The Compost Bin

Image by Walter Parenteau via Flickr

San Francisco recently approved the most aggressive recycling law in the United States. Residents will now be required to separate their garbage into three color-coded bins, blue for recycling, black for trash and green for composting. You read that right. San Francisco now has mandatory composting.

I think this is definitely a step in the right direction. Keeping this waste out of the landfill will cut down on landfill methane.

They’ve found that around 30 percent trash that goes to the landfill is compostable. But in landfill conditions, that waste is composting the same way it would in a home compost bin. In the landfill the piles don’t get to breath as much and the decomposition is Anaerobic. And the number one by-product of anaerobic decomposition is methane, a very potent greenhouse gas. If the production of methane can be reduced it would definitely help reduce our carbon footprint.

I'm always on the look out for cool composting stuff and I definitely spotted a bargain this week.

Costco is selling compost tumblers for $99 now. And they aren't bargain basement fall apart when you get home tumblers, they actually look pretty well made. Similar tumblers usually sell for about $150 - $250 online and then you have to pay for shipping on top of that. So $99 is really a steal. If you have a Costco in your area, just plunk down your $100 and you could take one home and start making compost that very same day.

It can hold up to 75 gallons of composting ingredients and it's made from recycled plastic. The steel legs are very sturdy too. I gave this thing a serious spin in the store. I haven't bought it yet but I think it's definitely in my future.

If you've never composted before, this is a great way to start. A tumbler is easy to maintain and you don't have to worry about pests getting in your compost because it's up off the ground. And very important for people who worry about nosy neighbors and home owner associations, it's really nice looking.

Even if I don't buy this tumbler I'm still happy to see it out there. A year ago composting bins just weren't widely available in stores. Now with the Obama organic vegetable garden all over the news and every morning show on TV doing segments on growing your own food gardening and composting are becoming mainstream. And that's definitely good news.

Just thought I'd share some of the composting news of the day.

1. Horse manure from the Inauguration Day Parade will be scooped up and sent to local farms for composting
2. The House of Representative receptions are using biodegradable containers, plates & utensils, that are made from corn and all food scraps and containers will be composted
3. Leftovers from today's inaugural events will be composted at a small farm in Maryland

This morning, Amazon made me very happy by announcing, Amazon's Frustration-Free Packaging. In their own words, they are "working with leading manufacturers to deliver products inside smaller easy-to-open recyclable cardboard boxes with less packaging material (and no frustrating plastic clamshells or wire ties)."

Now you're probably saying, what could this possible have to do with composting or gardening? Well, actually it's quite relevant but you'll have to bear with me for a moment.

One of my pet peeves on Christmas morning is all of the garbage that's left over. Have you tried to open up an action figure or really just about any toy lately? If you don't have wire cutters and a box knife, it takes literally 15 minutes to liberate a toy from it's package. Or how about batteries or small electronics? Those things could take a voyage to the bottom of the sea and return completely dry because of those crazy plastic clamshells. Now thanks to Amazon, all of that packaging can be composted.

These non-frustrating packages that Amazon is going to start using are recyclable. That means, that I'll be able to flatten the boxes and use them in the garden. Cardboard is great for stopping weeds. Just place it in between your raised garden beds and cover with mulch and you've got a weed free path. And if I'm all out of weeds (yeah right), I can just compost the boxes.

Here's a trick that I use for pizza boxes that would work great for regular cardboard boxes too. I fill a 5 gallon pail up with water and stuff the box in there. Then just leave it in there for a while or even overnight. The next day, the cardboard is mush and ready for the bin. No need to cut it into strips or anything, mush breaks down much faster than strips anyway.

So thanks for making my day Amazon. Since there's only a few products that come in frustration free packaging so far, my dream of composting Christmas is still a ways off. But that day is coming and that's great news.

Here's a tip for all of you out there trying to secretly grow marijuana in your basement. Having three pallets of compost delivered to your apartment building might give you away.

I'm not making this up. Actual drug dealers who were growing cannibus in an apartment had 360 bags of compost delivered to the site. That caused the landlord and police to get a little suspicious.

