ELI ON EARTH: Compost Katie; Do Something Good With Your Trash

Compost Katie offers an easy, low-cost way for residents of the Greater Lansing Area to take personal action against climate change. Organic waste such as food produces methane as it breaks down, a greenhouse gas far more powerful than carbon dioxide. By recycling food waste, our community can work together to use these scraps as fertilizer for local farmers, rather than poisoning our air, water, and land with our leftovers.

The organization provides a weekly curbside removal of your leftover food scraps that would otherwise take up space in a local landfill. They remove items such as vegetable scraps, breads, napkins, cooked meats, cheeses, fruit pits and all fruit, pizza boxes, newspapers, coffee grounds, used coffee filters and lawn debris (e.g. leaves and bundled twigs.).

Not only does this service reduce the amount of trash in our landfills, the majority of which is food waste, it also helps local farmers and community gardens by providing vermicompost. Compost Katie scraps are fed to red wigglers, or earthworms, creating vermicompost, an excellent organic fertilizer and soil conditioner. The material is then donated to The Garden Project of Lansing, an organization that oversees 90 plus community gardens, which feed over 7,000 people.

Compost Katie also works to spread awareness about important waste management issues. Landfills, the largest human-created source of methane gas, have removed the organic nutrients present in food and paper waste from the food chain, requiring farmers to rely on chemical fertilizers. “By returning food waste back into the food chain we are able to enrich farm lands and community gardens...extend the life of our landfill space and reduce the risk of groundwater contamination.”

The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality has announced that if current trends continue, our landfills will run out of room in just 26 years; and landfills aren't our only problem.

While garbage disposals are often thought to be a safe sustainable alternative, they actually cause over 75% of all sanitary sewer overflows. These usually end up in a natural body of water, which can lead to algae blooms, endangering the surrounding ecosystem.

One third of all food produced worldwide in a year, is wasted. Huge amounts of fresh water and oil is wasted during production, as well as the 24 million acres that are deforested each year to produce food that ultimately goes to waste, even though 1 billion people in the world are malnourished. Recycling our waste fights this trend, and Compost Katie is ready to help us do it.

Fees for curbside removal are $12 a month for the 5-gallon receptacle or $25 a month for the 45-gallon receptacle. Services are offered in Lansing, East Lansing, Okemos, Holt, Haslett, Mason, and Williamston.

For more information, visit compostkatie.com or call (517) 367-8279.