sustainability | Crazy About Compost

When is Your Compost Ready to Use? (video)

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0Hf_IcS_5U When is your compost ready to use? Some questions to ask yourself include: How does it look? Can you recognize any of the material? How does it smell? Is the material warm? Here I have a few different samples of compost...vermicompost, tumbler compost, commercial compost, and trench compost. What do you think of these samples? I feel like my tumbler compost and vermicastings could both go even longer before using them, but that they're still OK if I were to use them now. In fact, I'm going to use these samples for my next "Clash of The Composts!" experiment coming soon... stay tuned!

Compost Window at Tyler School of Art

I was sifting through a few months' worth of pictures on the camera, and I found this gem: Can you tell what it is? It's a sideview of an indoor compost pile in action. Pretty cool! I spent some time at Tyler School of Art's "Coffree Mondays" hosted by Robert Blackson a few months ago, and it was a great vibe. I was asked to hang out and talk about waste and environmental issues. I thought there would be people to speak to, but the majority just wanted to get their free coffee and get the heck out of there. I couldn't blame them, I'm not an early riser and I definitely wasn't during my hellish time in school. The coolest thing they had besides encouraging the reusable lifestyle with…

Begich Middle School Composting (video)

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIvpiUFms_Q I love seeing the kid in this video explaining the process, and he definitely gets it. We need more of this! Know of any schools that are composting near you? This is one of those things that I foresee really taking off in the coming years. Why? It's simple ownership of the students' (and staff's) waste that can merge nicely with an Environmental Science or Home Economics class that most if not all kids have to take at some point. Plus, these behaviors can make their way home and just like that our landfill impact drops. While Newt Gingrich made those extra-strength ignorant comments about replacing a custodian's job with students as young as 9 years old, maybe this is a little more realistic. Kids can take turns collecting…