Allison

A few months ago I moved into a quiet apartment that had one amazing feature: A large balcony. We aren’t talking 4′ x 9′ or even 5′ x 10. We are talking a 6′ by 25′ balcony that had so many possibilities that the mind boggled.

I happened to move in next to a green thumb and, throughout the cold winter months, before she ran off to Arizona, we devised greater and greater plans for what to do with my space. Her balcony, even in the dead of winter, was a warm, cozy place with chairs spaced appropriately for company and gardening pots and tools carefully placed on the side, ready to be used again as soon as it was time.

Why compost?

So these grandiose plans came down to one simple fact: I needed dirt. Three options arose.

First, sneak out and “borrow” dirt from neighboring homes in the dead of night. Second, buy dirt from a dirt store. Third, and the most enticing, make dirt. Create compost using all the organic materials left around after making a meal, coffee and reading the newspaper!

The first one would land me in jail, the second was not very appealing due to a small budget and even smaller ambition to carry large bags of dirt up to the second floor where my apartment was located. The last one made the most sense. Eco-friendly, cost-effective and hey, I have a balcony, I have plenty of room to “grow” dirt.

What I knew about composting at that time could have fit into a very small paper lunch bag. With room left over. But, with the help of my gardening nerd neighbor and what I was able to find on the internet, I have successfully handcrafted a balcony compost system. A huge thanks to Balcony Compost for the directions, which I’ve slightly modified.

Materials needed:

Two 5-gallon buckets — available at any hardware store or at thrift shops — usually holding skis and other random objects for display in the store. Dump out the contents (carefully) and make the thrift store an offer.

One large plastic storage tub with lid — also available for pennies on the dollar at your local thrift shop.

Drill with small bit (or a hammer and screwdriver, my dad happened upon my grandfather’s old drill and gave it to me, bonus!).

Small, recycled plastic container with lid — you’ll use this in the kitchen to store your compost materials.

Shredded newspaper, about a weeks worth of papers — after using the color comics to wrap a gift for your bestie, of course! This is one of the things considered as “brown” material you need for composting.

Two cups soil/dirt — recycled from repotting a plant works perfectly.

One cup water — recycled rainwater, if your balcony and/or state allows you to catch it.

Kitchen scraps – as much as you can save up in a week or so should do. Carrot peelings, egg shells, coffee grinds, strawberry greens, etc. Nothing cooked and no meat. This is some of the “green” materials you’ll need for the composting process. Well, eggshells are considered “brown” but you get the gist.

Materials

Make your compost bin:

First, I’d recommend safety glasses, just in case. Take the two plastic buckets and plug in your drill or get out the hammer and screwdriver.  Around the bottom and top of the buckets, drill holes approximately one inch from the top and bottom, two inches apart, around the entire bucket.

Then drill five holes in the bottom of each bucket, this is to let water or “compost tea” drain.

Next, drill holes throughout the body of each of the buckets. You’ll want them to be about three to four inches apart, going around and up the bucket. This allows air to flow through and help create a nice, warm, composting friendly environment within the bucket.

Air holes

Start your compost:

Now, with the hard work out of the way, let’s make dirt!

Place one bucket into the plastic storage tub (this catches any water and/or compost tea from dumping all over the balcony and your neighbors heads if they live below you).

Place two inches of the shredded newspaper in the bottom of one bucket. Wet with the cup of water

Dump the kitchen scraps on top. Add the two cups of soil to jumpstart the composting process. Cover the bucket with the storage tub top and weight with a rock (or in my case, a large, purple hippo paperweight).

Place in sunny corner of your balcony and sit back to enjoy the feeling of a job well done.

Keep it up!

Use the small plastic container in your kitchen to save scraps as you make them. Mine usually has fruit discards, egg shells, coffee grinds (a lot of coffee grinds), flower cuttings and leaves from plant trimmings. Again, nothing that has been cooked and NO meat. Oh, and no used kitty litter or other animal droppings. First, it doesn’t break down quickly and second, you might be using this compost to grow peppers on your balcony next year. Do you really want it to be grown in poop compost?

Compost's temporary residence

Continually add more kitchen scraps until you get a good three to four inches of scraps in the bucket. This is where the second bucket comes in. Take the first one, dump the scraps and newspaper into the second one so that it gets a breath of air and decomposes more quickly. Drop in a few more scraps of newspaper, water with a bit of recycled rainwater (or tap, of course), recover and start the process all over again.

A few notes:

1. Scraps being left on the kitchen table in the plastic bin. I make sure and dump it every few days, but even when I have forgotten to, it hasn’t smelled bad. A little mold, but nothing too icky.

