The Friday Compost - all the news that's fit to rot

Let it rot. That's our motto. We even rot some of the newspapers that we peel our root veggies onto. The newspaper may not be organic, but in the overall scheme of things, they probably add less to soil contamination than the fallout of the car exhausts from the 900,000 people living in my county.

This morning's Friday Compost before turning it over

Composting is very simple. I've done this for years. You only need four things - nitrogen, carbon, water, and heat. Nature will do the rest. Nitrogen is basically anything green, and comes from the various vegetable scraps we accumulate during food preparation, the few times I catch our grass clippings, and from the occasional refrigerator reject. Carbon is brown - or dead, like yesterday's news - and is primarily tree branches, leaves, or any other items that aren't green. Water is crucial to the rotting process. Keeping your compost wet will keep it rotting. Keeping the compost hot will help it rot faster.

There are several ways to generate heat. One time I dumped our fireplace ash into the compost, and didn't realize it had hot embers in it. The ensuing smoke and fire was exciting, but NOT the way to generate heat. A good way to generate heat is to dump some of your grass clippings on top, but you are better off leaving the clippings on the lawn. Last year we purchased a plastic composting bin with a lid, and this black container generates heat from the solar gain of being exposed to the sun. After years of open composting, I am sold on the value of a good plastic bin with a lid.

We keep a small container on our counter, and when we prepare food, we toss the scraps in it. Every morning before work, I empty the container into the compost bin. I do this year-round. I have yet to run out of space, and we eat lots of vegetables and fruit. We also add egg shells, coffee grinds, tea leaves, and of course, the fireplace ash. After I confirm there are no hot embers remaining.

There seems to be a common myth that compost smells bad. Trust me, it doesn't smell bad. Through a new Google feature called "Rub and Sniff", if you rub your monitor where the compost picture is (below), and then smell your finger, you will experience what compost smells like from 3 feet away. Then wipe the finger smudge from your monitor. Placing the compost by your property boundary closest to your least desirable neighbor is a waste of effort. Place it close enough to make it convenient to use, and far enough away to not trip over it.

Friday Compost turned over

There are a few things you must do to keep your compost healthy. You must turn it a few times a week. I use a spading fork for this. You must also ensure that the contents of your compost bin is making contact with the ground. This allows for worms, and beneficial bacteria to migrate into the pile and speed the composting process. I use the handle from a broken garden tool to open gaps in the muck, and this lets the compost fall to the bottom after I remove compost from the access door at the bottom. I have taken about 5 shovels of great compost from the pile so far this year, and this is what was produced over the winter. I expect to get loads more as the weather warms and I start to turn the gardens.

Some items are not for the compost bin - meat, including chicken should never be added. Fish scraps are great, but be sure to bury it in the center of the bin to avoid any odors. Don't add any dairy, fats, or plastic.

Our town used to pick up garbage twice a week. Due to cost increases, they have cut back on pickups to once a week. Due to the type of items that end up in the garbage, our trash can doesn't smell, and the volume of garbage we generate is so low that a once a week pickup is just fine for us. Think of how much less would go to the landfill if everyone ate local, organic foods, and composted the scraps. This would also keep the farmers near us in business. The volume of compost we generate isn't huge, but there is great satisfaction in seeing our waste turned into an organic and clean soil amendment and fertilizer.

So give it a try! You will get addicted to it. Most counties sell discounted composting bins, so before purchasing one at a store, check with your local and county government. If you are already composting, did I miss anything? Is it working for you?

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Stop the insanity at the source

Our previous home had a 450 foot driveway. Taking the garbage and recycling out, as well as clearing snow, was a big job. I'd often load the recycling in the car and drop it by the road on my way out. At times it felt like a war between the catalog companies and me, with the US Postal Service as the ordinance delivery vehicle. Every day our mailbox would fill, and every two weeks I'd haul it to the curb. Most of the mail was just plain junk.

The red dots show the route I took to take out the recycling

A few years ago, we began a campaign to stop catalogs. Each time we'd receive a catalog, we'd call the customer service number and request to be removed. Each call took lots of time, and we'd often get more mail from the same company again anyway. The battle at times felt as futile as trying to stop the tides of the ocean with my hands.

My honey and I are not into buying stuff, we stick to purchasing only basic items for the most part. We do splurge on outdoor gear, and a few gadgets, but our largest expenses are usually good vacations and the lasting memories. So the catalogs were truly a waste for us to receive. Our normal buying habits are to have a need, shop for the best solution, and purchase the item. We aren't stuck to one supplier, and when the product can't be differentiated, online shopping works great. We also try to buy local, even if it costs a little more.

Think about the process of making a catalog for a moment. I'm not talking about the layout and design, think of the physical book and where it starts and ends. All paper has some amount of real wood pulp, so envision the boreal forests of Canada, and the diversity of resources this represents - many birds, and all levels of the food chain, each requiring some small aspect of this forest to survive.

