Community-scale composting growing at its own pace - The Columbian

This story appeared first on Monday, Oct. 10, in the print edition.

Curbside composting bins for most food scraps are set to arrive at Portland homes by the end of the month. And that, officials say, means the city to the south gets to be a guinea pig for Clark County.

Clark County and the city of Vancouver are adopting a “wait-and-see” approach before starting a home food waste collection program here, Vancouver Environmental Resources Manager Rich McConaghy said.

“We’re not looking at that at this point,” he said. “Really, our focus is looking at the commercial side: hospitals, businesses, schools. We see that really as our first focus.”

Food waste is the county’s largest single contributor to landfills — it made up 16.3 percent of the county’s waste stream in a 2008 study. Food decomposes in landfills, but as it does so it creates a large volume of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, McConaghy said.

Right now, several large commercial ventures, such as Burgerville, and nearly every Clark County school recycle their food waste, he said. And as more facilities are built locally to handle food waste composting, the county will be able to more realistically look at a home collection program as well.

Portland will join other West Coast cities, including Seattle and San Francisco, with well-established curbside food waste collection programs — but that doesn’t mean it has been without controversy there.

All food waste, including vegetables, fruit, meat, seafood, baked goods, grains, dairy, eggs, and coffee grounds and filters, will be accepted. But in order to make the program work without raising costs to homeowners, weekly garbage service was cut to biweekly, while the yard debris and food composting can will be collected once a week — a move that drew the ire of many.

“If we did that, it would be an issue,” McConaghy said.

Portland had very specific goals to implement home food waste collection, and Mayor Sam Adams had a large hand in pushing the city council to approve the start of the program, he said.

“I don’t know if we have the same approach with city politicians,” McConaghy said.

Vancouver Mayor Tim Leavitt agreed that he’d like to observe Portland’s program in action first. Yet Vancouver shouldn’t lag too far behind, he said. “For me, within reason, it’s an avenue toward sustainability and preservation of our resources that I would like to see the city actively pursue,” he said.

The Clark County Comprehensive Solid Waste Plan, approved by county commissioners and the Vancouver City Council, has no strong language pushing for a home composting program. The county should instead “evaluate residential and commercial food waste collection” and “encourage the private sector to establish additional processing capacity,” the policy reads.

Leavitt said the city’s sustainability plan, which was never formally adopted, also likely addressed solid waste reduction as well.

Among the pioneers of food composting in Clark County have been its schools.

Nearly every school district has such a program, in which students sort their lunch remnants into trash, recycling and compost bins.

At Heritage High School, where the program started two years ago, teacher Nancy Keller said they previously filled six to eight dumpsters of trash every week, but now it’s two to four.

“The kids do a pretty good job,” said Keller, who estimates Heritage has about a 71 percent success rate with the right trash ending up in the right canister.

Cost is among the chief reasons the Evergreen School District adopted the program — composting is cheaper than sending trash to a landfill, Resource Conservation Manager Dave Cone said. He didn’t have the savings numbers immediately available, but said, “It’s considerable.”

Also, he said, the program is “a good role model. It’s good for us as educators to be modeling that and showing these opportunities to the kids.”

A big reason composting hasn’t taken off in the Portland-Vancouver area until now has been the issue of supply and demand, McConaghy said.

Seattle and other Puget Sound area cities can send their home food waste to processing facilities nearby, he said. So far, the same facilities haven’t been developed in Southwest Washington and Northern Oregon.

That means food waste has to be trucked to locations including Pacific Region Compost in Corvallis, Ore., Cedar Grove in the Puget Sound area and Silver Grove just south of Olympia.

That raises costs, McConaghy said.

“It’s kind of like the chicken and the egg — until you have a place to take it, you can’t do it,” he said. “We admire (Portland) for stepping out front and getting the markets going.”

At least one project, Columbia Biogas in Northeast Portland, is set to open in the next year or so.

Metro, Oregon’s regional government that handles solid waste transfers for the area, also just lifted a 10,000-ton cap on the food waste it would take from Clark County, McConaghy said.

That should allow the government to start working with more private companies to start commercial programs.

Home composting may just be a matter of time and patience.

“It would be good for us,” McConaghy said. “Maybe not this year, but a couple years down the road.”

Andrea Damewood: 360-735-4542 or http://facebook.com/reporterdamewood or http://twitter.com/col_cityhall or andrea.damewood@columbian.com.

