Compost users piling it up

HACKENSACK, N.J. — Going green doesn’t just mean buying a hybrid car or using low-wattage light bulbs. For many, getting eco-friendly means cutting down on what you haul to the curb.

Folks have taken to tossing fruit scraps, vegetable peels and coffee grounds in backyard bins — green thumbs or not.

For example, Bergen County, N.J., has recently seen a surge in sales of composting bins known as “Earth Machines” and at least 12 local schools received grants to start their own composting programs this fall, said Mark Vangieri, solid waste manager at the Bergen County Utilities Authority, which sells the bins.

“There are a lot more people doing their own composting … and more and more people are thinking about what they can do to help the environment,” said Lori Russo, a solid waste education and technical adviser at the BCUA.

Although most people associate composting with rural areas, fans of the practice say it can be done anywhere. No back yard? No problem.

“People think you find all the composting in rural areas, but that’s not necessarily the case,” she said. “I’m a city girl and I keep a bin full of worms.”

Russo takes her traveling worm bin on the road, giving more than 100 workshops a year to schools and waxing poetic about the benefits of vermi-composting to children as young as 5.

The process requires little maintenance, she said. For indoor composting, people need worms — dozens of Internet sites mail-order them — peat moss, newsprint and food scraps. Lettuce, fruit peels and coffee grounds are acceptable, but experts caution against using meat or dairy. The worms eat the scraps and excrete them, slowly creating a mixture of nutrient-rich topsoil in about six months.

There are several methods of outdoor composting, but the most common involves a carefully monitored combination of “green” nitrogen-rich materials, such as grass clippings, coffee grounds and fruit and vegetable peelings, and “brown” carbon-rich materials, including straw or hay, eggshells, fall leaves and newspaper shreds. The materials are layered in a pile that should be frequently turned over and given some water to help the organic matter break down into a rich humus. In most cases, worms tunnel through the backyard soil and arrive on their own once the compost pile begins to heat up. The outdoor process can take up to a year to compost, Russo said.

Sharon DelVecchio, a Rutherford, N.J., resident, recently bought a composting bin as a means of producing less waste.

“I keep a pail in my kitchen sink and throw all my food scraps in it — the tops of strawberries, tea bags, egg shells — and then, once that fills up, I bring it out to my composting bin in the back yard,” DelVecchio said.

“If you maintain it properly, there’s no odor or fruit flies whatsoever,” she said. “After only a few weeks, I didn’t have much at all to throw out in the regular trash, so if even half the town did it, it would be tremendous.”

Though a growing number of people, like DelVecchio, believe food waste should be regulated by municipalities, state recycling advocates say that would be a difficult feat in New Jersey.

As the amount of waste generated by North Jersey residents has increased, recycling rates have dropped, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection.

Food waste makes up the largest percentage of New Jersey garbage that is not recycled. Officials say that is a missed opportunity, one that could reduce our reliance on landfills and return soil to the Earth.

The state is without a single food-composting center and officials say New Jersey’s dense population and municipalities’ concerns about odor make it extremely difficult to gain approval for open-air sites, common in Pennsylvania.

“The reason we haven’t seen a lot of these types of facilities is because the financial return doesn’t take place in four to five years, it takes place way down the road, so it isn’t cheap,” said Marie Kruzan, the executive director of the Association of New Jersey Recyclers, a non-profit advocacy group.

“If you’re in Nevada and the nearest person is 200 miles away, no one’s going to complain about the smell of an open-air composting system, but in Bergen County, it’s a different story,” she said.

Two food-waste processing centers are planned for Middlesex County, including Converted Organics, a Canadian-based, closed-vessel site that will handle 500 tons of commercial food waste per day when it opens in early 2008, said Rich Hills, who heads the Middlesex County division of solid waste management.

With the cost of trash disposal skyrocketing due to a lack of landfill space, supermarkets, restaurants and cafeterias can save money by sending food waste to a composting center rather than including it in the trash, Hills said.

Russo said composting is a win-win situation for her — she’s reducing the amount of waste she puts in landfills and her next-door neighbor’s garden reaps the benefits.

“In essence, composting is like giving the earth a vitamin so soil and food can remain healthy,” Russo said.