As Kermit says, it’s not easy being green. It takes planning, effort and follow through. At Vancouver Cohousing, our garbage/recycling/composting team – maybe the Green Team? – is off to a good start. We met tonight to advance our goals to be as waste-free as possible. St. Patrick’s Day was perfect for discussing our green plans.
It helps that our members are environmentally conscious and already quite carefully sorting their waste materials. Besides the usual mixed containers, mixed papers, cardboard and food scraps, we are collecting refundables, soft plastics, styrofoam, light bulbs, batteries, electronics and small appliances.
A major goal is to use all our food scraps for compost. Colin (see photo) described the Bokashi system, which turns food scraps into fertilizer via fermentation. Bokashi means fermented organic matter in Japanese. A select group of microorganisms anaerobically (without air) ferments the organic waste. They will also break down things like meat, fish and cheese.
For the next few weeks we will monitor the volume of food scraps and collect five-gallon buckets for our Bokashi system. We hope to relocate some of our planter boxes to make space for our composting project.
Three of us are going to take turns every other day checking the bins in the garbage/recycling room to see whether things are where they should be. Others are going to organize the community kitchen waste, compost and recycling.
As Donnie says, “We will have the fanciest garbage/recycling room in town!”
Donnie with our recycling bins.
We have been composting since September – at last check we have enough soil to fill all our boxes for the summer! Not to mention how it has reduced our garbage output!
Wonderful, Joan. What do you grow?
We grow veggies and herbs in the front half of the garden, perennials that attract bees and butterflies in the back.