2. The compost bin on the balcony – does it smell? No. Except when I put garlic cuttings from my best friend’s garden in it. Then it smelled like I’d made pesto and forgot the basil.

3. This isn’t going to make you a lot of compost very quickly. In order to set up my garden, I did in fact have to purchase dirt in bags. But, it will be great for when you need to replant indoor plants or want to set up seeds for next year’s growing season.

4. Compost tea, if you collect it, can be used as a non-chemical fertilizer. Pretty cool, right? Google it!

Finished product:

Interior

And outside…

Exterior

Allison Barrett loves everything online, gardening and figuring out how to make things work. She works at the Camera as their Online Coordinator and always knows where her towel is. You can catch up with her on Twitter (@tofallfromgrace).

“Backyard compost bin sale and workshop May 1

“The City of Boulder and the Boulder County Resource Conservation Division are hosting the annual spring backyard compost bin sale on Saturday, May 1 from 9 a.m. to noon at the new ReSource Yard location, 6400 Arapahoe Road.  SoilSaver bins will be available for $50 each including tax.  Only checks and cash will be accepted.  Bins will be sold on a first-come, first-served basis.  No early sales.

“After purchasing compost bins, residents are invited to join a free backyard composting workshop from 10 a.m.to noon; space is limited to 30 people. Community members interested in attending this free workshop should RSVP with name, phone number and/or e-mail and number of attendees to jbohn@bouldercounty.org or call 720-564-2226.”

via City of Boulder

Ah, yes, the weird Mayan Temple concourse. | photo by flickr user Ken Lund

Title says it all, doesn’t it? No? Well, Planet Green says the rest about the new Denver International Airport composting plan:

It may be an airport—not the greenest of venues by nature—but DIA is really trying to lighten its carbon load. It’s already working on the world’s greenest parking lot, which includes solar and wind power. Now it’s composting.

Of course the plan sounds a bit… small for an airport, doesn’t it? Here’s a tidbit from the press release (PDF):

A1 Organics will be providing around 20 “totes,” or composting containers that hold up to 65 gallons of waste each for the project. The organic waste will be gathered in select employee break rooms at the airport and also at all of the restaurants in Jeppesen Terminal.

As I read it, that means there aren’t composting containers in the concourses (a.k.a. once you get past the security circus) — so compost early and often!

The photo illustration of what can be composted that ran with the Longmont Times Call story on the city's new pilot composting program.

The city of Longmont plans to launch a pilot curbside composting program this spring, according to a story in today’s Times Call.

If the pilot is successful, Longmont will start a citywide program in 2011.

A year ago, Boulder expanded its own pilot curbside composting program to serve the entire city.

Eight months later, Boulderites were using the composting program — along with the single-stream recycling program — to divert 50 percent of their trash from the landfill.

If you live in Boulder County and you want to know how you can compost, check out the composting resource page on BigGreenBoulder. Read more about Longmont’s program here, or check out an article on the success of Boulder’s program at DailyCamera.com.

Except in certain places! Less awesome!

Small garbage workers, too.

Yeah, curbside composting is really awesome, but if you happen to live in a multifamily situation, like a lot of Boulder renters, you’re out of luck.

But here’s a little story for you:

When we first moved here from New York, my girlfriend and I were dutifully keeping a pile of compost in the freezer, so we could take it to the farmer’s market. This being the dead middle of summer — and a pretty inefficient, ineffective freezer in a place we were inhabiting for just under a month — it didn’t take long for the compost to become the equivalent of a third roommate. A third roommate that had never seen a shower. But had seen compost. And was wearing it.

What to do? It was gross and I was getting impatient, so I asked R to “get rid of it.” She’s far more patient than I, particularly with green matters, so she put up a fight and said she wanted to compost it still.

Fine, I said. Take it somewhere as soon as you can.

“Somewhere?”

It’s Boulder, I said. Somebody around here must compost.

I headed off to work and, in disbelief, she stayed at home with the stinky compost. Then she called the nearest bar. You could literally see it from our window. She asked if she could stop by and drop off some compost. It’s obviously not something they want to do a lot, but they said it’d be fine.

And you know what? We tip well at that bar. Just sayin’.

(An epilogue: We moved to a more permanent location and now she drops it off at a couple of different places — and we tip well there, too. Soon, we’ll have our own composting situation set up, but until then, Boulder, thanks!)

