Community Composting

The Idea

Community Composting is all about bringing people in your community together, whether it's an existing community group such a neighborhood association, church, school, community garden or workplace; or a group coming together solely for this purpose, to divert their food waste, yard trimmings, and other organic matter, from landfill, and compost them instead. Community members can compost at home and use the compost in their own gardens. However, at-home composting doesn't generate enough heat to break down animal products (like meat, cheese, or bones) or biodegradable packaging. So the benefit of coming together as a community is that together you will have enough food waste to employ a local composting company to come and pick up your food waste from a centralized location, and these companies have the equipment to break down all food waste and compostable materials into useable compost! If your group is affiliated to a community garden the finished compost can even be used to fertilize your soil. Many municipal composting programs return composted food waste back to local farmers, creating higher-yield crops and reducing the need for chemical fertilizers.