Compost Food Waste and Yard Waste

Action of the Month for May

Composting is a kind of recycling. Compost, also known as humus, is the rich soil that the composting process creates from suitable combinations of

• Air
• Moisture
• Warmth
• Carbon as its energy food
• Nitrogen as its protein food

The composting process is a natural process that uses organic waste—waste that is from living things—as its carbon and nitrogen sources. Composting is a process used throughout history on all continents. You use finished compost to feed the soil so that the soil can feed the plants the nutrients they need at the time and rate they need them.

Basic Action: Turn your food waste and yard waste into compost to create new nutritious soil
 
Why would you want to compost?

• To grow a better garden with soil nutrients
• To provide a soil that absorbs and retains more moisture
• To correct a soil that has too much clay or is too sandy
• To use as a mulch to control weeds and hold moisture
• To reduce greenhouse gasses
• To keep food and yard waste out of the landfill
• To store carbon as soil

​Typically, 20% of household waste is food waste and that adds up to 80 billion pounds of food waste in the U.S. per year. If food waste goes into the garbage and on to the landfill, it turns into methane gas. Methane is a greenhouse gas 70 times more able to absorb heat from the sun than even carbon dioxide.
 
We have solutions for that!
Place your food waste into a compost container instead of a garbage container.

​You can compost in your home yard or you can use a commercial composting service to pick up food waste curbside on a regular basis. The service adds other ingredients, too, and creates compost from it. Much of the local commercial compost is used by local farms to improve their soil and your locally grown foods.
 
If you have not composted at home before, you will need to learn how to select a place for it; what materials the compost pile, bin, barrel, or rotary tumbler will need added to it to make compost; and the processes you use to mix the compost periodically for its moisture and temperature needs. Finished compost is a dark, crumbly texture with a sweet and earthy aroma.

Resources to learn how to make your own compost at home:

• To get a good overview about creating your own compost at home, you can go to YouTube to view the Sustainability Academy’s Composting Made Easy. It is less than one hour long and will give you some basic instructions about getting started. You can start viewing the recording after the first 7 minutes because the early part is about their academy and their local community before the composting presentation content.
• You can find an 8-page Montana State University Extension Service MontGuide on Home Composting, and can choose to print a PDF version of that resource from a link on that page.
• You can also find out more at the library, online, or from friends who already compost.

Resources about using a commercial composting service, an easy way to compost food waste:

• Bozeman and Belgrade, MT, are served by both Happy Trash Can and YES commercial composting services. Happy Trash Can also serves Livingston and some extended areas and YES also serves Big Sky.
• Both have programs to pick up your food waste curbside on a regular schedule in one of their 5-gallon buckets they provide. Their monthly fees are similar—currently less than $20, depending on the service and the program.
• Both have the ability for their subscribers to receive a share of compost back. Because YES uses vermicomposting, using worms in the composting process, a subscriber can select to receive worm castings organic fertilizer or compost.
• Each service provides information about what items they do collect and what they cannot collect.

 
You can find out more about their services at their websites with the links that follow.

         Happy Trash Can

         YES

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​Resources for pickup of yard waste for composting
 
The City of Bozeman Yard Waste Compost Collection is for customers of the City of Bozeman garbage pickup. They can pickup yard waste on a schedule during May to August. Check the link above for the details if you are a City of Bozeman garbage collection customer.
 
If you use a different collection service, contact yours to ask what their procedure is for collecting yard waste and composting it. And you can also check with YES commercial composting service about their yard waste pickup service.

​​Using compost once you make it or receive it back from a composting service

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• The first year you use compost, you can spread an inch or two on the soil in a garden area and mix it in gently with a rake or by hand in the top inch or two of your garden soil. It is important not to damage to the root system of your plants by going too deep.

• In the years after that, you can spread a half-inch or an inch of compost on the garden soil and carefully mix it in to the top of the soil.
• Another use for compost is as a mulch. It works to control weeds and retain moisture in the soil.

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It’s also possible to make a compost liquid by placing a handful or two of compost into a piece of permeable fabric like cheesecloth or burlap. Pull the fabric edges together and tie it into a compost-filled ball. Place that in your garden watering can and fill with water. Let it sit and steep until it is amber-colored. Leave the ball of compost in the can while you sprinkle the liquid around your trees, shrubs, and garden plants. You can use the same ball of compost and refill your watering can so it can steep into amber-colored compost liquid two or three times before taking the compost ball out and spreading the remaining compost contents into your garden.

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​Advanced Action: If you already compost your yard and food waste, Thank You! Thank you! Thank you! Your advanced action for this month is to talk to others about the benefits of composting and how to get started.