Cynical Composting

Some years back, ProfessorRoush ran across some compostable water bottles at a Starbucks in Seattle and, because of the skepticism deeply embedded in my academic soul, I thought it would be a neat idea to try to bring them back in my luggage and test their compost-worthiness at home.  Unfortunately, the TSA must have deemed the empty bottles in my checked bags as a potential terrorist threat because the bottles were not in my suitcase upon my arrival at home.

I was more fortunate last year when I ran into these certified compostable cups at a pizza parlor in Fort Collins, and I was able to ultimately get them into my 65 gallon Lifetime tumbling compost bin by sneaking them home in my car past the marijuana-alert sentries on the Kansas border.

These Eco-Product® cold cups are, as printed on the cups, certified by the BPI, or Biodegradable Products Institute, to be compostable in a municipal or commercial composting facility.  The BPI is a "multi-stakeholder association of key individuals and groups from government, industry and academia"....that tests products by written ATSM standards and certifies them.  I should reveal here that whenever I see the popular buzzword "stakeholder" these days, my cynical hackles are immediately raised and my blood pressure rises.  Materials tested by the BPI must include the ability to "biodegrade at a rate comparable to yard trimmings, food scraps and other compostable materials, such as kraft paper bags," and they must "disintegrate, so that no large plastic fragments remain to be screened out."

I placed the new cups pictured in the top photo into my tumbling compost bin on 5/26/2014, along with mature compost and grass clippings.  You can see immediately above this paragraph several periodic photos taken over last summer, a time span when numerous additions of kitchen scraps, grass clippings, other organic materials, and water were composted in the pile alongside these cups.  The cups did not disintegrate, as you can see, although they flattened and tore, probably from the repeated tumbling alongside wet and heavy clumps of compost.  The organic materials in the bin repeatedly became decent, black homogeneous compost with which any gardener would be happy.

This week, almost 11 months after the start of the experiment, I again opened the compost bin and found the cups as photographed yesterday and shown at right.  Now, in fairness, I should note that the BPI website states clearly that these products are not meant for home compost piles, but only for "well-managed municipal and commercial facilities."  Home composters "typically do not generate the temperatures needed to assure rapid biodegradation of this new class of materials. For this reason, claims are limited to larger facilities."

That's all well and good, friends, and I can accept that ProfessorRoush is likely a terrible composter, but shouldn't we at least expect that now, 11 months later, the ink would faded and illegible?

Furthermore, and while I'm on a rant, what exactly constitutes an "acceptable municipal facility?"  Does my local county recycling facility, which routinely composts leaves and other materials, qualify?  It isn't listed at the findacomposter.com website printed on the cups, nor is any other facility within 50 miles of me.  How many of these cups would actually make it into a "well-managed commercial facility" anyway, rather than just being tossed into the restaurant waste cans with all the other debris and taken to the usual county shredding facilities?  How much more energy and chemical processing is involved in making these cups over the standard red plastic cups that we love to make so much fun of?  Which is more likely to be recycled and have the least long-term environmental impact?  Is this merely more marketing misinformation to muddle the minds of the masses?

I can't help thinking that while compostable cups make us all feel good, this whole certification system seems designed just to keep us from noticing the man behind the curtain while we slurp the Koolaid of environmental ecstasy.  It is only a matter of time before we'll hear offers for a free carton of these cups with every thousand carbon credits we purchase.

Composting Karma

It is time, I think, to unveil my super-duper, space-age, Lifetime 65 Gallon Composter.  Yes, I bit the bullet, took the plunge, went for broke, jumped in at the deep end, and took one for the team by purchasing this hi-tech tumbling aerator in an effort to improve (decrease) my carbon footprint and to help me appear to be a gardener worth...whatever organic brownie points I can get.  Good golly, Miss Molly, rotting vegetable material has gotten so complicated!

I had been eyeing this little gem, and other similar artificial composting bins in Sam's Club and in various gardening catalogues, for quite some time. I had weighed the benefits of tumbling versus "in-at-the-top-out-at-the-bottom composters" for some time and since I only infrequently and reluctantly turn my low-tech, toss-in-the-weeds garden compost pile, I became convinced that a tumbling composter would allow more frequent aeration of the material (it would be less work, anyway) and thus help me be a better composter. This plastic monstrosity, purchased at Sam's Club, had dropped to around $80.00 a month ago when I finally brought it home, so I guess I finally found the point where the price intersected with my basic Miserness.  For gosh sakes, don't buy it at the manufacturer's link above, where the identical composter is listed for $169.99, nor on Amazon.com, where it was priced above $130. 

