Waste Not: How three Chappaqua families are reducing their impact by composting

June 18, 2010
by Laura Rossi-Ortiz

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “yard trimmings and food residuals together constitute 26% of the U.S. municipal solid waste stream.  That’s a lot of waste to send to landfills when it could become useful and environmentally beneficial compost instead!”

Here in New Castle, we take solid waste disposal seriously.  We recycle metal, glass and plastics labeled 1-7, more than the county and most other local municipalities, which only accept plastics labeled 1 and 2.  Many of us compost our yard waste, or we bag up the yard waste and place it at the curbside so the recycling center can collect and compost it.  And quite a number of us think twice before throwing out items that can be reused.  We donate used clothing, books and furniture, or take bric-a-brac to the Recycling Center’s Take it or Leave it Shop.  All these efforts certainly add up to reducing the load on the waste stream. 

Some families are living green by home composting their kitchen scraps, an easy and convenient method to greatly reduce the amount of solid waste your family generates.  We asked three Chappaqua residents, Susan Sloan, Bonnie Weill and Tracy Stein, how they got started home composting and what their experiences have been.   

Susan Sloan reports 

My husband and I started composting about two years ago.  Like a lot of people, we were becoming more informed about the environment and about the things that we all should be doing to be more responsible and less wasteful.  Also, like a lot of people, we were under intense pressure from our kids to “go green.”  Once they started asking about the wattage of our light bulbs, we knew we had to get ahead of the game. We wowed them with low flow toilets, then announced we would begin turning our food scraps into soil. They were impressed.

To get started, I bought a book, called Let it Rot: The Gardener’s Guide to Composting, by Stu Campbell.  This book is really wonderful, informative and reassuring about how to compost.  But I was still overwhelmed and feared that the process was more than I was ready to take on.  In the end, I decided to just jump in and do it.  I took the book at its word that composting is pretty hard to mess up and resolved not to stress over it.  For the first year, we were just happy to be able to throw our food waste into a bin, which somehow magically never filled up. We reduced the amount of garbage we made as a family, which was an achievement in itself. Plus, the kids were impressed.

We did make a couple of mistakes.  My first mistake was to choose a composter based on how pretty it was. My second mistake was to place it in the yard based on where it looked nicest.  Then, we proceeded to fill it up with only a minimal regard to the exact directions outlined in the book. 

Once we figured out exactly what you can and can’t compost, and the correct proportions and procedures to use (that is, once we followed the directions) we learned that dirt happens!  We added brown stuff (leaves) if things got too gunky, we added water if things got too dry, and we stirred it up occasionally.  After two years, we emptied it out and lo and behold, we had made compost!

I encourage you just to try it. Anyone can compost. You could get really involved and educated about it and do a whole lot better than we did.  Or you could just give it a try, let go of the stress of doing it “right,” and be pleasantly surprised by the outcome.

Bonnie Weill reports

I decided to start composting because I can’t stand waste of any kind and am always looking for ways of finding alternate or multiple uses for things, especially things that would otherwise be garbage.  I also try daily to lessen the amount of garbage we make. I thought about composting for a long time before I was ready to try it.  But once I realized that as much as one-third of our family’s garbage is food scraps I decided it was time to take action.

To get started, I asked people on the Environmental Committees I have been on about how they compost.  I also read a big article on good home composters in The Wall Street Journal, and I searched online for home composters.  I decided to purchase The Nature Mill, which had a very informative website and came highly recommended.  It is an expensive machine but extremely easy to use.  It can also be used inside or outside the home.

Like Susan, I made some mistakes along the way.  The Nature Mill came with an easy-to-read instruction manual, but because life is so busy I kept putting it aside to read “when I had some time.”  I knew nothing about composting so I knew I couldn’t start without a thorough reading of the material.  I threw one banana peel in the machine and it sat there for 3 weeks until I finally put it in the garbage.  When I finally did read the instructions, I skipped over the instructions for setting up the cultures the first time it is used, missing some important first steps.  Eventually I got it right, and composting has been extremely easy to do. 

Tracy Stein reports

I decided to start composting a couple of years ago.  Our Temple focused a large part of its social action agenda on the environment, and my family and I committed to take as many steps in our home to minimize our impact on the environment as we could (this included changing our bulbs to cfls, using reusable bags at the grocery store, eliminating all water bottles, look at the energy efficiency of our home, etc.).  Composting was the natural next step.

In researching what to buy, I was nervous about getting a simple plastic compost bin that sits open on top of the ground.  They are not very secure, often smell and require maintenance like getting shovels in to mix the stuff around.  I researched online, and found a compost tumbler, round bins that sit on their side and can be spun, which makes it easier to actually mix your compost to get it working.  I also liked that it seemed to be pretty well sealed and prevents critters from getting in. 

I set it up, and learned online and from the tumbler’s instructions that I could throw in a wide variety of kitchen scraps: fruit/vegetable scraps, egg shells, unsoiled paper towels, breads without sauce or grease, coffee grinds, banana peels, corn rinds.  For my first go, I filled the thing over the course of 9 months, stopping over the real cold of winter.  With winter’s end, I continued to fill it for another 6 months.

The thing never seemed to fill.  As much as I put in, it all seemed to condense – that included almost two full seasons.  Composting is a real trial and error learning process.  For example, I learned that when things smelled, the compost was usually too moist.  I would typically give it the dry leaves or torn up paper towels.  In short, brown stuff could be added to balance out the green stuff.  On the other hand, if I had too many leaves or dry stuff, I poured water in it to moisten it up.

Here are some other hints: larger items, such as watermelon rinds, take a lot longer to decompose, so it is well worth cutting things up so that they rot quicker and that helps the process of decomposing.  Banana peels, eggshells, and corn rinds didn’t decompose very well, but coffee grinds are great to add to compost because they counterbalance smell.

We placed our compost tumbler in a wooded area away from the house.  We did not have any critter problem, and no smells (except for when we opened the lid).  Sometimes a few little bugs visited the tumbler.  To address concerns about smell, or critters, I recommend that people make it easy.  Target sells a small airtight garbage can with a removable inside plastic can.  I keep the can under my kitchen counter, where it is filled over the course of about a week. It’s a better choice than bio-bags, which do not decompose very quickly.  By using the can, I take a trip out to the composter only once or twice a week.

Even though I stopped composting over the winter, when the trek through the snow in our backyard was not manageable, we really reduced the waste from our household.  At the same time, we stepped up our recycling, following the Recycling Center’s guidelines to recycle as much as we possibly could (paper, boxes, magazines, mail and plastics).

With the composting and the recycling, we decreased our waste by half over the past couple of years.  With the exception of the holiday season, our family of five, plus one dog, two cats and a bird, have reduced our weekly garbage load from 5-6 bags to 2-3 bags.

Where to find composters

Westchester County sells Earth Machine compost bins.  The Earth Machine, which sells for $50.00, is a passive composting system that is secured to the ground and designed to resist critter visitors.  You can purchase an Earth Machine at Muscoot Farm in Somers (864-7282), Ward Pound Ridge Reservation in Cross River (864-7317) and Hilltop Hanover Farm in Yorktown (962-2368).  Hilltop Hanover Farm also periodically runs programs that teach residents about home composting. Check their website, http://www.hilltophanoverfarm.org periodically for updates.

The popular Compost Wizard, a tumbler style bin that comes assembled and is easy to rotate, is available at Berger Appliance, located at 441 Commerce Street in Hawthorne (769-2300). The Compost Wizard sells for $229.00.

The EPA has an excellent site for composting resources: http://www.epa.gov/wastes/conserve/rrr/composting/by_compost.htm