Dear Editor,
This letter is full of stuff we already know, much of it is stuff I’ve written about in letters to the papers before. I think it begs repeating now, for reasons I’ll get into later.

Food scraps and other organic waste material do not belong in the garbage. Including it is a bad habit, hard to break, but it costs us in several ways. Organic material is heavier than plastic trash, so it adds to the cost of waste disposal. Organic material, when enclosed in plastic and compressed in a garbage truck or landfill, creates methane, a dangerous greenhouse gas. So, simply stated, organic waste should be kept out of the garbage/recycling streams, for economic and environmental reasons. As usual, the onus is upon us, the people at the bottom of the power structure, to sort organics and recyclables from useless trash, and dispose of them in separate streams.

Metal is easy to recycle, and municipalities get some money back for those items. Many plastic items are easy enough to recycle, although it requires facilities that are not available locally, so they are collected and sent to more centralized operations. These systems are already in place and operating.
Organic material is the most difficult to collect and transport, and therefore should be kept close to the homes from which it came. This is a case of YIMBY; yes, in my back yard. For those in rural areas, compost is no big deal, it’s just a fact. No problem. Town dwellers and people with busy lives may find that tossing food scraps into a pile is not within their time budget. One of your neighbours is probably a gardener, and may welcome your additions to their composting efforts.

For some households, a green cone (compostec.ca) may be the answer. I have two, 25 years old, still functioning well. You simply put your daily food scraps in, add some peat moss, dried leaves, etc. and it is digested. It is heated lightly by solar power and operates year round. Some people never have to empty theirs; I take the goopy stuff out once a year to energize my rather inert outdoor compost pile.
Another option is a worm bin. I have one of those, and it’s the easiest ranching project one can undertake. I put food scraps (except citrus and onion/garlic leftovers) into the bin, dig it under, add sawdust, shredded brown cardboard and eggshells, and my worms seem quite content with their lives. I have extra, if you want to get started. The worm manure product at the bottom can be mixed with water for plant food. Just ask my angel wing begonias, which have won prizes at the Shawville Fair, if they like that stuff.

There is also an appliance that does a similar function, variously marketed as Lomi, Nomi, (Foodcycler.com). It is about the size of a bread maker, goes on the kitchen counter. You would scrape your plates and dishes into the mow, close the lid, and overnight it grinds and slow cooks the scraps, so by morning you have a substance similar to worm poop. Use it as a soil amendment or compost booster.

Now, the part where I say why I am restating this already available information: the inscrutable upper levels of government seem intent upon collecting organic waste door-to-door, and I firmly believe that such a project would be logistically unworkable, very costly, and wrongly treats household organic waste as a dangerous substance, to be taken far away and forgotten, rather than as a valuable resource, to be easily processed and used as near to its source as possible.

So, separate your waste streams right away, and keep your compost local. Do it yourself, before a one-size-fits-all scheme is implemented, at your expense.

Robert Wills, Shawville and Thorne