Musician's 'soil maker' invention fights climate change
LOS ANGELES — When you think about fighting climate change, many solutions come to mind. But for music artist Derek Richard Thomas, the answer is simple: soil.
What You Need To Know
- The Soil Maker is a handcrafted stoneware composting tower that sits on the ground and turns your food waste into living soil
- Musician and inventor Derek Richard Thomas said climate change, pollution, water quality, garbage, hunger and scarcity all come from a lack of soil on a global scale
- Every day, 4,000 tons of food waste are generated in Los Angeles County
- In a landfill, a banana peel takes 2 years to decompose, in a Soil Maker, only 2-4 weeks
“Any piece of dirt can become soil,” Thomas said.
Dirt is essentially dead soil, stripped of its life-supporting properties. Soil, however, is a dynamic, living ecosystem, teeming with microbes, essential for plant life.
And for Thomas, “DRT” — his initials for “dirt” — isn’t just a name. It’s his passion.
After seeing widespread soil degradation during his travels, Thomas’ mission became clear: to bring that dead dirt back to life using his invention, the Soil Maker.
“A soil maker is a stoneware composter, you put it underground, and you put your food scraps in it. And then it composts your food and turns it into nutrients for the trees and plants around it,” Thomas said.
At Santa Monica’s Palisades Park, Thomas envisions Soil Makers empowering communities. Placed in backyards, schools and public parks, these devices could transform how cities manage waste and significantly mitigate climate change.
“In anywhere that there’s going to be organic matter thrown into a trash can, we can have one of these that feeds the trees, sequesters carbon. And it becomes part of the solution,” Thomas said.
Soil is a powerful natural system. It actively pulls carbon from the atmosphere, absorbs more water — mitigating drought and wildfires — and supports biodiversity for a sustainable food supply.
As a musician, Thomas amplifies this message, writing an original song that became the official music video for the acclaimed film “Common Ground.”
Up in Ojai at Big Picture Ranch is the home of Rebecca Harrell Tickell, co-filmmaker behind “Common Ground” and “Kiss the Ground” — documentaries highlighting soil health and regeneration as a climate solution.
“We realized that this is what our life’s purpose was, this is what our movies needed to be about,” Harrell Tickell said.
Big Picture Ranch has produced more than 20 climate-solution films, and they practice what they preach.
Harrell Tickell and her family have transformed their home into a thriving regenerative farm and movie studio.
Recently in their garden, Thomas installed a Soil Maker, showing employees how it will turn their organic food scraps into living soil — a direct page from their own climate storytelling book.
Thomas also envisions the Soil Maker as a solution for communities rebuilding after disasters like the Palisades and Eaton fires, turning charred land into vibrant, living soil.
“It just takes one city to adopt these soil makers at a citywide level, that we can then start to do it all over the world,” Thomas said.
To learn more or purchase a soil maker, visit here.