The Lot is located in Zone 6a of the midwest United States. We call a fairly little city home, but it is making great strides in it’s efforts to becoming more forward-thinking with issues from residential recycling programs to city planning. Currently the city does not offer a composting program for it’s residents which in my opinion is quite unfortunate. That’s why I was fairly excited when on a friend’s Facebook feed, I found a snapshot of a city flyer announcing curbside composting.

Not a City Service

When I looked further into the announcement, I found the curbside composting pickup would not be a service offered by the city but by a third party. Residents who sign up for the program would be provided a cart and be charged $5/wk for the service. In an online news article, the provider states “We simply re-arranged the waste stream in order to re-use the material. In doing so residents can reduce the number of carts in their garage and at their curb, and feel good about their materials being used to grow food, generate energy and create new industry jobs.”

What Can Be Composted?

Reduce the number of carts? I looked into the service provider’s site and found what would be allowed in the composting carts. The site stated their “unique zero waste service replaces your trash and allows you to combine 100% of your food, yard, paper and pet waste into a single organic stream.”

What? Pet waste?! Yikes. If a gardener were to create an average backyard garden compost pile, there are a few items such as some animal wastes that should not find their way into the bin. As stated by a Safe Composting report from the Colorado State University Extensions Office, “Meat eating animals are more likely to harbor bacteria in their intestinal tract that are pathogenic to humans, and pig manure may harbor parasites.”

Who Uses the Compost?

So, who was going to be using this questionable compost? Was it being purchased by local farmers? Are landscape companies going to use it on business properties? Will the city use it for some of the public parks and gardens? Could city residents themselves purchase the compost as a product?

Digging a Bit Deeper

So, naturally, I was curious as to how the service provider could collect things such as pet wastes, bones, meat scraps, and other items gardeners have been told to exclude from their compost bins. Also, wouldn’t the compost buyer be concerned about this? I wrote up a quick email to the provider with my questions, and within a day an answer was emailed back. “At this time the composting is handled by a local industrial composter, who can assure that the temperature and treatment of the compost rows are sterilizing the medium.  We are looking into a buy-back options for our customers.”

Not Your Backyard Compost Bin

The Safe Composting report states “Regulations by the EPA specify that to achieve a significant reduction of pathogens during composting, the compost should be maintained at minimum operating conditions of 40°C (104°F) for five days, with temperatures exceeding 55°C (131°F) for at least four hours of this period. Most species of microorganisms (i.e., the good guys) cannot survive at temperatures above 60-65°C (140 – 149°F), making it important for compost managers to turn or aerate their systems to maintain the temperature in the correct range. ” So maybe this is why a more casual backyard composter is told to avoid certain wastes?

In the end, I think I’m going to sit tight and keep an eye on the curbside composting as it is rolled out this spring. It is exciting companies are beginning to offer such services in our area, but I want to make sure this solution is right for our household.