When you compost you not only create at home the best nutrients to feed your garden you also participate in reducing the waste sent to our landfills.
How do you set up your at home composting?
Find a place
Add some stuff
Turn
1. Find a place for your Compost: The location doesn’t have to be complicated for expensive. It needs to be a container of some sort so the contents can do their chemical work. Some folks use large plastic trash cans, large wooden boxes, and store bought compost containers. Others just build in a deep hole in the ground.
2. Add some stuff from your kitchen or other parts of your landscape. The key combination is green and brown and a little moisture to keep the active bacteria hydrated. Green waste is kitchen waste and grass clippings. Brown waste is small pieces of newspaper, wood chips and dried leaves.
3. Turn your compost pile with a pitchfork, ideally, or a shovel. Air is important to keep up the bacterial activity up in your compost. Remember that the addition of soil from your garden and dried leaves and twigs from you yard are excellent additives to keep your heap aerated.
Some helpful hints to jump start your compost.
Size Matters: The bigger the pile the better. The more material you compost the more lucrative the outcome. The size of the pieces, however, need to be small. Larger pieces take longer to degrade.
Wet and Wild: Your compost is a living organism. It needs moisture as much as any living creature. Especially when weather get warmer, remember that your compost needs water.
Mix and Match: The more variety you feed your compost the more it will thrive. Imagine if you had to eat the exact same meal everyday… Boring! The diversity also will help your plants’ resistance to disease and pests.
KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid (no offense) Composting is simple science. Keep is organic, no proteins. If it keep on the shelf for more than a few days, it probably has preservatives and should not be included.
Don’t be afraid to ask for help: The do sell “Compost Activators” that make start up simple. Get help if you’re new, the goal is to make great fertilizer, not to struggle and be unsuccessful.
Throwing away tires is more than finding a big enough trash can. Tires are special waste. There is often a price and limit to taking tires to the landfill. Read Why.
There are hundreds of stories about massive fires caused by illegally disposed tires. There are hundreds of photos of vacant land covered in tires, that lead to massive fires. Tires are combustible. That is why tires are special waste. Tires themselves are not hazardous, but if a tire is burned it becomes hazardous as air pollution or fire hazard. They can withstand a tremendous amount of heat, but once lit, they are virtually impossible to extinguish.
This was a fire in Savannah in February 2014. The authorities were able to contain the fire, but the rubber would smolder until the viable material was gone. The material, Rubber. When rubber is burned it creates toxic fumes that pollute the atmosphere.
Tires are special waste because they need to be collected and separated from general landfill waste.
This collection process allow appropriate distribution of tires for recycling and reuse.
As an example in 2003, markets for scrap tires were consuming 233 million, or 80.4%, of the 290 million annually generated scrap tires:
130 million (44.7%) were used as fuel
56 million (19.4%) were recycled or used in civil engineering projects
18 million (7.8%) were converted into ground rubber and recycled into products
12 million (4.3%) were converted into ground rubber and used in rubber-modified asphalt
You may think that a landfill or dump site is just a giant hole in the ground, but EPA and OSHA have a much greater say processing your trash.
When I was a kid, my family lived near Ann Arbor, MI next to a landfill. I remember watching the giant trash trucks drive in. There were seagulls and pigeons flying around all the time. I even remember during the summer you could smell it. It really did stink. We moved away when I was in the second grade. When I was older and went for a walk down memory lane the landfill was gone and in its place was this:
The landfill had become a park. I though, “that is so cool,” I didn’t know this was a common practice. There are many factors to consider when city planners get together and “build” a landfill.
Here is a diagram of a landfill for the community of Monterey, CA that includes reuse of menthane gas providing energy.
Kind of cool. We have discovered a way to turn our trash into energy, bioenergy.
Prepared Subgrade: This is the raw soil the creates the outline of the landfill.
Compacted Clay: Clay is added and compacted to form a natural barrier filter in between the liner and earth.
Geomembrane: This is a high-density plastic liner that is impermeable and extremely resistant to decomposing chemicals and compounds, also called Leachates.
Pipe System: Pipes are installed to exhaust methane gases (Leachates) that will be produced during decomposition. This exhaust is funneled through a management facility to create significantly less air pollution. Sometimes the facility energy plant renewing the exhaust into usable energy.
Geotextile Filter: This material is sometimes used over the pipe intake to reduce the debris entering the pipe systems.
Leachate Collection Layer: A layer of sand, gravel or hard plastic mesh that allows the Leachates to seep to the pipe system by way of gravity.
Waste Layer: The trash that is dumped into the land fill.
Daily Cover: The waste layer is covered daily with soil or other approved materials to reduce odors, keep litter from blowing around and also to help scavengers and pests.
When the landfill reaches its planned capacity these layers are added.
Compacted Clay: This layer of compacted clay prevents excess water and moisture from entering the landfill. The addition of water forms more gas which would cause unneeded air pollution and offensive odor.
Geomembrane: The top geomembrane with the clay promotes a better top seal on the landfill.
Drainage Layer: Gravel to help filter in between the cover soil and geomembrane.
