Q: I was interested if you or your readers knew more about food composting. I am always looking for ways to better reuse and recycle but I can't seem to get a straight answer on what can be composted and if there are locations I can drop it off. I don't need it for soil purposes... what can I do?
Sent by Brianne
Editor: Brianne, you've come to the right place! We've written a lot about composting, and our readers are veritable experts on the subject! We, too, don't have a yard, but we save all our organic food scraps in a bag in the freezer, and take it our local community garden once a week. Here are a few posts to get you started:
- Composting: An Easy Way To Include Dry Stuff
- Composting Without A Yard?
- Can You Put Seeds in a Compost?
- 75 Things You Can Compost: Who Knew?
- Best Composters and Tools 2009
Image via Flickr member jared licensed under Creative Commons.
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Comments (3)
I'm sure it depends where you live. My city (Mountain View, California) does a pickup for "yard waste" every other garbage day. I know there's a public compost heap at the dump, so I assume that's where it goes, and so put my composty stuff (strictly raw vegetable matter; proteins and cooked foods seem like they'd get me in trouble, I don't know how hot their compost runs) in that bin. They pick it up. I dry then crumble our eggshells by our entryway bushes to discourage snails.
You can go the worm route to shrink your output, but it might still get tiresome to keep trying to unload your worm tea and poopage if you don't need it yourself.
Yes, it depends on where you live. In places that have city-wide industrial composting you can compost a larger variety of items (because the composters get hotter and can break down more complex items) than in places where you are relying on smaller composters. Here in NYC there are a number of community gardens and other places to drop off vegetable scraps and such for composting. Guidelines and locations can be found at http://www.nyccompost.org/
If you are having a hard time finding information, try contacting a local food coop (you may find a member who knows the composting regulations in your area) or see if there is a recycling education office in your area --Here in NYC the Council on the Environment of NYC does a lot of education and outreach about composting and recycling/reuse. http://www.cenyc.org/ Good luck!
If your city or town won't take food waste but you really want to put it to good use, I suggest you compost it yourself and offer the compost for free via Craigslist.
I use the compost I create for my container garden, but when I moved this summer, I had a bunch of compost that I had no immediate need for and didn't want to transport. So I put a post on Craigslist offering it for free, and I had lots of takers. They people who wanted it carted it away themselves.