By Kaibab National Forest
via Wikimedia Commons

To produce your catalog, trees are harvested. Most of the trees harvested are not selectively taken down by big men (and women) with chainsaws. Most wood harvesting is done using large impersonal machines, where the trees and everything around the trees is removed. What is left of the forest has lost all diversity, and replanting trees disregards the other vegetation required to maintain the entire ecosystem. Most birds can't survive in it.

I've seen areas of the Yukon Territories that were destroyed by fire. It is amazing to see the endless destruction of a lightning strike. But a fire leaves behind the seeds and roots of most plants that lived there. Eventually, the forest returns to what it used to look like, and the ecosystem recovers. In a lumber operation, it is like a big farm, sterile and homogeneous.

This harvested wood is then trucked to a lumber mill, where some portion of that wood is shipped to a paper company. This pulp is then processed using loads of chemicals, and lots of resources.

Recycled paper is just a big circle. You put your unwanted paper and cardboard in the recycling bin, and the town picks it up. They take it to a collection facility, where it is again trucked, this time to the processing plants to be used to make recycled paper.

The paper is then made by combining the recycled paper and the wood pulp. If you notice where paper mills are located, they are all by water sources. Making paper is very energy intensive, and the process uses loads of water. The paper is then shipped off to printing companies in huge rolls.

Then that layout thing happens. A file is sent to the printer, and millions of catalogs are printed. It is here where your name is affixed to your catalog. The catalogs are then trucked to a mail processing facility, where the catalog enters the mail distribution system. Your catalog is shipped to a regional center, then to your local post office, and then sorted and carried to your front door by your local postal carrier.

At the end of the work day, we go to the front door, get the mail, and sort it. We put the catalogs in a pile, and then we tear the cover off, carry the catalog to the back door recycle bin. Every two weeks I drag the pile of paper to the curb. (See three paragraphs up about recycling, re-read until dizzy.)

An attentive reader is presently wondering... why does he tear the covers off? Here's why. We put the covers on a stack, and every few days we login to Catalog Choice. This company provides tools on their Web site to contact catalog companies and have your name removed from their mailing list. The site provides you with a dashboard to see the status of your requests, and how many times you made the request. Within a few months of starting to use this site, our mail pile began decreasing dramatically. If a company doesn't comply after a few attempts, I then call the company and put up with the few minutes of getting my name removed. Try it, this works. It's also free, although they ask for donations so they can continue providing this service. Free and it works. Can you think of many things like that?

Catalog Choice stats

Carting your unwanted mail from the front door to the back door, so it can be reused to send you the same stuff you don't read the last time it came to your home is insane. Stop the insanity by stopping the catalogs. See the impact we've made in a few months of using the service (our numbers are the small ones at the bottom of the image).

Protecting our communities and ecosystem from the invasion

When I was growing up, my dad would take the newspaper to work with him, and read it at lunch and during breaks. I would enthusiastically greet him at the door, wrench the paper from his hand on his arrival, and run for the living room with it. I'd flip through the pages until I found the comics, and one of my favorites was Mark Trail. If you aren't familiar with the comic strip Mark Trail, he was a game warden who protected the environment from people bent on destroying it. He would often do this by beating someone senseless with his fists, which is probably why your local newspaper doesn't publish it anymore.

I'm not sure if it was Mark Trail, or my observations later in life that opened my eyes to the damage people do to the environment with their ignorant, and sometimes willful acts. My honey and I have sea kayaked many areas from Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New Jersey. We mostly paddle in the littoral zone. This has nothing to do with literature, it refers to the tidal areas and wetlands along the coast. We've also vacationed from Trinidad to Canada, sometimes sailing in the waters, sometimes birding while walking, and the presence of garbage is the same everywhere, with the worst of it near populated areas and shipping channels.

By Piotrus (Own work)
via Wikimedia Commons

What strikes me the most about every paddle, is the amount of trash that is present miles from the nearest road. This includes cigarette butts (it's easy to blame people who fish, but they'd have to chain smoke in large groups to generate this much of stuff), plastic bags. and all types of stuff you'd see on the side of the road. While enjoying water activities in New York Harbor, we've seen "Bronx Squid" a regular "species" that resulted from the discarded instruments of safe sex practices in poorly lit areas of NYC. Showering becomes a ritual to look forward to after a day on the water. Most of this trash finds its way from the street, into a storm drain to a stream or river, and eventually into the littoral zone.

The littoral zone is pretty amazing to experience. It contains a very diverse range of plants, animals, fish, and other things whose classification is beyond my scientific depth. Fiddler crabs are always interesting to sneak up on. They have one huge claw, and a small one, and wield their large claw like Darth Vader using his light saber. Of course the plastic bags, bottles, and flotsam (or was it jetsam?) floating in the water, and enmeshed in the vegetation impacts the ability of these species to thrive. 

