 Welcome everyone. Thank you so much for coming out. I'm Maggie from the Waterbury Library next door and I'm so pleased to introduce John Malter today. He's from Mad River Resource Management Alliance and he's going to give us the full rundown on all things composting. This is our first in-person program in months so it's so exciting to see your faces. We really appreciate you all masking up and coming out to learn something together. It's good to see a community space even if it is spread apart. So I'm going to give it over to John because he's the one who's got something to say. Thank you Maggie. Thank you for being here. Well I want to welcome you all to the workshop on how to attract bears to your backyard. By the end of this session hopefully we'll be able to avoid that as part of the program and I've got a bunch of handouts that I've put on your sheets so that whether you want to pay attention to me or not you can take all that stuff home and you'll know a lot more than I do so it'll be okay. A little housekeeping there is a restroom out there or a restroom's out there. It's two dollars to use it but all the money goes back to the library so just kidding. Also has anybody who's here signed up to pick up a bin after the class? Okay okay so when I get everything broken down after this we'll meet over at the Waterbury Armory behind the Thatcherbrook Primary School. It'll probably be about a half hour after this is done so just be patient and we'll meet over there. Just a little background I wanted to talk to you about a little bit about the Med River Resource Management Alliance. Give you a sense of who I am and what we are and the Alliance was formed in 1994. It's a group of communities that were formed through a what's called an interlocal agreement. It includes Faston, Moortown, Weitzfield, Warren and Waterbury and we provide some of the solid waste special programs that aren't done through the private sector such as Rodney's transfer station, Kassela's transfer station down in Weitzfield and the local curbside collections that are done around town. Besides the composting workshops we do the household hazardous waste collections and we've got one coming on October 3rd over at Harwood and there'll be a lot more publicity on that. We had to cancel the one in the spring because of the virus and so we're expecting a pretty good turnout for the full collection. We also provide some support to Greenup and we do tire collections. We work with the wheels for Warmth folks. We also do newsletter twice a year on various programs and try to provide assistance to the folks within our communities on a lot of things, all things solid and resource management wise. I'm curious before we go much further how many of you are already composting? Okay and so everybody is more or less a composter or as I want to be that will be good. So we'll talk about all that. We also as part of our program we do a solid waste implementation plan which is kind of a mirroring of the state's materials management plan which talks about goals and activities that are required for all areas of the state to accomplish things like getting recycling done, getting reduction in the amount of waste being generated, dealing with composting, dealing with household hazardous waste, primarily with education, both at the business level and at the schools and a variety of other activities. So these are all things that the Alliance as a solid waste management entity provides through these solid waste implementation plan and we upgrade that every we have an amendment of that every five years and we put out data on it every year. And our goal is to reduce the amount of waste that's generated since there is only one landfill in this state. We want to preserve our resources. We want to look at how we can manage things in the best possible way. Effectively we are going from a linear economy where you dug out stuff from the ground, you made it into a widget, you sold the widget to a consumer, the consumer used the widget and then it was thrown out into the landfill. Now we want to take and manufacture the widget, sell it to the consumer, the consumer finishes with it, we have a stewardship program that takes the widget back, it goes back and gets demanufactured and made into new widgets. So we can change the concept of use and dispose, cradle to grave, to cradle to cradle and that's really what product stewardship is all about and I like to think that we're a a vehicle of change in helping to make this all happen. And Vermont is a leader nationally in accomplishing this and I think our legislature representing all of us has been very foresighted in saying you know we support this concept in preserving our resources for our future and so they've passed a lot of legislation over the years and since 2012 when the Universal Recycling Act was passed we've had a lot of stuff that has been going from the trash bin to the recycle bin and to the compost bin and things like your plastics one and two there are mandatory recycling of plastics one and two and papers and some of the metal containers and glass containers instead of going in the trash those are all being properly managed that way and with the the organic waste food scraps especially this has been ramping up since the 2012 legislation where we've captured the largest generators of these waste going from the big restaurants and grocery stores to smaller facilities right down to now in 2020 on July 1st us so it's taken a while and we've tried to publicize the fact that this was coming for quite some time and a lot of people have said this makes sense and the bears have been saying this makes sense too but enough of the bears for now we also in 2019 the legislature passed the single use products act which said that retail facilities will no longer sell or provide things like plastic grocery bags styrofoam cups and packaging for clamshell packaging it also is things like uh stirs plastic stirs for coffee and plastic straws so now you know if you go to a restaurant you have to ask specifically for a straw if you've got a need or you can get a metal straw and bring it with you and use it