Protective Cover Soil: Protects the landfill cap system and provides additional moisture retention to help support the cover vegetation.
Top Soil: Helps to support and maintain the growth of vegetation by retaining moisture and providing nutrients.
Cover Vegetation: As portions of the landfill are completed, native grasses and shrubs are planted and the areas are maintained as open spaces. The vegetation is visually pleasing and prevents erosion of the underlying soils.
So there you have it. What you thought was a useless hole in the ground not. It is a well engineered, necessary part of our existence that is being put to the best use possible.
Why would you need to request special trash pickup?
Special Trash is defined differently by each municipality around the country. The general understanding is trash that is too large to fit into a receptacle or that consists of hazardous chemicals that cannot be taken to a landfill.
Items that do not fit into a regular size trash bin require special trash pick up. These are items that can NOT be disposed of regularly do to size and material:
Air conditioners
Stoves
Dish washers
Washing machines and dryers
Water heaters
Lawn mowers
Doors
Sinks
Toilets
Mattresses
Furniture
Televisions
Large trash items cannot always be lifted by the truck, or put into a standard truck compactor. These items may need to be lifted by two workers or may need to be loaded on a special truck and taken to a special dump or recycling center.
Special Trash Pickup for Chemicals is required by some municipalities.
There are many household items that have stickers and warning labels. These labels address safety for both the use and the disposal of the contents as well as the container. Landfills are responsible to avoid various levels of contamination depending on the anatomy of the landfill.
Tires: Tires require special trash pickup or disposal no matter where you live!
The process of tire waste can be hazardous directly to the air and ground. Tires are extremely flammable. Tire fires cause severe air pollution. Some specially engineered plants around the world provide tire incineration which creates energy. They are equipped with sophisticated ventilation systems to minimize air pollution. Most landfills will be cited and fined if they accept tires.
For more information about when you should request special trash pick up visit the website or call your local solid waste department.
In Cobb County, GA for information concerning solid waste services please email solidwaste@cobbcounty.org or call (678) 581-5488.
Our country is filled with small local business. They make up three quarters of business in our country equaling 28.2 million in number.
The success of small local business is incredibly important to the strength of a town.
Imagine the scope from the dollar’s point of view.
A man walks into Pete’s Hardware, a small local business…
He buys a hammer for $26.99
Pete buys his hammers from Vaughan Manufacturing, an American corporation. Vaughan is located in Hebron, Illinois where they employee Americans and pay taxes.
The man leaves Pete’s Hardware and goes home to hang a picture for his wife.
Pete employs 10 people who live in his town. He pays property taxes, employment taxes and gross receipts taxes on sales at his store. He gets some tax breaks but not many. Pete spends his income locally at businesses who also provide employment for residents of his community.
Now… say the man had gone to a “Big Box” business.
He buys the same hammer for $24.96.
A portion of the money does go to the American owned business in Hebron, IL.
The “Big Box” store also has interests in other countries. They may invest money to sponsor sporting events that allow them to advertise, so they can make more money.
They are a publicly traded company, so many (millions of) people have an interest in making sure this company profits.
The “Big Box” company employs many and pays taxes, but gets huge tax breaks. I was unable to find exactly who is collecting the overall profits, or where they spend them.
The “Big Box” companies, can offer you slightly lower prices because they order in tremendous bulk and are able to make a significantly higher profit on each item.
I am not saying that the big stores are bad, but consider where your money goes. If you have a chance, buy from your neighbor instead of some millionaire who you’ll never see.
Support your Small Local Business.
R&R Containers is a small local business in Georgia.
Biofuel is fuel derived directly from living matter. Simple? No!
In this scene The Doc is putting food into his “Mr. Fusion” to create fuel. Oh the foresight. Back in 1989, someone imagined that food could be fuel. They were right.
Creating Biofuel is not simple. Reading about it is like sitting in a college chemistry course. Please click HERE for a full discussion by Biofuel.org.uk. The bottom line is that biofuel uses agricultural products like corn and soybeans to create fuel instead of non living things like oil. The great thing about biofuel is that we can reproduce it easily and inexpensively; however, because of the almighty dollar, the oil companies are not interested in letting any of their profit slip away.
The Industry of Biofuel is promoted at the governmental level in Europe.
BusinessGreen.com has an article about this European movement and how it will provide tens of thousands of jobs. The article focuses obtaining living waste from trash as opposed to straight out of fields.
Imagine, as you are sorting your cardboard, cans and plastics into your recycling bin, you also have a container for food waste. Have you ever had a compost pile? Same stuff. The article makes reference to the sorting taking place at the landfill, not in the home.
Is BioFuel a reasonable fuel source?
Yes. The answer is simple. The complicated part is financial. Turning crops into fuels is a technology. It needs to be developed and development requires money. There are many massive companies who have an interest in oil remaining our primary source of fuel. Basically, until l oil runs out or become too expensive for us to buy, there will be no other fuel source. Of course this is just my opinion.
Next time you drive past a wide field of beautiful green crops remember that one day that will fuel your car, your home, you business.