Where does it all come from? the vast majority of the storm drains in our communities empty into streams and rivers, and eventually end up either in lakes, or in the case of our watershed in Oradell, and most of Bergen County, the water ends up in the Hackensack River. This river empties into the littoral zone - which in this case is Newark Bay. Little is done to capture the garbage that people toss from their cars, blow from the bed of their pickup trucks, or are discarded outside the convenience store. The density of population increases as we near the bay, as does the volume of trash. Our rain water run off has become a secondary garbage can for many people.

A recent study showed that there are 250 billion plastic fragments in the Mediterranean Sea. Keep in mind that I don't believe every study, since many have a desired outcome, and data can be skewed by the research tool, the researcher, or the pool selected. So I automatically cut this number in half, and at 125 billion pieces, it is still a real lot. 

By Kyle Moore (Own work) [Public domain]
via Wikimedia Commons

The wrapper we drop on the ground, blows from the back of our pickup trucks, or falls from our garbage can at the street, ends up somewhere. Somewhere we generally can't see it. What we don't see, doesn't exist. Except it does exist, it just exists in a place where it impedes the health of a vast section of our food chain.

If you see someone littering, rat them out. Riverkeeper and Bergen County have a system in place to do this. If you see someone littering, call the Hackensack Riverkeeper Watershed Watch Hotline at 1-877-CPT-BILL (278-2455) with the date, time and location of incident as well as the vehicle make, model, color and license plate number. There is a similar system in place in Rockland County, NY, and I was a top contributor. The county sends out a warning ticket, and the person may think twice next time they have a little wrapper in their car that is bugging them so much they feel the urge to toss it out. 


So please put the wrapper in your pocket until you find a garbage can. If you smoke, use the ashtray in your car (or field strip it) instead of flicking it out of the window. Cigarette butts aren't easily biodegradable, and they look strange in our coastal water among the organisms that live there. Don't try to stuff your garbage onto the top of a full garbage can on the street. Bag your garbage before it goes to the curb. Pick up litter when you can, and dispose of it. The world will be a better place for all of us by following these simple actions. 

So many books, so little time...

Back in April, my honey and I were excited to have a buyer for our home, and were looking forward to getting out of the tyranny of NY. We ended up escaping to the hope and change NJ Governor Chris Christie was offering. Of course, with both of us from NJ originally, this was a return home in many ways.

As Project Management Professionals (PMP), we approached the move in a way that comes naturally to us - as a project. We went through our house, noting what we hadn't used in a long time, and decided to sell as much as possible to save the cost and effort of moving extra stuff. We then estimated how many boxes of stuff we had left, and how this translated to boxes. We then determined how much time it takes to pack a box, and from this calculated how long it would take us to pack. Pretty simple.


One of the categories of items we decided to sell was our massive book collection. I'm not sure how we accumulated so many, but as a couple without a television connection, books and reading are a passion for us. We have a great collection of reference books, and along the way we picked up a wide array of other types of books. 


Most of the time we use the library for our reading material. But where we lived in Rockland County, we were treated as pariahs in the member libraries, forcing us to drive to Spring Valley to get books out. If you've never been to Spring Valley, good for you. So we ended up with books.


I started selling them on Amazon.com, where I have had much success in the past. The collection quickly decreased, and as it decreased, I consolidated the books, and began to disassemble the empty shelves for the move. As the move date came closer, I had about 15 books that wouldn't sell - at any price. So my honey mentioned this to a friend, and she told me about Paperback Swap. 


I read the information related to the site and how to become a member, and decided to give it a try. The concept is pretty simple. A member offers 10 books online. This entitles the new member to 1 credit. As they ship any other books, they receive an additional credit. These credits are used to order books from other members. The person shipping the book pays the shipping, so you pay for your books to go elsewhere, and when you order a book, that member pays to ship to you. Shipping is via Media Mail, which is a little more than $2 a book. 


It took about 3 weeks for 12 books to be ordered from me. I shipped them out, and watched the credits accrue. I packed a small stack of unwanted books with the keepers, and we got ready for our move. After we moved, I began to order books with my credits. It has worked great for me. I have a small stack of unread books, and as I read them, I repost them to the site, and as I ship them, I get more credits. 


Check the site out - www.paperbackswap.com, and if you register, please credit "surlyrider" as the person you learned of this site from, and I will get book credits for each of you. This is a much better way to get a book than buying them at full price. They hae an inventory of almost 5 million books. I still use the library, Bergen County has a great system, but this site has provided me with many great reads. I can take my time with them, and if traveling, can swap them on the road, and keep reading. 


Give it a try, if you like to read, it is a great resource.