Efforts aimed at organics diversion and food-waste reduction grabbed attention during International Compost Awareness Week.
The awareness initiative is held annually in early May and is spearheaded by the US Composting Council and similar organizations in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom.
Below, we outline some of the ways compost stakeholders worked to bring their message to the masses.
The nonprofit Institute for Local Self-Reliance created a series of infographics that lay out the range of environmental and economic impacts that composting can make. Among the facts and figures noted by the group: Food scraps make up 21 percent of the weight of a typical municipal trash setout, and on a per-ton basis, compost production creates twice as many jobs as landfilling and four times as many as incineration.
In the run-up to the awareness week, Kimberly-Clark Professional, the US Composting Council and Keep America Beautiful released the “Guide to Workplace Composting.”
Promising “a little science and a lot of fun,” Western Disposal Services opened up its Boulder, Colo. composting facility for tours.
The City of Santa Maria, Calif. offered a garden workshop as well as free compost and vegetable plants. The coastal city of Santa Maria lies about 120 miles northwest of Los Angeles.
The Melbourne Zoo in Australia offered a composting workshop that showed visitors the inner workings of the zoo’s organics operation and provided tips for composting regularly at home.
Residents of Essex County in the U.K. could nab low-cost compost bins during the week.
The Memorial University Botanical Garden in Newfoundland, Canada offered a special compost-focused family program last week. It included informative compost displays as well as a look at the garden’s worm bin and face painting for kids.
