Paths Crossed: Domingo Morales, part I
The founder of Compost Power on how he arrived at soil, sustainability, and stepping into mentor David Buckel's shoes after his tragic death.
“We cannot fight for climate justice without giving public housing residents the opportunity to be innovative, without giving them the power to make a difference at a local level.” That’s from Domingo Morales, the force behind Compost Power, founded on the mission to make compost cool in New York City by removing negative stigmas—think rats and odors. Domingo currently operates nine sites around the city, eight on public housing campuses in all five boroughs, and one on a private patch of land on Brooklyn’s East River, near Domino Park. This site is the one that makes Compost Power my neighbor, and where I was lucky enough to meet this brilliant community leader.
It's no small thing to find community, to work toward interconnectedness in New York City, where we can be paradoxically more alone while adjacent to thousands within the narrow walls of our high rises. Walking along the atmospheric riverfront past the dirt piles around which Domingo and his team were gathered always had me curious—and that’s the point. (Those dirt piles are in fact windrows, where life-giving soil is simmering.) Now, dropping off my food scraps to Compost Power is a bright spot in my week, knowing I’m making a small contribution to a healthy, more sustainable cycle for our planet.
Domingo made quite an impression on me when we first met. I’d been looking forward to talking to him for a long time to learn more about this composting cycle and how it’s serving our city and its residents. But what I uncovered is a story that has everything—it is about exposure and education, local government vs. federal government, fossil fuels vs. human power, and resilience in the face of tragedy.
This is the first Paths Crossed I will be sharing in two parts. It starts with a parallel and profoundly poetic life cycle in the form of a mentorship between David Buckel and Domingo Morales. It is a mentorship that channeled all of Domingo’s overlooked energy and intelligence into a calling. David, a civil-rights attorney turned master composter, championed both people and the planet—if you recall the film Boys Don’t Cry, it was made in tribute to one of David’s real-life cases. But in the first Trump administration—in the time of that first foray into gutting the EPA—David’s climate grief took a tragic turn, and he ended his life in an act of protest. As Domingo steps into David’s shoes as a leader, so begins Compost Power. Part I is an important origin story, one that I hope leaves you with some inspiration before we move into Compost Power’s current initiatives as Earth Day arrives next week.
How would you introduce yourself?
I'm a native New Yorker. I'm an entrepreneur, an innovator, a designer, a builder, and a steward of planet Earth.
And the founder of Compost Power.
Ah, yes, and that—I am the founder and CEO of Compost Power, and one of the very first winners of the David Prize in New York City, which is really cool. It's an award modeled after the MacArthur Genius Award, where five residents are chosen yearly to receive $200,000 to make New York a better place. In 2020, my goal was to bring composting to public housing, and I won the prize.
You told me that you’re an adrenaline junkie and that’s why you love composting. What is the correlation there?
I have always liked a physical workout. I was one those people doing pull-ups and climbing light posts. I did parkour for many years. I would start careers, and they would be physical, but they would get boring as soon as I felt like there was nothing more to learn. I’m a quick study, and if I'm in a place where I can't expand my mind, where I feel like I’m not being challenged, I get frustrated and quit—it was always, bye, thanks, on to the next.
Composting was the first time I found something that could give me that adrenaline—I'm getting that workout, I'm turning compost by hand. But it was also a place to constantly learn. I have to be a pest control specialist, and I have to keep one step ahead of New York City rats. I have to keep one step ahead of storm water. Composting in New York City—in an urban environment—means our sites are in proximity to residential properties, so there’s always a spotlight on us. That’s in and of itself stressful; and I love it. It keeps me going. Someone’s always watching, so you have to do everything at the highest level possible so the community knows how much you care.
One of your sites is right near my building, and when I first went to the open house last year—shared with the aquaponics farm and beekeeping sites that are no longer there—you really struck me when giving the Compost Power tour. Not only was your enthusiasm apparent, but I could see your sharp mind turning. I could see the problem solver, the leader, the architect, the chemist. Where does this all start for you?
I grew up in public housing. And I had two kids really young. So that meant college wasn't an option, even though I was really smart. That's why I started working all of these jobs; I needed to pay bills. So I would get work and become the best, but then they wouldn't pay me enough. I wouldn't feel valued. That went on for many years. In 2014 I hit a really dark moment; I hated my job and the way they treated me. I felt like I didn’t have a purpose and I shut down. Me and my kid's mother—that was the end. She's like, You just quit your job. How will you make money? So we split up, and I went through a couple months of contemplating life and what the purpose of it was: Why am I even in this world? Why am I alive?
