If you don't happen to live in progressive areas like the Bay Area where many communities offer a green waste curbside pickup program, then why not compost in your backyard?  Better yet, why not start a composting system and get your neighbors involved!

This is quite easy to do.  About 3-4 neighbors on our block drop off their kitchen scraps (no meat, dairy or breads) in the compost bin in our backyard.  We mix it with browns (leaves, torn up pieces of cardboard boxes, shredded newspaper) and then let nature do its part.  Actually, we accelerate the process be poking it with a compost poker-this adds air to the equation which helps speed things up a bit.  You can see a picture of the compost poker in one of the photos to the right. We strive for a 50% browns to 50% kitchen scraps by weight ratio and this seems to work out quite well.  We also collect coffee grounds from the Whole Foods down the street and add these to the compost (coffee grounds are great in the compost-and they add a nice smelling ingredient to it).

My wife and I figure we save about 5-10 pounds fromour household each week (only my wife and I live in our home).  We collect up our kitchen scraps in a small stainless steel crock  - see the photo to the right to get an idea of what the crock looks like.  We empty the crock into the backyard compost heap 1-2 times per week.

After the compost has finished "hot composting," we do a few things with it.  We use some of the rough compost in our vegetable garden and flower garden.  We also take some of the compost and feed it to a bin of red works that we have.  The red worms refine the compost even further and leave behind a really rich byproduct called, "vermi-compost," which makes a wonderful additive to the soil.  We never feed the worms raw scraps, as this tends to attract fruit flies even when the scraps are covered (most sources on the internet say you can feed them raw scraps directly...this just hasn't been successful with us.  The worms seem to be much, much happier as they are able to readily consume the cold compost). 

Because we've involved our neighbors in this project, we've created a little more community and conversation about sustainability.  Other people start to see that these things aren't so difficult to do! 

reference link: not provided

2 Comments

  add a comment

 

alorenk says:

Thanks for the tip re worms. Also use of cardboard boxes (office cleaners unite! those cardboard boxes really are great for mulching and keeping weeds down too).

posted 12/30/08 at 07:43 PM

 

argam says:

There must be some emissions savings resulting from this solution due to the garbage trucks not coming to pick up the garbage.

posted 05/26/08 at 07:59 PM

 

add a comment

The Creative Citizen Network: