Pitch In! Community Compost Supports Local, Sustainable Food

It wasn't easy for me to start composting. I wanted to, of course, because it's such an easy and sustainable way to recycle food waste, but when you live in a city or town there are often obstacles. Ok, I'll admit that part of it was laziness and not wanting to deal with it, but mostly the reasons had to do with my living situation. I was renting and sharing an apartment with several roommates who weren't all that excited about food rotting in a bucket in our kitchen and having to empty it and clean it every few days. More than that, we didn't have much of a backyard, and the landlord wouldn't have been supportive of the construction of our own little compost pile there, regardless of my insistence that it really wouldn't smell all that bad. Reluctantly, I settled for tossing my food scraps in with the regular trash.

But no longer: I soon discovered that the little city I live in happens to have a community composting program located at one of the community garden sites. Anyone is free to contribute their household food scraps (with a few limitations) to the compost, which is spread in windrows and aerated. The finished compost is incorporated into the soil of the city's community gardens and excess is sold to other local farmers and landscapers. Community composting projects are a great way to add nutrients to urban garden spaces, which are often characterized by depleted soil, as well as a great way to divert waste from the landfill and back into a usable and profitable product.

Chances are pretty good that there are community composting projects in your town or city. They're all over the place. In my city, individuals bring their waste to the compost area located on the outskirts of town, but many larger cities have multiple drop-off points and receptacles at centralized locations, like the farmer's market. Some may require membership or operate as a cooperative reliant on volunteer labor to maintain the project. In several cities, the public works department will even pick up your compost for you, just as they would the trash and recycling.

When joining an urban community composting project, it's important to self-regulate what you are throwing in your compost bucket according to the project's guidelines. Most compost projects don't accept pet waste, meat and bone scraps, ashes, or anything that isn't organic matter, like plastics. If community composting is still too much of a hassle for you, look into maintain a small indoor composting operation using a worm bin. Check out the options available to you and start composting in your community today!

photo credit:CC BY 2.0