Lucky composting family from Challenge 2021.
In partnership with all three local jurisdictions, Boxerwood Nature Center is once again facilitating a conservation challenge in which 80 local households receive free backyard composters in exchange for participating in a 10-week food diversion study.
As last year, newly recruited households will weigh and divert food scraps to their grant-funded composters each week and report their results to Boxerwood, which will post aggregate results on its website. “Last spring an amazing 98% of participants successfully completed the project,” said Education Director Elise Sheffield, with 58 local households diverting 4,000 pounds of food waste from the landfill in just three months. The success of the project prompted renewed funding from the Virginia Dept. of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to the City of Lexington and the County of Rockbridge, each of whom received a $7,500 competitive grant to expand the program with Boxerwood this year.
“It’s a pretty simple concept actually,” explained Elise, “switch out something harmful for something good.” Hauling food waste to landfills increases costs for municipalities. Decomposing organic material in landfills also releases methane, a harmful greenhouse gas. Composting food scraps at home, on the other hand, builds rich soil and sequesters carbon: healthy ecological outcomes. For these reasons, municipalities across the nation are now encouraging citizen composting, but not everyone has the tools or know-how for getting started.
The Great Backyard Compost Challenge tackles those obstacles by providing composting kits plus supportive coaching from Boxerwood and from volunteers from Rockbridge Area Master Gardeners (RAMGA). The kit includes the original “Earth Machine” (an 80-gallon sturdy black plastic composter), a household collecting pail, and hand scale. Participants do not need prior knowledge of composting, said Sheffield, noting the Earth Machines were selected for their simplicity of use. “They’re not fast composters,” she says, “but they do the work. We’re getting reports from last year’s participants that their composters are still functioning well.”
The project runs April 2 to June 11, 2022. Participation in the study is open to all residents of Buena Vista, Lexington, and Rockbridge County, but only households not currently composting will be considered for the free compost kits. According to organizers, households with children will receive preference, with others selected by lottery. There is no cost to participate and indeed at the end of the study, households who wish to continue to divert their food waste may keep their composting kits, a $150 retail value. Interested households may register online at the Boxerwood website https://boxerwood.org/compost-join/ The deadline for signing up is March 23, 2022.
As in the pilot study, the goals of this citizen-science project are to encourage family learning, promote stewardship, and gather baseline data for future stewardship actions.