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Making a compost bin - Gloucester Daily Times

I think that good, rich composted soil is "black gold," so it should be no surprise that I think it is worth creating your own gold. The best way to do that is to have your own compost bin of some sort. Remember that to make compost you need four components: organic matter such as leaves and straw; garbage and kitchen waste without any meat or dairy; soil; and water. Just remember that you want to turn the waste periodically so that it will decompose more quickly.

You have a few choices on how to make your own compost. One choice would be to just make a compost pile out near your garden and add the four components as they become available. The problem with this is that it is not easy to contain the contents and is not very neat. You or someone else in your house may not like the looks of it as well.

Another choice is to take a plastic container of some sort (such as an old plastic trash can or storage bin) and drill holes into it, about every 2 inches or so, on all sides, on the bottom, and on the lid. (The container must have a lid.) If you are able to obtain a second lid without any holes, this would be perfect to catch the liquid that leaches out of the holes. Otherwise, this nutrient-filled liquid will be wasted.

Every day or so, as you think of it, you can aerate the bin by giving it a quick shake. If the contents of the bin are always wet, or if there is an unpleasant odor, add some shredded fall leaves, shredded newspaper, or sawdust to the bin. This will dry it out and help restore the ratio of greens to browns that makes decomposition happen quicker. This is a good way to try out composting without making it into a big project.

Of course you can also buy a compost bin. I have one that was offered for sale at a very reduced price by the town that I live in. Towns know that if someone uses a bin, it will reduce garbage and some trash disposal costs. We have reduced our garbage by half. If you buy a bin from a garden center or online you will see many choices at many different prices.

If you the yard space for it, the method I recommend is to simply create your own wire double compost bin. It is easy to make and maintain, allows you to have one side decomposing while filling the other, and it is cheap. It is also easy to move material as it decomposes from one side to the other to speed up the whole composting process.

Here is how it is done. Looking straight ahead, you want to make two side-by-side boxes that are each about a cubic yard. All you need are six cedar landscaping stakes, some plastic wire screening and some plastic twists to secure the fence to the posts. The first step is to pound three stakes into the ground 3 feet apart to form the three corners of your square for the left bin. Wrap the screen around the first three posts so that one side is open. Secure with the plastic strips. Pound in another stake at the fourth corner and bring the wire mesh up to that, wrapping it around so you can now bring it back towards the right rear stake.

As you look directly at you box, pound another stake beside the right rear stake of the left side box, then another 3 feet to the right and the last stake 3 feet toward the front of what is now the right side box. Now continue wrapping the mesh down between the two stakes at what is now the middle rear of the boxes and around the stakes of the right side of the right box. Secure all of the corners with more of the plastic ties and you have two side by side composts bins.

This compost box will give you many years of "black gold" and hardly takes any time or costs relatively little money. It will be the cheapest gold that you ever invest in.

Guy Esposito is an orthopedic surgeon whose other passion is vegetable gardening. He is the head gardener for the PBS series "Ciao Italia" (www.ciaoitalia.com), featuring his wife, Maryann, which features several episodes based on his garden. When not attending to his duties as chief of surgery of the Wentworth-Douglass Hospital in Dover, N.H., he can always be found in his garden.

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Scrape Your Plate day at CU-Boulder brings food, compost awareness - Colorado Daily

Whitney Bryen - Posted: 10/12/2011 11:26:17 PM MDT

After checking out the options at the 11 restaurants in the Center for Community (C4C) dining hall Wednesday, University of Colorado freshman Chris Wood settled on chicken sliders with mashed potatoes, French fries and a side salad.

After eating the majority of his lunch, Wood took his tray to the dump station before heading to class.

But instead of laying his tray on the conveyor belt and sending his leftovers to the back, Wood was asked to clean his own dishes into compostable bins as part of Scrape Your Plate Day, hosted by CU's Dining Services.

Wood pushed a pile of mashed potatoes, a few croutons and a couple of French fries into one of the bright yellow bins, which were already filling up an hour after the event began.

Scrape Your Plate was started in 2007 by the Environmental Center and Dining Services to raise students' awareness of not only how much food they're wasting, but that food can be composted as well, said Dan Baril, recycling program manager for the E-Center. The event is held every semester in the C4C, Libby and Sewall.

"It's not a costly event at all so if it impacts even five students to change how much food they're taking for the rest of the semester, that makes a big difference," Baril said.

