Footprint

My trashcan has been so empty. In an attempt to reduce my carbon footprint, I started to compost a while ago. I dump in all kinds of stuff - old lettuce, coffee grounds, tea bags, toilet paper rolls, leaves and other things and just spin it around every so often. But something's wrong. I've yet to see any of that rich, brown, glorious dirt come out. Mainly it just looks like old lettuce, coffee grounds, tea bags, toilet paper rolls, leaves and other things in various stages of rot. But at least it's small rot. Since August, I've thrown so much in to that black ball. Stuff that would have filled up my trash can and some landfill out in the desert somewhere. So, while I'm a failure at creating dirt, I'm creating a lot less trash. And maybe that's the point.

Composting Update

My brown to green ratio was all off. My composting efforts were turning into a soupy, smelly mess. I was totally cleaning out the kitchen, loading up scraps in my pot on the counter - watermelon rinds, tea bags and coffee grounds which was all good green stuff. My problem was the brown. So I started spending more time outside and went gung ho on the brown. Raking my yard, shaking my trees, pulling weeds and grass and loading up the bin. It must have worked, because the other day I opened the top and it smelled so good! So earthy. Like nice soil. I didn't actually touch it or anything, but the ratios are balanced, the amount of trash being thrown out is way down and soon, hopefully, we'll see something that resembles dirt.

Compost

Today's the day Shawn and I are going to start composting. I bought a Composter at Costco. It's supposed to take between 2-3 hours to assemble. I've got three days worth of watermelon rinds, coffee grounds, expired cottage cheese, a banana peel and a pile of leaves outside in a box ready to go. Saving the world and slowing down global warming updates to follow...

OK, it's later. So Shawn put the thing together in under an hour and I discovered that you can't compost dairy (who knew?), meaning that the cottage cheese ruined my three days worth of stuff.

We'll start tomorrow.

Trashy

Garbage disposals are bad. I heard on NPR a few weeks ago five things about them that are wasteful:
1. the water flowing unnecessarily 2. the unnecessary electricity usage, 3. the wasted food that's going down the drain, 4. the extra impact all of that waste has on the sewage system and 5. well, I can't remember what 5 was, but there were definitely five, so I've been thinking about making some changes.

I try to be a good human, try to recycle, try to reduce my carbon footprint, turn off lights when I leave the room, be all Al Gory and all, but really, I just use too much. We all do. I don't live in a mansion, but I do have an entire room I never go in, I drive too much, have too much crap around that I rarely ever use and have a pool pretty much for the sole entertainment of a dog.

So I've decided to start composting and stop throwing all of that stuff down the drain. I don't have a garden or herbs or anything that is in desperate need of nutrient-rich compost, so if anybody wants it, just let me know. Since starting to eat like a person on Weight Watchers instead of the glory days of subsisting on Starbucks "banana" walnut muffins, Happy Hour specials and Pei Wei, my waste seems to have increased - watermelon rinds, banana peels, peach pits, carrot scraps, remains from vegetable soup makings (zero points!). Plus we've got lots of coffee grounds. Shawn, Mr. Fancy Four Shot, goes through coffee like he's a barista - gets a case automatically delivered every month from Illy (imagine the carbon involved in that - the paper, the box, the metal canisters, the plane, the UPS truck - please don't tell Mr. Gore)

I've been doing some research and I'm getting close to actually buying a composter, but for now, it's the old fashioned way - the bunnies in my yard have more carrots than they know what to do with.