I lived in East Harlem in the Woodrow Wilson Houses. They had really tall buildings, and I used to just sit and dangle my feet off the top of the building and look into the East River. So one day I was headed to the roof when I saw an AmeriCorps flyer that said: Do you want to serve your community? Are you 18 to 24? Do you have a GED or high school diploma? And in the photo there were people who had army uniforms on. I really wanted to be in the army when I was 17. I passed everything except that I had a tattoo that showed outside the uniform, on my neck. So they told me I couldn’t join. When I saw the AmeriCorps flyer and uniforms, I thought, Is this an army program in the city? That’s how I registered it—that this has to be for me because I have everything that they're requiring; the people in the picture look like me; they have uniforms on like they are military—I love this. So I ripped the flyer off and went and called them.
Wow, I’m glad you saw that flyer.
In the info session, they were talking about sustainability, and they were so passionate. They asked, What’s going to happen to public housing in 10 years? And everybody in the room is like, What are you talking about? It's public housing; it’s federally funded, it is fine. And then they started asking: Do you know that public housing residents don't know how much electricity they use? And it hit me, that's true—there are no meters in any apartment. You can just use as much power as you want. And there's no way to track how much water we use either.
They were pointing out a variety of unsustainable practices and systems that negatively impact the planet. And then the connections started firing in my mind—why does this matter to NYCHA (New York City Housing Authority) residents? If NYCHA residents aren't paying for it, and we're not being careful with how we use it, then the federal government can blame this wastefulness on NYCHA residents instead of unsustainable, poor design. And then they can keep divesting, as they have continued to do year by year. The whole session had me inspired. It also really got me thinking about the way I eat, and my food habits, how many gallons of water it takes to make something, and how everything goes into the trash.
I bet the U.S. would be a better place if we all had to do a year of national service in the form of volunteerism with programs like this. I have to dig in, but I’m sure now AmeriCorps is also on the chopping block with our new administration. What did you do after the info session?
There were two tracks within Green City Force [the program within AmeriCorps for youth who reside in NYCHA housing]. One is the energy team: You learn how to do energy audits, how to maintain solar panels, and then you get a job in that field. The other is the farm team: You manage a farm, grow food for residents, do farm-based learning and composting. I wanted to do solar panels and energy audits; I wanted to make NYCHA buildings more efficient, because my background was in mechanical engineering and building maintenance. And I wanted to stick to tech because that's where the money is. But they wanted to put me on the farm team. I made a big fuss. I was a germaphobe, so I certainly didn’t want to compost. I thought they were gonna kill me. But they saw that I would have a bigger impact on a farm. I took it as an insult, because I didn't see the importance of all my different skills and how they were interconnected.
And you probably also just hear the word “farm” as a New York City kid…
Yeah, and for some reason we associate it with poverty, like farmers don't make money. But in the end, they put me on the farm team, and I kind of fell in love with the physical aspect of tilling the soil. That was one of the first things we did on the farm. And then I got to design my garden bed; I put a race track in my bed so that at lunchtime I could do laps around the garden.
MEETING A MENTOR: DAVID BUCKEL
A race track, I love that.
Yeah, I found a way to make gardening for me. A week into being at the farm at the Red Hook Houses [the largest NYCHA campus in the city], they took us to a nearby composting site. And they introduced us to David Buckel, who they introduced as an amazing civil rights lawyer turned environmental genius. He worked at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, which managed the compost site. They told us that he's the only one who figured out how to do large-scale, human-powered composting right—that he doesn't have rats or odors on his site.
In the beginning, I used to wear multiple layers of gloves when working. I would cover up because I was worried about the stuff making me sick. But I realized that it was a lot cleaner than I thought. And as I started, I fell in love with David because he was a really hard worker. And he was an older man—I thought, wow, he's moving really fast, he’s shoveling. I'm like, This is the kind of guy I want to be like when I'm older. This is how I want to be moving. So I gravitated to him, he was very thorough, very methodical and detail-oriented. I would do research and then come back and ask David targeted questions.
I love that you finally landed somewhere where you saw something of yourself in someone else.
I did get bored with composting after about a year. And I told David that maybe it was time for me to move on, maybe run a farm or try something else. And that's when David started putting me on to different composting systems. He said if I was bored, I should start consulting and go to community gardens throughout the city who didn’t have it as good as we had it, who didn’t have these skills and protocols. So I started consulting at other community gardens throughout the city, and that’s when I realized, Oh, you can't get bored. Impossible. There are way too many different ways to do this. There are way too many sites that are doing badly. I’ll always have a project. And I'm the kind of person who needs a project. So I fell in love with it.
And David was also teaching me how to manage people. I discovered I'm really good at it because I have this whole-system approach to everything I do. I could be on one end of the site and pick up on something that's 50 feet away like it's right next to me. I loved working with people; I had 150 volunteers at one time on that site in Red Hook, and they were all moving efficiently. They each had something to do. Nobody got hurt. If you design your site with people in mind, you can get a lot done, with a lot of meaningful education.
