The compost recipe calls for food scraps, 

 yard clippings, leaves and dirt 

 stacked in alternating layers. 

 Heat inside a household pile 

 builds to 90 F or more, 

 causing oxygen molecules to break down, 

 water molecules to gather 

 and bacteria to multiply. 



North Carolina was typical in the amount 

 of twigs, grass clippings and leaves 

 that it folded in with household trash 

 before it banned yard wastes 

 from municipal landfills in 1993. 



change form. An occasional stirring fuels the microbes 

 with oxygen, and the trash heap becomes azalea fodder 

 as early as six weeks. 



I've quietly admired a couple of friends' compost 

 piles, but I've always been a little skeptical of dumping 

 my kitchen wastes into the yard. What if it stinks and 

 bothers the neighbors? Or what if it attracts raccoons? 

 Aren't there things I should avoid putting on it? 



And how significant could my kitchen and yard 

 wastes be anyway? 



In reply to my last question, some statistical 

 sleuthing suggests that these are meaningful portions of 

 landfilled trash. Nationally, 7 percent of our waste 

 comes from the kitchen while 20 percent is gathered from 

 the yard. North Carolina was typical in the amount of 

 twigs, grass clippings and leaves that it folded in with 

 household trash before it banned yard wastes from municipal 

 landfills in 1993. Since then, about 50 special sites have helped fill 

 the void by accepting more than 310,000 tons of yard wastes annually. 

 My remaining concerns about composting can be addressed with a 

 few simple tips: keep meat and dairy scraps off the pile to stave off odors 

 and wildlife, turn the waste occasionally to control odor and hasten the 

 composting, and build a fence around it to keep critters at bay. Another 

 tactic is to place grass clippings and leaves around the base of plants as a 

 ready-made mulch. 



Of course, my recent awakening to this disposal option doesn't 

 discount the generations of history behind composting. Rural communities 

 have been doing it in some form for centuries. Even today, garbage 

 services are not offered to many countryside addresses outside the city 

 limits. So these homeowners try to lighten their load to the landfill by 

 composting all the food and paper wastes that they can. 



Composting can be done on a grander scale as well. Across the state, 

 64 local governments composted residents' wastes in 1992-93. In Win- 

 ston-Salem, the city feeds its compost stack with tobacco wastes. The leaf 

 waste is an excellent source of nitrogen, which the stack needs to operate, 

 and diverts a significant amount of material from the landfill. 



Landfills and Incinerators 



When the best conservation efforts haven't gotten rid of the household 

 and industrial trash, the EPA says landfills and incinerators should be the 

 last resort. 



This requires me 

 to completely 

 reverse the way 

 I think about 

 waste disposal. 

 Traditionally, I 

 have surrendered 

 my trash to the can 

 without another thought 



MARCH /APRIL 1995 



