Recycling Hub

It’s easier to get the whole family to start recycling than you might think. Just telling everyone to recycle if not enough. You need to get organized and organize the closets and kitchen to encourage your family to recycle.

Buy plastic bins and mark them with “newspaper”, “paper”, “plastic bottles”, “cans” and place them in the kitchen. To keep the kitchen clean, you can place them in the closet. They don’t have to be super big, just enough for a few days to a week’s recycling. Then teach you children and husband where to find them and how to fill them up.

But a composting bin and place in on the kitchen counter and place all unwanted vegetables in it and empty it in a designated composting pile area in the backyard.

Make recycling fun for your children. You can do the same with unwanted toys and clothes. Place two medium sized plastic bins in children’s closets and ask them to place unwanted toys and out-grown clothes in them. Then take the items and donate them to the salvation army. This way, the house stays neat and organized and everything is recycled.

ard trimmings and food residuals together constitute 23 percent of the U.S. waste stream, as documented by EPA. An estimated 56.9 percent of yard trimmings were recovered for composting or grasscycled in 2000, a dramatic increase from the 12 percent recovery rate in 1990. Accompanying this surge in yard waste recovery is a composting industry that has grown from less than 1,000 facilities in 1988 to nearly 3,800 in 2000. Once dominated by public sector operations, the composting industry is increasingly entrepreneurial and private-sector driven, led by firms that add value to compost products through processing and marketing. Compost prices have been as high as $26 per ton for landscape mulch to more than $100 per ton for high-grade compost, which is bagged and sold at the retail level.

While yard trimmings recovery typically involves leaf compost and mulch, yard trimmings can also be combined with other organic waste, such as food residuals, animal manure, and biosolids to produce a variety of products with slightly different chemical and physical characteristics. In contrast to yard trimmings recovery, only 2.6 percent of food waste was composted in 2000. The cost-prohibitive nature of residential food waste separation and collection is the primary deterant to expanding food waste recovery efforts. Yet in many communities, edible food residuals are donated to the needy, while inedible food residuals are blended into compost or reprocessed into animal feed. In some areas, composting operations are working with high-volume commercial and institutional food producers to recover their food byproducts, saving these firms significant disposal costs.

Source: http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/conserve/rrr/composting/basic.htm

Compost is organic material that can be used as a soil amendment or as a medium to grow plants. Mature compost is a stable material with a content called humus that is dark brown or black and has a soil-like, earthy smell. It is created by: combining organic wastes (e.g., yard trimmings, food wastes, manures) in proper ratios into piles, rows, or vessels; adding bulking agents (e.g., wood chips) as necessary to accelerate the breakdown of organic materials; and allowing the finished material to fully stabilize and mature through a curing process.

Natural composting, or biological decomposition, began with the first plants on earth and has been going on ever since. As vegetation falls to the ground, it slowly decays, providing minerals and nutrients needed for plants, animals, and microorganisms. Mature compost, however, includes the production of high temperatures to destroy pathogens and weed seeds that natural decomposition does not destroy.

Source: http://www.epa.gov/

Yard trimmings and food residuals together constitute 24 percent 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!

Composting offers the obvious benefits of resource efficiency and creating a useful product from organic waste that would otherwise have been landfilled.

Source: http://www.epa.gov/