Your mentor sounds amazing. You said he’d been a lawyer previously?
Yeah. David took a master composting course after he left civil rights law. They made a film about one of his cases called Boys Don't Cry. David was the lawyer who protected this transgender young man.
Oh yes, with Hilary Swank—I’m finding this whole story that you’re sharing inspiring. We don't know what's out there until we find it. And it sounds like this is the beautiful case when it comes to your path and this mentor…
Yeah, I think that exposure is important. And I also think David had a really high standard. I call it the diamond standard of composting. For David, the goal was to provide job training that kicks doors open. He knew he was a privileged white man, a former lawyer, and that there are a lot of young adults in New York City that don't have jobs, that have to live off the system because they didn't get the same training and education. So he was really invested in professional developing and sculpting amazing young adults; he took it really seriously. After every volunteer session, he would send a report of what AmeriCorps members could do better, what they could work on, and things that they excelled in. He was a genius. We lost a good one.
Oh is he gone? I was about to ask you where he is now.
Oh. Unfortunately David killed himself in 2018. He set himself on fire in Prospect Park. He poured gasoline all over himself and lit the match to protest the fossil fuels industry.
[Tears in my eyes, still, when working on this piece, in the way my conversation with Domingo unfolded into this moment].
Yeah, I’m sorry, I probably should have warned you.
No, no, please. I’m so sorry. That must have been a horrific time for you.
It was. My dad died in February of 2018. Then two weeks later my cat died, who I’d had for 10 years. And then in April, David immolated himself, April 14. I was so numb, I just didn't know how to react.
Of course, why would you? You said David was struggling leading up to this?
Yeah. We ended up working very closely together. He’d lost one staff member at Brooklyn Botanic Garden, so seven months into my AmeriCorps program, a job came up and David told me to apply. I told him I couldn’t because I didn’t have a college degree or a driver's license, and those two qualifications were required. “Domingo,” he said. “We hired people who had both those things and they weren’t a great fit for the job. You're the best person for the job.” So I applied as a joke. Like, Okay, David, but they're not going to hire a person of color at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, that's just not a thing—maybe as a security guard, but not as a composter.
So you get the job.
I ended up blowing the interview out of the water. The director of horticulture was giving the interview, and I did research on the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, because I knew I was going to interview at a place where their focus is horticulture, not composting. So if I went in there and all I knew is composting, I wouldn’t stand out. I think I asked him about how they’d stopped using fertilizer in an effort to be more environmentally friendly. I asked if instead they were using special aeration machines on the lawn. And he went on for 20 minutes about the upgrades that the Brooklyn Botanic Garden was making. I think in that interview I was able to show that in NYCHA, we're really smart; we know a lot, we just don't have exposure. So from November 2015 to spring 2018 I worked alongside David.
LOSING A MENTOR
And so this was basically at the start of the first Trump administration.
Yes, and what began to happen is that when we were at the Red Hook composting site, our budget was cut over and over. The EPA was defunded by Trump. We went through a lot of ups and downs. And David and I were constantly fighting to keep our site human-powered—they wanted to give us gas/fossil-fuel machines to boost capacity. The Department of Sanitation kept asking us, Why are we going to fund you if you’re only processing 150 to 200 tons a year. We tried to change the way they looked at the metrics and the funding for these small sites: We worked with 2,000 volunteers, 27 school groups, and this many community gardens—how many people were educated through this site? So David was depressed; he would send me articles about environmental issues like dead zones in the ocean, the EPA being defunded, nuclear plants exploding. He went down the rabbit hole, and he couldn't stop scrolling. I’d be like, “David, stop sending me these articles, you can’t pay too much attention to those.”
I wish I could remember what podcast I heard this on years back, but in talking about our varied internal sensibilities, this person related it to the degree to which we have a built-in surge protector or not. For example, where some people are crushed by fame, turning to drugs etc, others are able to handle it.
Yeah—the morning he died, he sent an email to all of the news outlets. He sent it to all of his environmental partners. He sent it to all of the AmeriCorps program. He sent it to his family. Like, This is what I want people to know from this. And early that morning, David texted me to say, Hey, Domingo, I'm not going to make it today. Are you going to be good?
And I'm like, “Of course, I got this, David. You trained me, don't worry about it.” That's what I said to him—I got this. Because for the last couple of months before he immolated himself, he was teaching me things he’d never taught me. He was removing the curtain. So this is me proving to him that I can handle the site without him, right? And although he sent me an email along with everyone else early that morning, I glossed over it. For me, it was David sending another dark article that I couldn’t read right then. But then I'm shoveling that morning—that’s when everything disappears for me. It always happens to me, it’s my time to think.
Ah, so that's when everything quiets.
