We have reached the finish line! Time to reflect, celebrate, and extend many thank you’s to everyone and everything that contributed to the success of our project.
First, thank you to each of the households who signed up back when spring was still just a wish away. In midst of a long cold winter and pandemic coping, you and your families rallied and took up the compost challenge.
Collectively, you faced bears (two), raccoons, and one winsome garter snake. You scrounged the earth for “browns,” crunched the numbers, and cleaned your green pail more times than you’d like to recall. You also renovated kitchens, travelled for work, managed various family mishaps, lumbered through virtual schoolwork from the dining room table -- and kept composting
Thanks to your commitments, you have now collectively diverted more than 4,000 pounds of food waste from the Rockbridge County landfill--in just three months!
If you are focused on gardening, that’s a lot of new soil. If you are focused on climate change, that’s equivalent to preventing release of more than a ton of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Any way you look at it, it’s a win. And hopefully just a start for a lifetime of new impact.
But that win also depends on the critters in your Earth Machine: the decomposers both seen and unseen. Trundled in their self-contained worlds, they have worked tirelessly without recompense other than a slimy banana peel once and awhile. Like Rapunzel in her tower spinning spun straw into gold, these decomposers without complaint and perhaps even joy have spun their own gold from your leftover food. That’s teamwork too.
Lastly, let’s give a shout-out to the organizations that summoned this project into being. Conceived by Boxerwood, this idea came to life thanks to two grant awards from the VA Dept of Environmental Quality, a state agency supported by your tax dollars. Congratulations to the City of Lexington and to a Roanoke-based non-profit, Clean Valley Council (CVC) who received these funds, then enlisted Boxerwood for the logistics and weekly hoo-haa. Thank you also to the compost coaches of Rockbridge Area Master Gardeners ready with tips, advice, and encouragement.
By now you get the picture: teamwork made the dream work. Thank you one and all!