It makes me proud to know that the benefits of compost are getting to be so well known that even the shady underbelly of society is taking notice.

Image via Wikipedia Compost never ceases to amaze me. It looks like scientists have discovered that a bug that's commonly found in compost can be used to help the biofuel making process become more efficient.

Normally corn or sugar cane is broken down by yeast, into small forms of sugar that can be fermented when making traditional ethanol. But with the help of this compost bug, they believe that they'll be able to use grass, forest waste and other non-food items and do it more efficiently that ever before.

Since I'm a blogger with zero journalism experience, I'd like to use this part of this post to speculate and dream of how this news will effect things. No reason to just report the facts, when I can voice my opinions too.

Lets jump ahead 10 years for a moment and imagine what this could mean to automobiles of the future. Do you remember the Mr. Fusion that Doc Brown mounted on his Delorean at the end of Back to the Future? if I remember correctly, he went through the garbage and found a banana peel and some beer and dumped them into the device. Then the Delorean was all fueled up and ready to take Marty back to the future.

Well instead of Mr. Fusion, we could be fueling our cars with a Mr. Compost. Fusion sounds a little too, radioactive to have in your car but compost would be a lot safer. Ideally you would just throw some food waste into the tank, and then the onboard biofuel making stuff happens and you've got your ethanol. Ta-da!

Well it might take longer than 10 years for this to happen so someone should get working on this on right away. And if any of my biofuel industry readers need a spokesman, feel free to give me a call.

Composting in the future is going to be cool.

"Compost is the silver bullet that may allow Denver and the Democratic National Convention Committee to slash DNC trash to just 15 percent of the waste stream, their stated goal."

Source: Rocky Mountain News

DNC Composting Factoids:
- A1 Organics collected the DNC waste to be turned into compost
- They used special cups from cornstarch that could be composted
- Cardboard and sandwich boxes were composted
- A1 uses a special predatory wasp to control flies in their compost piles

Only 15% of the DNC waste stream wound up in landfills. The rest was composted or recycled.

Image via WikipediaAn Iowa City man was charged with possession with intent to sell when police arrested him with a large amount of marijuana.

First it was a retired UK man who was storing his heroin in his compost bin and now this guy claiming he was going to compost several gallon bags full of marijuana. Now it's a good guess that pot is a green and would get a compost pile cooking pretty well but these guys are giving us composters a bad name.

Related articles

• Iowa Man Says He Planned To Compost Pot, Not Smoke [via Zemanta]

They say that there's no such thing as bad press but after reading this article at the BBC, I'm not so sure anymore.

I've always said that the more we hear about compost in the news, the better it is for everyone. You know, to get the word out that it's good for the environment and all. Well I may have to retract that statement now.

Apparently this retired 70 year old gardener was using his compost pile to store the heroin that he was dealing from his garden.

Umm... so is heroin a green or a brown?

Everyone seems to be jumping on the compost bandwagon lately and that's a good thing. Imagine my surprise, during one of my usual lunch breaks spent wandering around stores with my camera, when I saw these bagged coffee grinds in Borders Bookstore.

The sign says, "Free coffee grinds to add to your garden's soil. Plants love it!" How cool is that? Now I know that Starbucks has been doing this for years but it's good to see some other stores following their lead.

And my 4 newly acquired bags of coffee grinds have already been added to one of my compost bins. I think they had some more in the cafe section of the store but I already took a picture of their display and then swiped it so I wasn't going to be too greedy.

I'm not a big fan of putting the grinds directly in the garden as they suggest so of course I composted them. I really have way too many leaves and need to get my piles cooking. Free coffee grinds are a great start. Thanks Borders.

Everything is better,
When it is wetter,
Under the sea.
- Sebastian - The Little Mermaid

That little crab was on to something and scientists at The National Institute of Water and Atmospheric research (NIWA) must have been listening. They're currently experimenting with compost and mussels in hopes of making a healthier environment for marine life and in the process, create the most delicious mussels.