Yeah, so I start going over things in my head. I’d heard a headline about someone that morning in Prospect Park setting themself on fire. Wait, did he say David Buckel? David and I, a year or so before, had a conversation about Tibetan monks setting themselves on fire as an act of protest. And I remember telling David, “That's stupid.” And he's like, “You can't say that, Domingo.” And I'm like, “No, David. If they're burning themselves to protect their kids, who's caring for their kids after that? What happens to the kids in the time it takes them to figure out what family they're going to be with?” I felt like this did more damage to the kids and the families than it did make a statement to those occupying Tibet. I had a knee-jerk reaction to that conversation, and we had a really big argument about it. So all of this comes down on me while shoveling, and I hand my phone to someone and I’m like, Hey, dude, am I reading this right? I didn't believe it.
There’s no reason to be able to process something like that.
Yeah. And I had to keep my composure for a whole hour and a half. I'm trying to make sure the volunteers end on a happy note. At the end of each day we form a circle and talk about what we accomplished. Why what we did was important. How many tons of compost we turned. We turned 15 tons; that's 15 baby elephants. We sifted 40 cubic feet of finished compost that could go out to farms. We clap it up and thank everyone for making the world a better place. It’s usually the happiest moment, and it was the first time I had to fake it.
I can’t imagine. And that’s a beautiful closing ritual day to day.
Because of that moment, because of having to shut out all emotions when I first got the news, it kind of shut off my emotions for a couple years. I just kept working. In the email David sent me, he said, Domingo, I trust you. I'm leaving this site in your capable hands; go and get some temp workers. He's worried about if I’m going to have enough staff to turn the compost. I took it as David expecting me to keep moving, not to shut down.
I am hoping you knew/know that whatever you chose to do in that impossible situation would have been okay as long as it was the right thing for you. Were you angry?
Yeah, I spent a lot of time angry at him. I was really pissed. I did contemplate leaving, but I felt like the community we made at that site was too important. We also had the young adults who came through the same program as me, who would be coming behind me and would have nowhere to go if we didn't keep that site going.
So you did take over?
I got a bunch of calls and emails from my supervisor at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden afterward: Hey, we're going to shut down the site. We're going to take all the compost out. We're going to bring in Bobcats. The Department of Sanitation is going to clear it. Don't worry about it. Take time off. And it gave me so much anxiety, and it made me so angry and frustrated and sad and depressed. I'm like, This is not David’s legacy. He did not want gas machines on his site the day after he killed himself. It woke something up inside of me. I told them I’d be in at work as usual. I told them we’d slow down on volunteers while I figured this out, but that I didn’t think we should shut down what we're doing.
So I became the David Buckel. I became the guy everyone came to for professional development. I became the guy who wrote reports: This is really great, but they could focus on this. I thought, Alright, how can I make this site a little bit more me? I was a bit more inclined to teach youth the many different skill sets I had—using circle saws and tools, for instance. I always wanted to have wheelchair accessibility for visitors to the site. David always thought it just wasn't feasible. So I did it; I built collapsible tables that go up and down. David always thought that getting kids involved was a lot of work and not very productive, that they’d mess things up. But I have kids. And I think the productivity is in what they're learning. So I built a curriculum and had kids come to the site.
That’s all really incredible, and given the circumstances.
Yeah, when David immolated himself, I decided, Okay, I’m here, let me have some fun with this. I dove into it from 2018 to 2020. We boosted capacity. But in 2020 Covid happened. The Department of Sanitation was defunded. They stopped all composting. I got laid off. For the first time in five years, I didn’t have a job to go to. I just didn't know what to do, but I was in the process of applying for the David Prize already [the name is a coincidence—different David]. The founder of Green City Force had sent me a message encouraging me: Domingo, you always have a million ideas. How about you put them to good use and apply to this program? My initial David Prize idea was to create a compost gym, a gym that stores kinetic energy—putting shovels on a pulley system so you could increase tension and create more electricity depending on your strength. I called it Motion with Meaning—a gym where your energy isn’t wasted.
Wow, I love that.
Yeah, but the initiative had to change because we didn't have resources for the public housing residents after Covid hit. There was no training for them. I got depressed waiting for the David Prize to let me know whether or not they would give me the seed money to start this initiative. So I decided to use my savings to build one compost site at a public housing campus in Canarsie as a test case. I sent the video snippet to the David Prize—I was like, Hey, I just want to let you know that I started without you and it’s going well. A couple weeks later, they're like, Hey, we didn’t forget about you, Covid delayed us—you’re a finalist.
I won in October of 2020.
And that’s how Compost Power was born.
To be continued next week…
Thank you so much, Rachel, for sharing the story of this incredible person and his work. So enthusiastic to read the next Part! We all need inspiration these days and your conversation with Domingo Morales is among the most compelling examples of resilience I’ve seen.