ashed!”

If you had asked me “What good is a volcano?” I would have said, “not much!”               So, when I learned this week that volcanoes have a silver lining (or two), I had to laugh.  Even a volcano, the same one that ruined my travel plans, has a role to play in the tightly interconnected and delicately balanced phenomenon we call earth.

So, what good is a volcanco?

Thanks to Guõrún Gísladóttir, an enthusiastic and highly knowledgeable professor of Geography at the University of Iceland,  I learned one answer to this question has to do with soils.

In Iceland, the soils are called andosols.  Andosols are soils that are formed in the volcanic regions of the world. These soils have special properties that make them an important and unique natural resource.

Diagram created by U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) agency

These soils form from tephra, the stuff blown out of volcanoes.

Professor Gísladóttir and I grab a few shovels and dig down four feet or so in the pasture near Eyjafjallajökullo.  We find six different colored stripes in the soil, each stripe telling a different story.

The author digging for tephra

As I learn, tephra is filled with nutrients.  If you taste it (which I did!), it has a crunchy, earthy taste, not far from a hyper-healthy granola.  With the help of the rains, the nutrients from the tephra wash into the underlying vegetation and into the soil itself.

Whether your soils are fed by a volcano, or by salmon in a nearby river, or good old household compost,  healthy soil provides a foundation for healthy crops, the cleanliness of  water,  and the livelihoods of  farmers.  If handled well, soils (and the millions of creatures living in our soils) also help to break down waste, turning it into food for other species.

We depend on soil to live, yet it is surprisingly easy to forget.  When we pave where pavement isn’t necessary, clear cut forests, over-graze land, or cultivate land without protecting the top soil, we leave our soil unprotected and vulnerable to erosion.

Dana Meadows, an American systems scientist, worked with great mastery and diligence to raise the level of public discussion about a variety of systemic issues, one of them being soil erosion.  Explaining how nonlinear relationships influence soil erosion, she wrote:

“The effect of nonlinear relationships is also not generally understood. The public debate on the seriousness of soil erosion, for example, has yet to recognize that the relationship between soil depth and crop yield can be sharply nonlinear – that a little erosion may not have much effect, but a little more erosion may reduce agricultural output dramatically.”

Of course, there is much, much more for me to learn about soils.  So for now, I have decided to become a student of soil, studying how to create and talk about healthy soil and prevent soil erosion.

What’s my motivation?    I share Dana’s desire to raise the level of public discussion about systemic issues.  I also want to be able to explain to my kids how the health of our soil effects the health of people.  I want them to be inspired by soil, to invest in it and to treasure it.  If they have all the money in the world, but poor soil, dirty water and less wholesome food and less natural beauty, what good is that?

Perhaps after we all learn more about soil, my kids won’t think their mother is crazy when she “puts the garden to bed” in the fall.  Maybe, just maybe, they might pause as they step out off the school bus or onto a field, and notice the feel of the soil beneath their feet, and even revel in it, just as Walt Whitman once did:

Underfoot the divine soil

Overhead the sun.

The press of my foot to the earth

Springs a hundred affections.

— Walt Whitman

I’m becoming more and more convinced that when it comes to living “green” – or within the means of nature – we don’t have to get an advanced degree, or follow a 20-point check list.  Much of what we need to do is remember what we already know.

I grew up reading about Johnny Appleseed (real name:  John Chapman), the American folk hero who walked across America planting apple trees, handing out small bags of apple seeds along the way.  Last night, I read “The Story of Johnny Appleseed” (Aliki’s version) with my seven-year old son. It was the perfect ending to Halloween madness.  We both paused at this line:  

“On and on Johnny walked, planting as he went. When he needed more seeds, he collected sackfuls from the cider mills.”

When I asked my son what he thought of Johnny taking seeds from the cider mill, he said “that’s cool … ‘cuz they probably would have just ended up in the trash!”.  

I poked around this morning and found out that Johnny wasn’t just handed the seeds from the mills.  He had to separate the seeds from the apple pulp, wash and dry them, then put them in small sacks.

Long before the principle of “waste equals food” was so compellingly described by McDonough and Braungart in Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, Johnny Appleseed was living the idea.  

So what can we learn from Johnny?  If we want to live sustainably – within the means of nature – we’d be smart to look for opportunities where the waste of one, can become the food for another.  In this way, we do as nature does, allowing all materials  to continuously circulate in closed loops of production, use and recycling.

Most of our products, however, are created using a linear manufacturing process, e.g., take -> make ->  waste.    We take raw materials, such as copper, iron, and minerals from the Earth.  We make goods, for example, cars, refrigerators, and computers. And then, because most of these products end up in the dump, where they cannot be put to use by anything or anybody, we waste.  (Check out “The Story of Stuff” for more on this). 

We don’t have to create unusable waste.  If we imitate living systems, waste from one system can become food for another. Old tires can be become shoes, plastic bottles can turn into fleece jackets, the remains of coffee plants can be used to grow mushrooms*, and paper can become kitty litter or animal bedding. 

So how can we close the loop?   If you compost food wastes at home, you’re already doing it.  Your “waste” is becoming “food” for your garden.

If I think about it, I learned early on about the idea of “waste = food” from my parents. As a little girl, I tagged along on trips to the garage sales and flea markets.  To them, one person’s junk was another person’s treasure.

*See the ZERI site for a terrific case study.