For the last four years of the event, CU has compared the amount of wasted food to the number of students eating in the dining hall, said Lauren Heising, CU's coordinator for sustainable dining.

On average, students are wasting about a quarter to nearly half a pound of food each, Heising said.

"That's like three pieces of provolone cheese per person," Heising said. "It's a small cheeseburger or about three chicken nuggets that's being thrown away."

CU freshman Kate Stentina left her tray after scraping about a quarter of her veggie burger and a few bites of noodles into the compost bin.

"It's hard at the C4C not to get too much because there is so much you want to try," Stentina said. "It gets better after a while but it's overwhelming at first."

With options including an Italian pick-your-own-pasta bar, Mexican food from homemade tortillas, Persian skewers and a dessert bar, it's difficult for some students to resist the temptation to try a little of everything in C4C's all-you-can-eat dining center.

CU freshman Jiwon Song said she sometimes makes two trips to get everything she wants instead of loading up in the first trip.

"I try to think about how much I eat so I don't throw a lot away," Song said. "Sometimes I start with a small amount and then go back for dessert, so I don't get too much."

For some students, a little wasted food is no big deal but for students like Wood, Scrape Your Plate is exactly what he needed to start thinking about how much he's putting on his plate in the first place.

"It's true, I probably could have taken less and then gone back for seconds," Wood said. "I'll probably start smaller next time and make more trips instead of loading up right away."

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Got Compost? Read About Compost Bins and the Finished Product - HobbyFarms.com

(Compost Basics by Jessica Walliser, page 5 of 5)

Where to Compost
For large-scale production of compost, ingredients are usually organized into windrows and turned with a tractor or bulldozer.

Moderate-sized farms may prefer a series of large, freestanding piles turned by hand or with a tractor.  Home gardeners and small farmers have more options, including both commercial and homemade composting bins.

Commercial composting bins can be constructed of plastic, wood or recycled materials and are available in many shapes and sizes.

Freestanding, composting containers, including plastic, oblong tumblers and spinning cylinders, are meant to make turning the pile easier.

Your compost bin--even as simple as one crafted out of chicken wire--will help you give back to the earth and grow better, heathier plants.

Many of these models come with handles or cranks that rotate the whole container along with its contents. The contents of rectangular, ground-level composting bins are a little more difficult to turn, but the finished compost is easy to empty out through bottom doors; these types are usually cheaper to purchase.

Kits for do-it-yourselfers are another option; containing metal corner pieces and a lid, these kits are installed by sliding appropriately sized lumber (purchased separately) into the metal pieces to construct a square bin.

If commercial composting bins are used, consider their size (3’ x 3’ x 3’ is the minimum size necessary to reach required temperatures), ease of use, number of aeration holes (especially important for enclosed tumblers) and appearance.

If the bin will be prominently located, it may be worth spending a little extra money for an attractive model.

Homemade composting bins can be constructed of pallets (avoid ones used to store chemicals), wood slats (never use treated lumber—the preserving chemicals may leach into the compost), hay bales, perforated plastic trash cans or wire cages.  There are many construction plans available online.

The Timeline
Organic matter can fully compost in as little as four weeks or as long as six months (or more!).

The finish time depends on the ingredients used, the C:N ratio, the frequency of aeration, the moisture content and the size of the ingredients when the composting process began (shredding or chopping materials before adding them to the pile will help speed decomposition).

For record-fast compost, begin with two to three times more “browns” than “greens,” finely shred or chop all ingredients, add a few shovelfuls of finished compost to the new pile, aerate at least once a week, maintain moderate moisture levels and actively monitor temperatures (don’t forget to thank those microbes, too!).

Testing the Finished Product
Tests for C:N ratio, compost stability and pathogens must be documented before any compost (even homemade) is used on a certified organic farm. Tests can also be conducted for nutrient content, an assessment of biological activity and pH. 

For home gardeners, testing isn’t necessary, but it is interesting to find out what your finished compost is all about. Remember, temperature is really the best indicator of proper decomposition—160 degrees F is an easy indicator that compost is done right.

About the Author: Horticulturist Jessica Walliser can be heard every Saturday from 12 to 2pm EST on Sirius satellite radio channel 114 where she co-hosts “The Organic Gardeners.” For more on organic growing, check out her new book, Grow Organic: More Than 250 Tips and Ideas for Growing Flowers, Veggies, Lawns and More (St. Lynn’s Press, 2007).

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