Cliff Hathaway recycles the family Christmas tree last Janauary in Boulder | Daily Camera

After the presents are opened, the chestnuts are roasted and the carols are sung — don’t forget to recycle your Christmas tree.

(Assuming, of course, that you didn’t go eco with a live, potted tree that you can plant. Or, that you didn’t buy a petroleum-based fake tree.)

If you live in Boulder, you can get rid of your tree just by sticking it in your curbside composting bin (even if the lid won’t shut.) If you can’t stuff it in the bin, then you can just lean the tree against it instead.

If you went big this Christmas, and your tree is over 6 feet tall, your trash hauler would  love it if you’d cut it into at least two pieces.

If you don’t have curbside compost, you can drop your ornament- and light-free tree for free off at the city’s Yard Waste Dropoff site at Western Disposal, 5880 Butte Mill Road.

Folsom Field's recycling stats are pretty impressive

CU’s football stadium is full of stats, but its number of trash cans might impress us most. Turns out almost all containers of what you can eat or drink at Folsom Field is recyclable or compostable already — and it’s still improving. From PlanetGreen:

Equipped with the necessary compost and recycling bins, he says the only trash produced is from coffee cup lids, snack chip bags, and candy wrappers. For now, that trash goes into the recycling bins and gets sorted out later (by students, as all the recycling on campus is done), but soon they’re going to stop selling candy in non-recyclable wrappers, and in part because of the university’s influence, Newport said, Frito-Lay is now producing SunChips in compostable packaging.

Read more about Folsom’s zero-waste plans here or after the jump.

CU to make home games at Folsom Field zero-waste

Originally published Aug. 5, 2008, in the Daily Camera.

By Brittany Anas

The University of Colorado is pledging to become “zero waste” at Folsom Field this football season — an environmental program that will mean no more trash cans in the stadium, valet parking for fans who arrive on bikes and compostable nacho trays.

CU officials made the announcement Tuesday, and the Buffs will become the first major collegiate or professional sports program in the nation to tackle a zero-waste challenge, said CU Athletic Director Mike Bohn.

About 60 tons of game-day garbage was sent to landfills last football season, amounting to an average of 10 tons of trash fromeach home event.

This season, environmental czars expect to recycle or compost 90 percent of the waste from home football games.

Student volunteers will staff the 50-some recycling stations throughout the stadium, helping football fans toss their trash into the right bins. CU’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps units will help with cleaning up after games.

Finished compost will be returned to CU for campus landscaping.

Nearly all the food and drinks sold in Folsom will be packaged in recyclable or compostable containers, according to the school. CU will contract with Boulder-based Eco-Products Inc., which makes biodegradable products, such as sugarcane plates and corn cutlery, that will compost — unlike petroleum-based that depend on oil.

Since there will be no trash cans, non-recyclable garbage — most of which will have been brought in by fans — will be plucked out of the recycle bins after the game.

CU spokesman Bronson Hilliard quipped that security officers won’t be patting down fans for cardboard, or banning non-recyclable items like candy wrappers from coming into the stadium.

White Wave Foods is the primary sponsor of the program, which has been dubbed “Ralphie’s Green Stampede” with the stadium in turn advertising the Boulder-based organic-food company.

The university has not conducted a formal cost analysis of the program, Hilliard said. The school expects the launch will be low cost, and the newly stepped-up green measures won’t cost more to conduct than current clean-up practices.

“With this measure, CU Athletics is taking a bold step, in sync with its student, faculty and campus leadership, toward keeping CU at the vanguard of sustainability leaders, where it has been for nearly 40 years,” said Dave Newport, director of the CU’s Environmental Center.

The nation’s first student-led environmental center was born atCU on Earth Day in 1970. In 2000, CU students voted to purchase renewable wind-energy credits to match power used in all major campus construction projects, also a first for college campuses.

The student-union this year also began requiring all student-funded events that include food to be zero waste.

CU is supporting Gov. Bill Ritter’s climate action plan that targets a 20 percent reduction in carbon emissions by 2020 and an 80 percent reduction by 2050. CU officials say the athletic department’s new pledge is another step toward carbon neutrality on the campus.

The zero-waste and recycling efforts in Folsom could save as much as 455 million BTUs of energy — equivalent to the total annual energy use of four U.S. households, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

CU’s athletic department also will invest in local carbon-reduction projects to match energy used to power the stadium and for the football team’s travel.

In an effort to encourage fans to ride their bikes to games, there will be valet bike parking at the nearby Franklin Field.

Victoria Garcia, a CU student body president, said she hopes that the campus’ program becomes a model for other schools nationwide to follow.