Community Composting

Composting is an amazing biological process we can use to recycle waste nutrients back to the soil, and smells surprisingly good when done well. Many people already have home compost heaps, but if you have a large home garden or a local community garden, you could start a community composting project!

Gather waste nutrients from the whole neighborhood and build big, hot compost piles and reduce work by combining neighborhood composts into one. People can drop off their vegie scraps and green waste, and also pick up compost for their garden when they need it.

Often forgotten is the necessary step of adding "high carbon" layers such as leaves, twigs shredded paper or cardboard. Leaves can be collected en-masse in winter and stored near the compost, Wood waste can be collected from council street tree chipping, and paper and cardboard waste... well its pretty much everywhere! just make sure you use some leaves and twigs for bulk and structure, as using just processed cardboard and paper materials dosn't usually make a very good heap.

Community composting is also a good community building project. The centre for sustainable living in Minnesota says a 'community composting project is more about creating community (in an interesting way), than it is just the collection of food scraps...'

Two great resources for starting community composting projects are Valuing Community Composting and Devon Community Composting