Composting, or organic recycling used to be a backburner issue, because refuse disposal was inexpensive and landfill capacity, before the eighties, was not as scarce as it is now.

Composting has been successfully demonstrated throughout our country, as well as the world. It is economically competitive with other waste management methods. In addition, compost is an environmentally beneficial product. While large scale composting operations will be increasingly important, the most cost effective way of handling yard, kitchen and garden waste is in our own backyards, avoiding trucking and fuel costs.

With the continued depletion of available landfill space and anticipated high collection and disposal fees needed to cover the cost of the refuse disposal facilities being built today, the separation of leaves, grass clippings, brush, and other yard debris from refuse will become increasingly attractive.

Remember: thirty to forty percent of materials in the solid waste stream are compostable organic matter!

Lee’s Living Will, written by Lee Hayes to Pete Seeger’s wife:

If I should die before I wake
All my bone and sinew take
Put me in the compost pile
To decompose me for a while

Worms, water, sun will have their way,
Returning me to common clay
All that I am will feed the trees
The plants, the fishes in the seas

When radishes and corn you munch
You’ll be having me for lunch
And then excrete me with a grin
Chortling “There goes Lee again!”