Underwater compost sounds a little tricky because it would seem to me to be too wet. They always say that your compost should be about as wet as a wrung out sponge. But when you combine one of my favorite sea foods and compost, how can you go wrong. Good luck to the folks at NIWA.

This is a blog about compost and gardening but today I'm going to talk about the Olympics. No, they didn't add a synchronized composting event to the games (although that idea has some potential) but they did use biodegradable plastic for food packaging at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

The other day I did a post about how I thought that this company selling compostable cutlery was pretty cool. It's a step in the right direction when it comes to keeping things out of the landfill. So when I did some further research I found out that more than 75% of the 660 tons of garbage that was created at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney Australia was either recycled or composted. And biodegradable plastic used in the food packaging played a big part in that 75% number.

There's still some issues with this new products like the fact that it's more expensive than regular plastic. Also these products won't compost in your average home compost bin and will take 18 months in a commercial compost environment to break down. So that means that if you can't compost it at home, this stuff is going to wind up in the landfill. Sadly, I don't think anything composts in the landfill.

I recently read on Tiny Choices that biodegradable garbage bags are at the opposite end of the spectrum and are breaking down too soon. What good is a garbage bag that falls apart before the garbage men come to pick it up.

But like I said earlier, any step in the right direction is a good one. The biodegradable plastic people will figure it out eventually and when they do, think about all the different products and packaging that I'll get to put in my What's Decomposing blog posts.

Source for Olympic Data:

Now here's a good idea that's almost ready for prime time. You may have heard that they can now make biodegradable plastic using corn. So the whole supermarket paper or plastic argument may be going away sometime soon. But did you know your next picnic or BBQ could become more green too? All you need is some compostable cutlery.

How cool is this? These knives, forks and spoons are biodegradable and can be composted. They're made from corn starch "and other biodegradable fillers".

If you explore around this Eco-Products site, you'll see they also have compostable cups, plates and other cool things. The containers and plates are actually made from Sugarcane.

Unfortunately, these green products are probably a little too expensive for me. I think I can get a package of 500 forks from Costco for under $10. These compostable forks are sold in cases of 1000 for $45. But as they become more popular I'm sure the price will come down. And then I'll be the first on my block to have a Zero-Waste BBQ.

Here's an awesome quote that I just found while going over the articles Google sent me. You find a lot of interesting things in the news when you have a Google Alert for Compost.

This is from an article about how E. coli has been getting in our food supply lately. It was in the San Francisco Chronicle. The quote comes from a letter to the author that was written by Ian Davidson (it's the second letter on the linked page).

The application of properly made aerobic compost and the liquid extract of such compost (known generally as compost tea) to the foliage and root system of a plant creates a microbial force field around the plant that is naked to the human eye. By inoculating plants with these beneficial organisms, it is virtually impossible for pathogenic organisms to even touch the plant, because the beneficial aerobic organisms are in such dominance.

Well said, Ian. And on a personal note, I'd love to have my own "microbial force field". I'd use it on my kids all the time.

What's that honey? The kids are chasing each other with brooms again? Don't worry, the force field is up, they'll be fine.

Oh well, I guess I'll have to settle for a microbial force field around my garden. And that's not a bad thing to settle for.

Let's face it, compost needs a makeover. The only press that compost gets is when there's a neighborhood battle over a stinky compost bin. You don't hear teens at the mall saying things like, "Dude, compost is the awesome!" Even Al Gore really didn't mention much about compost during his many speeches and events that helped him earn a Nobel Prize.

When you think of compost, if you're like most non-gardeners, you think of garbage. And besides Oscar the Grouch, how many things associated with garbage are even remotely popular?

Well this composter would like to take his hat off to Julia Roberts. While Britney's meltdowns are making big news by demonstrating a celebrity who's falling apart, Julia Roberts is making news by doing it right and going green. I've read a few articles where she mentions what she's doing to be more environmentally friendly and one of those the things she's mentioning is composting.

It sounds silly when you talk about composting, but it’s something that is manageable in my household, something that I know we can accomplish.

Pssst... composting is good for the planet. Pass it on.