This particular composter is designed with black, double-walled panels to absorb and retain heat, has an internal mixing bar that increases aeration of the material, and a large door to make it easy to get "stuff"in and out of.  I don't know if it is the "best" available, and I am not an agent for the company, but it seemed to fit what I wanted.  While many would deny that I could ever be mistaken for an accomplished composter, I do know a little about the theory, and so far all those embellishments sound okay to me.  Even so, although the accompanying instructional material talks about finished compost in as little as a month, I'm not going to hold my breath. It is merely a compost tumbler, not a miracle catalyst that will turn a lazy gardener into a reincarnation of Jerome Irving Rodale.

In the past, Mrs. ProfessorRoush has been resistant to participating in the creation of compost because the standard compost pile in my garden is a long walk up and down a hill from the house. For that reason, I placed the new tumbler in a convenient spot about 20 feet from the back door in an effort to encourage Mrs. ProfessorRoush to add the kitchen peelings to it.  Although she initially grumbled that it would smell and draw rodents and snakes, she finally agreed that the great Organic Gardening Gods would likely pleased by her sacrifice.  Okay, I don't know, along with all the sighs and eye-rollings, maybe she just decided to humor her half-crazy husband.  Anyway, I assured her that as long as she didn't add meat, eggs, grease, or our non-house-trained Italian Greyhound to the composter, it would not become a blight upon the entire household.  And I take it as a sign of good will that she has since taken that first step of keeping most of the household vegetable and fruit peelings for me and telling me when they were ready to be walked the twenty feet outside and placed into the composter. 

I have just one question remaining about the composter.  How long, do you think, do I have to use it before the environmental benefits I gain will make up for all the plastic and aluminum and stainless steel composing it and also offset the fuel to ship it here from China?  Just wondering when my carbon footprint karma will balance out?

Compost Musings

YES I compost, YES I do, YES I compost, how about YOU?

Sorry.  Some of the enthusiasm I occasionally run into when I talk about composting within earshot of the WEE crowd (Wild-Eyed Environmentalists) brought to mind an old cheer from high school basketball games when I thought about starting this particular blog, and that led to memories of friends and classmates who were high school cheerleaders or "pom-pom" squad, and that, of course, revived other old enthusiasms and left me mentally wandering....but I digress.

Actually, to be truthful, I was late to the composting game as a gardener and I still do it haphazardly.  For the first years of my gardening life, I was fond of throwing the weeds back down where I pulled them and letting nature do the work (I still do, to the chagrin of my wife, if I'm weeding far from the compost pile).  I am certainly not a religious convert to the organic-only mindset and, forgive me Gardener, but I routinely sin and don't compost many items which are compostable.  I don't, for instance, walk my wife's coffee grounds down the hill in the freezing Kansas wind to add them to the pile.  Nor the banana peels, or eggshells, or wilted celery.  My desire to compost, I'm afraid, ends at the onset of cold weather.  Just last week I read a locally-written article on how we should turn our compost piles every month in the winter.  Really?  I don't know about you, but here in Zone 5B, my compost pile has been frozen rock solid for the past three weeks and it'll likely remain that way through March.  I wonder if the local writer has really gotten out and tried to turn his compost pile lately, or if he was reading and passing on information written in Britannia or southern Texas?

Towards my salvation, though, over the past several years a good friend who lives amidst the trees has provided me with as many bags of fresh  fallen leaves as I can drive away with.  Routinely, that means that in making the compost pictured above in my makeshift compost pile, I've added about 50 large bags of leaves to the mix annually.  In fact, as you can see pictured below, I have several bins where leaves remain half-rotted until I begin cutting summer grass and pulling weeds.  I mix in the leaves with the green fresh material as it becomes available, and then turn the pile back and forth between bins until finally, all those bushels of leaves and grass become the pictured half-bin (2X4X4) of mostly compost.  

I certainly don't make great compost, however.  Somehow, I never reach the black, crumbling texture described in all the books, even though my soil thermometer tells me that I reached the prerequisite temperatures at least twice this year.  Perhaps, being intrinsically lazy, I don't turn it enough since I probably only turn it completely about 3 times in a summer.  Sue me, I just can't face turning the compost pile when the July sun is high and the temperatures start at 90F and end up at 109F.  And I probably don't water it enough. Although I try for the "wrung-out" sponge dampness, I mostly see repeatedly watering the compost pile as a bit of a waste of water in a landscape where water is a precious commodity during the summer. And maybe I fail because I mix in whole leaves and grass clippings and I don't chop them up fine enough. 

But, even half-finished, the plants don't seem to complain when they're mulched with my meager offerings.  And I trust the ingredients of my compost enough to put it on my vegetable garden, in contrast to the local municipal compost.  The latter, while free and available in large quantities, tends to have a bit of gravel, bottle tops and rubber items occasionally mixed in.  I might not mix my partially-aged compost into the soil for fear of losing a little available nitrogen, but the worms seem to appreciate its presence as a mulch. 

I'll leave you with this very deep thought:  however reluctantly and imperfectly, I suppose all gardeners eventually compost.