More cities are encouraging and even mandating that residents who don't compost at home take time to divide their food and yard waste from other trash so it can be recycled elsewhere. San Francisco is implementing a new rule requiring that its citizens separate their household waste items into green "composting" carts or potentially face fines.It might just be opinion, but I think the landfills NEED some organic materials in the pile. That way the brew can start cooking to create the heat to allow the rest of the inorganic materials to decompose quicker. For example, if you just have a stack of newspapers (in the landfill) the size of a house and don't add any goodies like grass clippings, egg shells, meat scraps and the like, and you dig it up in a thousand years, it will still be a stack of news papers the size of a house. So in the long run, we come out even. And a lot of businesses and factories fuel their plants with the methane created by the mixture.
Also, they want us to separate all our household waste down to it's lowest common denominator, they should lead by example. If it is true we could compost all our household waste right at home and not end up with just a big heap of garbage in the yard, then why don't they just do it on a bigger scale. We should be the largest producers of black dirt on the planet. And if they can't separate it themselves, I have a great solution for that too. You can read more about my idea HERE.
Several years ago, I thought I would go green and build one of those grass clipping yard / kitchen waste composters. I used the pallet method and ended up with 2 compartments 4 feet by 4 feet. The theory is, put your grass clippings and waste in one compartment, and every week or so transfer the mess into the other compartment. At the end of the year, all I had was a stinky mess of grass clipping slime. I even broke down and bough some of those granules (expensive) that are supposed to make grass clippings break down faster. Even next spring it was not good for anything, so I threw the mess in the trash. So much for that. I have a smallish lawn, so I am skeptical on the whole yard waste composting campaign.
I am somewhat green though these days. I use the "Jerry Baker Lawn Tonic" twice a year. It helps the grass clippings break down quicker when you mulch (among other things). I will not try to compost my own grass clippings even if someone gave me one of those funny looking composting balls that you fill with clippings and roll around the yard to stir it. I hope I see someone in my neighborhood with a composting ball rolling around their yard, so I can go down there and laugh my butt off.
