Commit to Composting

Yesterday I shared Envirowoman's post referring to how the City of Vancouver deals with our organic waste (compost) with a contact at The City who replied with the document below.

I thought people might also be interested in learning about the Composting Council of Canada

I'm fairly green, I think. Try not to consume too much,we own a Prius, I mostly walk to work. But we have never composted before. I can't quite say why.

We were in Seattle over the holiday and they have mandatory recycling, which is amazing. They also have a city-wide yard and food waste pick-up program. This floored me.

From Yahoo! News: California encourages bringing worms to work.

Always on the cutting edge of all things environmental, California is encouraging public and private-sector employees to bring worms to work so that the creatures can chew up apple cores, sandwich scraps and other lunch leftovers and produce compost.

I am using a blue Rubbermaid Roughneck bin in which I have made ventilation holes with a nail and hammer. For bedding I tear newspaper into strips about 5cm by 15cm, soak them in water briefly, then squeeze most of the water out.

I keep vegetable scraps in a plastic bucket with a ventilated. Once a week bury them under the bedding in the compost bin. That's it. The worms do the rest. It takes them about a week to get through what I feed them, with some things (orange peels, onions) taking longer. My worm bin has been going for about a month now.