and do that or get a wooden stirrer or use your finger finger is definitely the preferred method for that doesn't work as well for sipping a beverage though the state is actively involved in product stewardship as i mentioned earlier one of the big things that we do is uh e-waste collection this has been going on since about 2011 where people can bring their computers printers monitors and televisions and all their peripherals to a facility to be recycled at no charge and the closest one around here is the state surplus property uh facility right over on uh route two about a mile and a half beyond the roundabout west of the roundabout that's one of the main things we also and they'll take other electronic material but they do have a per pound charge for that and i think it's 50 cents a pound right now so if you've got a dvd player or say a radio or record player i'm dating myself uh or a copier machine those are all things that they can take as well also we are now through the uh paint encodings uh association able to take all the uh oil and latex architectural paints back at uh both our household hazardous waste events and our uh several of our retail establishments around the alliance and around the state and places like obishans and true value hardware canyons down in the valley uh uh bizbies uh i'm sorry not canyons but bizbies down in the valley do take uh the paints as part of their program yeah okay and that's another one and that was just going to get to light bulbs uh fluorescent bulbs compact fluorescent bulbs uh and the longer tubes can also go to uh our household hazardous waste collections as well as to uh the true value hardware and bizbies uh the earthwise transfer station takes them down in the uh in the valley uh and uh i believe obishans also takes the fluorescent bulbs uh you want to check on that you want to check on all these but they i believe they are all taking these at this time and there is a listing you can go online you can find all this stuff either through uh the uh the vermont coltory cycle for uh there's batteries there's the e-cycle hotline uh on the state website you can get that information as well as on our website which is madriverrma.org and uh so all this information is available and it all is there to help make it easier to lighten our collective footprints as we go through our environmental lives so uh compost yes the reason everybody is here you know food scraps and other organic material uh leaf and garden waste uh all contribute about 30 percent to our potential solid waste footprint that was the amount of stuff that was added to the waste stream that was going in to the landfills and it was pretty much a no-brainer that by taking that part out of the waste stream and using this as a resource which it truly is uh was not a really hard thing to accomplish and as i said earlier the universal recycling act incorporated that as the uh the keystone i feel for this whole program to accomplish getting us to a much further goal in managing our resources uh so i don't know if you you want to be doing it with a compost bin or if you want to just have it in a do-it-yourself kind of operation or you want to just take your your food scraps to a transfer station it's all really up to your own personal desires we don't really want you to just put it out for the bears and that's part of what i'm i'm here to talk about uh so basically when you create a compost bin or you when you create compost you're taking and developing a pile and the goal of the pile is to take and reduce the amount of stuff you're putting in and ultimately getting out a bunch of pure uh renewable uh soil resource and that is accomplished by starting a pile with brown material and i usually put a bunch of small twigs and branches on the ground put about three or four inches of brown material dried leaves and such maybe some shavings and wood shavings on the base and then i'll start to develop layers and the layers would be uh you're going to take your food scraps you're going to take your uh your grass clippings you're going to take uh freshly weeded material and add that right right to the uh right to the uh pile and then you're going to just start layering and you're going to want to do this in a ratio of pretty much three to one uh and it's going to be by volume because food scraps weigh a lot more than dry leaves so you're going to have maybe two or three inches of food scraps in your pile layered over by maybe six inches to eight inches of dry material your your carbon rich material over your food scraps which are your nitrogen rich material and you'll just start to build that pile and what i try to do is as i'm building the pile i add a couple of handfuls of soil just throw it in uh on top of the food scraps to begin the process and what that adds is the uh the uh the fungus the microbes bacteria the small micro sized critters that eat and metabolize the food and so it offers a a real opportunity to break down everything so you start with that and you just keep adding layers and you get up to about three feet or so of material and you want to uh you know check and you'll want to add a little bit of water so you get a little bit of moisture to help with your uh with your uh uh pile but you want your moisture to not be any more than if you grab a hold of a pile of your composting pile it's not going to be more than let's say a rung out sponge so when you start to do this you just look for that and so you're going to be building and building and building and then if you're using a compost bin what you do uh what you do is uh just close it all up and uh you can wait a couple of weeks open the top up and you'll notice that the pile has shrunk considerably and that's because the things are going to be uh getting metabolized they're going to be breaking down they're going to be uh drying out things are going to be happening and the best way you can tell that things are happening is that you can uh use one of these fancy thermometers you can stick it in and you'll find temperatures going from 120 to 140 150 degrees and uh this is really kind of a good thing but if you don't have