This Fall the students in our local elementary school began separating their lunch waste – using the new green bins. On one of those early October days, the students had a lunchtime talk about what goes in each bin – green waste, recycling and garbage – and where the contents from each bin end up. We talked about landfills, recycling plants and compost heaps. Did you know that every day enough trash from our small city goes into the landfill to match the size of a Volkswagen bus – every day. In a year, that would be enough to fill up the school playground. So these kids are learning how to divert their trash from the landfill – using recycling, and green bin composting.

To demonstrate how the green bin waste turns into compost, the kids collected some of their lunch scraps and put them into a plastic file box. The box contained numerous banana peels, orange peels, sandwich bits, a few apples cores, some paper napkins and paper plates, and one untouched apple. To all this we added a small amount of old, finished compost and five worms.

Throughout the Fall, the box was taped up and hung on the fence near the lunch tables for the kids to watch throughout the semester. Each week the level of stuff inside the box dropped, and last month we opened the box!

The paper plates were gone.  The fruit peels – gone.  The napkins – gone.   Only the untouched apple remained, though much mushier. The worms had multiplied – we counted over 20, and the contents had become rich compost soil. And no smell – confirmed in a comparison with a fourth grade sneaker.

The finished compost was sprinkled in the school’s garden, fertilizing the growing vegetables – all in all a wonderful hands on learning experience. Now they see what happens to all that stuff they put in that big green bin, and why.

Try it with your kids – take some food scraps, paper napkins, and some dirt from your yard (not potting soil) – tape it up in a plastic bin, shake it every few weeks for a few seconds, and then open it in the summer – and your kids will see why we’re using these green bins.

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The answer will save you time, save you money, save you water, and make your plants healthier.  Mulch!  Comes in all kinds of flavors – compost, wood chips, bark, pine needles, grass clippings, even crushed rock.

With water as sparse as it is, mulch is a perfect way to maximize your irrigating – providing a blanket above the soil to keep things moist.  Still not convinced?  Here’s a few more reasons:

Mulch in your garden will:

1. reduce erosion – keeping water sources clean.  During construction mulch will keep your soil where it’s supposed to be, and less mud tracked through the site.
2. reduce weeds – making maintenance easier.  Weeds that do grow through will pull out easier.
3. make it look better – maintaining a consistent color will clean up the appearance of your garden.
4. fertilize your plants as the organic matter breaks down.

Now you’re convinced, what to do first?  

If you are simply adding mulch to an already established garden bed, be sure to weed first, then add mulch two to four inches thick – keeping it away from the bases of trees.  If you have a new area that you are replanting, or perhaps removing some grass around some garden beds – a great plan would be to sheet mulch.  This involves cutting everything down first, and then laying down an organic weed barrier – cardboard or a thick layer of newspaper.  On top of this, layer on your mulch.  Remember this can be anything from bark chips you order by the yard or buy by the bag, pine needles you rake up, or here’s my favorite option – green waste mulch.  There are always tree companies working in town – ask one to drop off their tree chippings.  This benefits them too by not having to haul away this green matter.  

Everything you need to know - click on mulch on the left column.

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I’m at work, it’s different.  I’m supposed to leave my computer on all night when I leave, even on Friday.  I’m supposed to leave my monitor turned on – everyone else does.  The office lights stay on all the time, the cleaning people will turn them off.  The landlord pays the utility bill, so we don’t need to turn off the lights.  We don’t have recycling in the office kitchen.  I can only recycle paper at the copy machine, we don’t have recycling bins in my office.  The heat in the office is always too hot, so we have to open the windows in the winter.  The sandwich place doesn’t have recycling, so I have to toss my bottle in the garbage.

Somehow when we’re at work, issues around consumption and conservation don’t apply.  Somehow it becomes something They need to decide on.  Who exactly are They?  Does it take any more time to turn down the heat, or call the building manager once, than it does to suffer in the heat day after day, opening windows and wasting energy?  How difficult is it to get a few recycling bins?

My favorite office waste: water.  You’re in a modern building with modern plumbing, using the same water source as your home, but somehow you need to have big bottles of water in the office, in the kitchen, next to a sink – as if the water in the office is unsafe to drink.  Or worse yet, cases of bottled water in an office building – as if no one has ever used a cup (and no not a disposable cup, a real cup).  At home, given a preference, would you rather drink water from a glass or from something plastic?  Then why not do the same at work?  I can’t; I’m just too busy; it takes too much time to fill up a glass; I have to bring a plastic water bottle to my office.

You’ve been doing all these green things at home – it’s now time to make sure you are doing them at work too.  There exists this misconception that work is somehow different from home life, that there is no place for conservation in the office, or no time for conservation.  In this economy businesses must re-examine every cost saving measure possible – recycling vs. garbage hauling fees, water delivery contracts, cases of bottled water, lighting, unnecessary energy use, heating and cooling costs.

Consider applying for green business status – the application includes an excellent checklist.
http://www.greenbiz.ca.gov/ 

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