The Changes

it is international compost awareness week and the City of Vancouver launched curbside compost pick up just in time!

I bought a small composting kit for our office. It came with a plastic bucket, compostable bags, and a book. I very quickly realized that I had no idea how composting works. I thought I'd put some kitchen scraps in the bin and after a little while, voila, I have sweet-smelling soil! Lots to learn, I'm taking a composting course this weekend.

What kind of city do we want to live in during the garbage strike? What are you going to do? Just ignore the growing smelly pile of bags around your dumpster or refuge bin, as the crows spread junk over your alley?

My focus on composting and sustainability has led me to some interesting places on the ‘net. Lately, I’ve been looking for extra compost bins on Vancouver Craigslist.

Yesterday I shared Envirowoman's post referring to how the City of Vancouver deals with our organic waste (compost) with a contact at The City who replied with the document below.

I thought people might also be interested in learning about the Composting Council of Canada

I'm fairly green, I think. Try not to consume too much,we own a Prius, I mostly walk to work. But we have never composted before. I can't quite say why.

We were in Seattle over the holiday and they have mandatory recycling, which is amazing. They also have a city-wide yard and food waste pick-up program. This floored me.

Hey everyone,

I am creating a business that will collect food waste from businesses that want to be more sustainable and stop dumping food waste into landfills.

I am looking for businesses (and people) interested on changing this so if anyone wants more information on how this would work contact BlackGold Food Waste & Compost Services at elmufino@yahoo.ca -

Treating food as garbage is one of the reasons we have to import food and create space to dump more garbage. Landfill usage promotes anaerobic decomposition of the material we put there. In the case of organic material, even food waste that is easily compostable takes years if not decades to decompose using valuable land space that could be used for truly unusable materials.