one of these things we have a special added accessory it's called your right hand if you're right handed or your left hand just put it on your pile and you'll feel the warmth a guarantee that as you work on this you will start to uh generate heat especially during the spring summer fall months things get more challenging as we get into the winter but what you're going to be doing as things start to uh break down and you'll you'll see things happening you may want to turn your pile because what you want is a combination of nutrients you want your uh your your carbon rich material you want air you want oxygen to help keep the pile aerobic and you can use one of these which is a fancy store bought opera operation that you can put into the into the pile and then just pull it up and down uh I go to some garage sales and I find this works really well people thought these were really ice wagers but their compost bin that turners you just open the top and you put it in and it's great for doing that and usually frustrated fishermen are selling these for fairly little amounts of money so these work well or you can uh just take and pick up your bin and move it and then just take a pitchfork and move the pile as you go along and what I find is that you can make if you're a real hard driver you can make compost in a month or so that you can start to harvest out of the bottom of your bin but for the most part people I'm a I'm a lazy composter I'm gonna I'm not gonna make any bones about it I'm a firm believer in the in the bumper sticker compost happens I mean look at the look at the forest all the leaves and everything that are out there they're all composting it just it takes time and it's amazing how effectively compost will break down and I can pass this around I don't know socially distancing it's uh this is what the compost is is all about yeah yeah I don't know as I need to bring it to everybody but how big of a pile was it before this oh that's a good question my this is just a little amount of I had a bigger bin than that actually but it I I probably had about a third of the volume of that was all full compost material so and I'll let people yeah sure sure sure there's no silly question like should I go buy top soil like from the store or is there like I can use like soil from my yard oh by all means go to the most expensive store you can find which hopefully is in your backyard uh yeah and and I apologize everybody this is a totally open please feel free to ask the questions because this is your workshop I'm just here to facilitate I want to learn because everybody's had experiences that can help each other out as far as that goes I usually just go out to the garden and take uh you know a pail and bring it in and when I feel the urge throw some new you know bugs you can go to gardener supply and buy a bottle that is this bacteria the microbes that you can do that to but you don't need to it really is uh mother nature at its finest helping us all out collectively so you want to you want to consider that yeah yeah oak is uh is a little bit of an issue and actually I think on page two there was oak leaves recommend shredding they're very acidic and decompose slowly so composting process will help counteract the acidity so yeah you can but you just want to be you know astute about it and plant some other maples and other things solve solve that problem but yeah you know people worry about how exact everything has to be trust me once I started putting in uh food scraps and started building the pile uh it's it's it's incredible to watch it just never filling up it's like until you get to the winter and then you you do have issues there and we'll talk about that in a second but the the bottom line is stuff starts to decompose the microbes really work at munching away at the food scraps and accomplishing uh the goal of creating the composted material and I use that composted material as a soil amendment in my garden I add it to my uh my potted plants and it just helps everything yeah um well one thing one thing you want to do is the more surface area you present in terms of making things break down the quicker things are gonna decompose so if you've got like a a lot of watermelon rind you want to chop it up make it smaller but smaller makes it larger it's kind of a counterintuitive but that's basically what you're creating is more surface area uh when we talk about bones when we talk about other things that's kind of a trigger because uh while we say food scraps are banned from the uh from the landfill uh there is the caveat that meat bones fish and oils are not banned from the landfill they can still go in your trash now you can also put them in a green cone and a green cone here is a solar digester basically you're not going to be recovering uh composted material from that but what it will do is break down the the various materials that you put in there and you could put food other food scraps in there you're just going to be digesting them effectively and it will break down to carbon dioxide and water and will run off into the uh into the ground because um much of it at least to about here is going to be under the ground you're going to dig a hole and put it in so you're going to need to look at the uh soil that you've got if it's a really clayey soil you're going to have to add some gravel or some uh sand and gravel to make sure you're able to percolate the material that you're putting in and you're also going to want to consider things like uh if it smells really good you're going to want to make sure you've got some chicken wire and some rocks around the bottom so the skunks and raccoons don't try to enjoy the the the the uh wares that you're creating here and trust me i've been through all of that um also with the compost bin when you set it up you can do one of two things you can just put it right on the ground well even let's go one step back where do you want to set up your compost bin you want to set it up someplace where you're going to use it that's uh that's always a good thing so you're not going to want it in the back 40 if you're taking stuff out of your kitchen when you