Compost happens...

Or so says Patricia Becker, Center Manager for Common Ground, when commenting on how easy it is to compost....

On Thursday, our recycling sub-team of the greater employee sustainability initiative hosted a seminar on composting. We were lucky enough to have Patricia Becker, Center Manager, and Neil Jensen, master composter, from Common Ground, an organic garden supply and education center in Palo Alto.

Common Ground has been in Palo Alto for 35 years and started the first recycling program in Palo Alto. Among CG's original founders were those famous gardeners, Smith and Hawken. You can learn how to compost at CG, and also buy starter plants and gardening supplies and take all kinds of classes in gardening.

For those of you don't know much about composting (and even those who do), we first go to the source - wikipedia of course, which describes composting as:

"Composting is the aerobic decomposition of biodegradable organic matter, producing compost. The decomposition is performed primarily by facultative and obligate aerobic bacteria, yeasts and fungi, helped in the cooler initial and ending phases by a number of larger organisms, such as ils, and other families representing ants, nematodes and oligochaete worms."

Composting is a great way to recycle the organic waste you create in your household and reuse it for vital nutrients for your garden and lawn. You can compost yard waste, food scraps from your kitchen, some paper, and other things depending on what type of composting you are doing. All this organic material turns into something that looks like dirt but is basically a superfood for your garden.

You might ask, but "Doesn't that stuff you mentioned just biodegrade in landfills?"

No, not really....Landfills pack in all the garbage - whether organic or plastic or metal or anything else - so tightly that it doesn't get the oxygen it needs to degrade naturally. This isn't a new phenomenon either - archeologists have done studies of ancient societies by digging up their garbage dumps.

But, "it really isn't a big part of my garbage, is it?"

Again, no....a study by the EPA in 2006 said that 25% of solid waste collected by municipalities in the US is food waste and yard trimmings.

So, obviously organic waste like food scraps and yard trimmings are a big opportunity for recycling.

And it's not just something only people with huge large backyards can do. It is easy to compost in small backyards. There are even solutions for composting in apartments and houses with no backyards. The nice thing about composting is that the material you put in is reduced to 1/3rd of its original amount during the composting process - so you won't end up with more compost than you need.

Note to San Francisco Residents: The city compost for you - just get the Green Bin. House residents can get one for free from their waste management company. Apartment dwellers, ask your landlord to get a green bin. Check out more info below.

Want to learn more about composting?

To start composting in your backyard, the best way to learn is to take a class:
Composting classes @ Common Ground
Composting classes in San Mateo
Composting Classes in Santa Clara

Other Composting Resources:
From the EPA
From Earth 911
California Integrated Waste Management Board Resources
Composting Terms Glossary
Sam Mateo Resources
Santa Clara Resources
http://www.compostguide.com/

Composting for Apartment Dwellers and Houses without Backyards:
SF Goverment info on city composting program
Apartment Composting Tools/Machines
Information on Worm Composting

Living the Message

Our employee sustainability initiative team had our first informational open house last week where we recruited volunteers to our Green initatives.

I was excited to get people involved, but interestingly, what I learned from the event was equally as valuable as more volunteers...

In planning this open house, our founding sustainability team members not only tried to create a great event, but we tried to do it in an environmentally friendly way and told guests about it. For instance, we used as much re-usable material as possible (whiteboards, re-usable signs, laptop presentations instead of fancy posters) and advertised that we did this on purpose.



We felt it was important to "walk the walk" with our sustainability initiative particularly in the beginning. We worry a lot about our message getting diluted if we get criticized for doing things in an "unsustainable" way. If you turn people off from the beginning because you don't seem genuine, you've lost them forever.

But if we had started getting too caught up in running the open house "perfectly" sustainably, we might never have gotten the event off the ground. And it is vital for us to get out there with these events now and get more people involved. In the end, people seemed pretty open and supportive of our event.



So I learned that "walking the walk" is key, but we don't have to be perfect about it. I hope many people gave us credit for doing our best, but saw us as more real because we weren't perfectly green. Hopefully it makes being green seem more attainable -- if you don't think you have to be perfectly green right out of the gate.



It's a delicate balance - always striving to be more green while recognizing action without a perfect plan is also important to keep up momentum. Talking transparently about it helps everyone understand and buy in to the choices you make. So that's the plan for our employee green initiative and also my plan in my own personal green pursuits...



So, in the spirit of "walking the walk"and telling people about it...

For those of you who have been making changes in your life to be more sustainable this year, please let me know what you have done by commenting on my blog or writing on my facebook wall. Let other people know how you are personally striving to be more green....