We were in T'hassee the weekend before Earth Day and saw fliers that some county or city agency was having an Earth Day truck sale of backyard composters, selling them at cost -- nice compost bins for like $30, that usually sell for $100 or more. To encourage folks to compost organic wastes and return them to the earth rather than landfilling. I was so wishing we had that sort of program here.
While we're on the subject of recycling and budgets--seems to me it's a no brainer the county could turn collection of yard/landscape/food waste into a money-making operation, or at least a money-saving one. Hot composting on a county or district scale. This is being done in localities all over the country; sometimes they farm it out to a private firm, who sell the compost at a nice profit. But no matter how it's done, it keeps organic waste out of the landfill (saves money) and perhaps more importantly, converts valuable nutrients into a useful soil amendment that is way better for us and the soil and critters than chemicals.
I have brought these kinds of things up a number of times at Planning Commission meetings and I usually get laughed at or told that now is not the time to deal with this, the time for this will be later. Perhaps if enough people got involved, contacted commissioners, etc., the sense of time would come into a little sharper focus. It gets a bit lonely and discouraging being the only voice speaking out for this kind of thing in the public meetings.
