COMPOST DROP OFF SPOTLIGHT #5: Pam Boyce

Go Green Park Ridge is proud to spotlight our neighbors COMPOSTING! This interview is part of a series raising awareness of reducing wasted food, seeing the various opportunities to compost right outside our doors and inspiring each other to keep making a difference. 

Join us in becoming better stewards of the soil, partners in sustainability and proud participants in a greener future. Together we are building a more resilient Park Ridge by composting.

What got you into composting?
I had been interested in it for a while, so I researched the different opportunities for composting. I hadn't really decided on my final plan, and then my kids gifted me my composting bin, which was working great. The difficulty with the worm composting bin, is that the worms could not eat as much food as I wanted to give them. So, this year, we bought 2 sets of worms, and they still can't keep up.

Please describe any aha moments when you began composting?

• Composting is pretty easy!
• It was great to see how much stuff we deem as waste not actually going in the garden and having a productive 'end of life'. 
• You can't just put food scraps directly into a container and call it composting - you need the dry 'ingredients' too. I generally use cardboard pieces without ink on it, dry leaves, etc.
• It's been great to manage my 'overflow' food scraps by bringing them to the location in Uptown Park Ridge by the triangular parking lot near the train station when my worms can't go through all of the food scraps I have! With the community composting site, I've noticed that sometimes the bin is full, which is great to see so many people in Park Ridge participating in an opportunity to reduce food waste!
• It's exciting to use your own compost in your yard to make your trees, bushes, garden, etc. healthier.
• I was surprised to see that my worms multiplied over time. I never directly counted them, but it was clear to see that the number increased. 

How long have you been composting?
Formally, I've been composting with worms for a little over three years. Before then, I was finding ways to leverage the food waste from coffee and tea grounds in my home garden to reduce the waste from those materials.

Do you have advice for new folks on how or where to begin?

• Start small, make it easy - you don't have to begin with worms and your own composting bin at home if that feels daunting. It's great that we now have access to a community composting bin.
• Use an opaque, sealed leftover container to put your food scraps in - I use a coffee grounds canister - and if you want to reduce the smell if you're collecting scraps over the span of a few days to a week, consider putting it in your fridge or freezer. This reduces the sights and smells, and then I just drop off these excess scraps at the community composting site on the way to the farmer's market or any trips I have to make through Uptown.
• If you do decide to begin the adventure of at-home composting, note that there's a difference between what you can compost in your at-home bin versus what you can compost at the community site. At the community site, you can compost scraps such as cheese, meat, bones, and coffee filters; at home, none of these items should be composted. There's more to the science than this, but ultimately, it gets down to the fact that bigger composting piles have a higher internal temperature as opposed to smaller composting piles (like those at home), which is why certain things can be more easily composted at community piles or in commercial facilities, where those are available.
• I think it's important to clarify what composting actually means and what the end result of compost looks like. Composting is a process to help decompose food scraps into compost - while the initial food scrap themselves may smell (which is why it's best to keep them in the fridge or freezer while you're collecting), once you put them in with the worms and the scraps don't smell, because they are being broken down and processed by the worms. The end result of compost is an earthy, dark soil colored and smelling, nutrient-dense output that you can spread on your soil. Composting does NOT mean you just spread food scraps around on the soil.

Any advice to help Park Ridge increase participation in composting?

• Spread the word! Tell your family, friends, and neighbors that we have this great opportunity, and that it's easy. It helps make the world a better place for you, your kids, your grandkids.
• If you're interested in at-home composting, but doing it by yourself feels like a lot, consider asking your neighbors if they're willing to share a composting bin and responsibilities with you!
• I hope that the city can continue to promote awareness of our community composting as well, as it's an incredible resource we have access to and should be taking advantage of.
• Get your kids excited about it and participating at home so they're scraping their food scraps from their plates into your bin that you drop off at the community site, or if you're at-home composting, I'm sure they'd love to learn about the worms.
• If it feels like too much to manage your own composting bin or to have to drop scraps off at the community site too, there are other services that you can look into where they give you a big bucket and you can collect scraps and a service will come collect it after a period of time. I can't speak to this from experience, but want to make sure people know there are alternatives and other resources if they need.
• I can't help but think that if we take care of the earth, earth will take care of us too. <3

Composting in Park Ridge