Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 7, 1990 TAG: 9006070058
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Take your basic mixture of broccoli stems, egg shells and weed-eater waste - maybe add in some manure for good measure - and oh, you can almost savor the descriptions.
"While it's cooking, it should be so hot, you can't even touch it," says Roanoke horticulturist Chris Barlow. "When it's finished, it should have the texture and color of rich, moist chocolate cake."
Ellen Aiken compares the process to perpetuating a good mix of sourdough bread starter - or brewing up a batch of beer. Not quite as tasty, she says, but a lot of fun to watch.
And then there's what Jane Price affectionately refers to as her "little bacteria guys."
"See, those little bacteria guys are just eating their hearts out, reproducing more little bacteria guys - that's what you want," she says. Price stands in the backyard of her suburban Vinton home as she peers into the bottomless wooden box she's been manning for almost four years.
On the ground next to it is a matted-up pile of grass clippings. She plunges her pitch fork into it and says, "This is how not to do it. This pile smells like a dirty diaper; it's gone into anaerobic decomposition."
Price and her organic-gardening cronies love nothing more than to be up to their trowels in the grimy sludge of garbage: Dirt and dandelions, shredded sticks and coffee grounds - they can get downright poetic about the stuff.
Composting, the once lowly process of turning yard waste and kitchen garbage into gold, is gaining respect. And not only among the nuts-and-berries crowd that makes homemade fertilizer-mulch with it.
"Right now, recycling is the in thing to do, but many people forget about this form of it," says Aiken, assistant recycling coordinator for the Clean Valley Council.
Yes, compost has become yet another mini-movement in the debate over shrinking landfill space. Landfill content surveys show that almost a third of the space is taken up by yard waste (18 percent), food scraps (8 percent) and wood materials (3 percent). It's an abundance of materials crying out for composting.
While municipal governments in the region are considering composting programs to help meet Virginia's recycling mandates - where yard waste is swapped for mulch, for example - no regular collection programs have emerged.
Which brings us back to the backyard bin.
A Department of Waste Management study issued in January reported that 11 percent of Virginians use some form of home composting - and that number is growing. The report also said that municipalities should encourage backyard composting as a natural first step to implementing neighborhood composting programs.
So Bill Wolf was right all along. Founder and president of New Castle's Necessary Trading Co., a manufacturer and distributor of natural pest controls and fertilizers, Wolf has been banking on compost for years.
And not coincidentally, he has recently seen sales of these compost-related products soar - from wire bins and fancy contraptions, to bacteria enhancers and stirring tools.
Looking for some handsome compost accessories? Wolf's your man.
"Composting is getting more popular because it's sensible," he says. "It's a sensible thing to convert trash into a valuable resource."
Similarly, a spokesman for the Burlington, Vt.-based Gardener's Supply catalog reports that 1989 sales of composting equipment increased 100 percent from the year before.
"There are about 15 states right now that have or are currently working on legislation banning yard waste from landfills and incinerators," says Paul Conrad of Gardener's Supply.
by CNB