think about how long a trek it's going to be to get to where you're uh you're taking your stuff so i usually uh well i have mine uh down at the uh it's probably about 40 feet out from my house and uh beyond the end of my driveway you want to watch out for things like don't put it under the ease of your roof of your house because ice will come down and redesign the compost bin uh you want to have it so that it's not right on your driveway so that the plow in the winter comes in also fine tunes your compost bin and ideally you want it in an area where it's relatively sunny so that it helps to heat up the contents of the bin uh so now you've got the bin you set it up and put it right on flat ground because it's so much easier on flat ground uh and you can look at one of two things do i want critters to come in from below or do i not want critters to come in from below now if you have critters uh coming in from below the good news is that they're helping to aerate the bin you get things like mice and snakes they kind of like that nice warm weather that environment that is there and so that's good but if you're you're kind of person who you open the bin and there's a snake looking at you uh and you decide you never want to see a compost bin again you may want to not do that but i think for the most part i've been really you know happy with sharing the the goods with them uh plus it it really does help and you know bugs and everything will get in there and that's that's okay but you can also put a quarter inch to half inch hardware cloth on the bottom and that will prevent any critters from coming in from below and that'll solve the problem of uh having to manage that kind of of material now you you never want to have an issue like i had where i opened my bin which i hadn't it was a bin i hadn't used for a couple of years but i wanted to show somebody and i opened the bin and a bunch of yellow jackets had decided time to make a nice warm nest or a comfortable nest and uh so that was my my uh uh compost bin injury story uh one way to get rid of uh them and it works not just for uh compost bins but you can uh get some uh essential oil of peppermint and uh take a tablespoon of that and mix it with uh i think it's four cups of uh water and put it in a spray container and just spray it on the uh on on the uh the the nest in the area and they don't like this peppermint smell however you know it's everybody's up to their own thing when you when you hear a lot of buzzing you'll know you've got issues but but yeah there and and you know the uh the bins are designed so that they can have air and water coming in and that's important to the the whole process but you know these little buggers are able to get in as well so you want to be a little bit sensitive to that kind of issue yeah with this kind of bin i thought they i thought i said that it lets rain water in so it does is there no further need to add water you you are you are your own monitor so what you want to do is take in like i said check it out and feel how the material is doing and if you can kind of squeeze it and it's a little bit like a wrung out sponge you've got the ideal moisture content for the the the the composting process if you feel like it's too uh wet you may want to add a little bit more dry material you may want to let the air onto everything you know if you've got it in the sunny area just let everything dry out a bit or you may want to add you know put your garden hose or water can and just put a little moisture in so you know everything everybody's compost is a little bit different you know you are making your own designer compost and and so when you're considering your holiday gifts this year you're going to be all getting your your recycled containers and you're going to fill them with your compost and this is going to be this most special gift you're going to give to your significant others so that's uh that's one thing to to consider there sure does somebody else's question about like oak leaves being more acidic so does that also apply to like green scraps that are acidic like citrus rinds and things like that all those things you want to you you know you want to consider that as possible you know the chemistry of of the foods that you're adding but you can't add it it's just be a little bit sensitive to to what you're putting in but for the most part you're adding enough stuff that it shouldn't it shouldn't be a a major critical amount yeah i was surprised to see that lint is okay to put in your compost and i was wondering you know with micro plastics i didn't hear uh i was surprised to see that lint is okay oh yeah yeah but what about micro plastics okay now lint is okay if you're using wool and other natural fabrics if you're using a lot of synthetic fabrics it's not gonna help you so yes you're right and that's you know that's where we get back to how natural we are or we aren't and uh you know lint is a is a good thing to to do if you're you know if the majority of your clothes are not synthetic but if they are it should go in the trash that would be my my advice on that other things to consider compost tea take some of your compost put it in a bag a like a potato sack fill a bucket with water and just dunk it in there and let it stay for a couple of days and then you can use that nutrient rich water as a a source to water your your plants and it really adds an extra zing to zing that's a technical term it adds an extra special something to your to your plants and helps in the in their development so that's a that's a good thing well you can you know you can compost your tea bags and you can compost coffee you know take your little k cups and dump them out and put that in there and and do that so you've got all that um those are those are some of the major things oh when you're when you're setting up your your food scraps and uh let me see if i can do this here these are just the examples of the uh the food scrap containers that you can use they can come larger you can go and get a five gallon bucket i had some of these these are like five bucks a piece if anybody needs to have something of that nature you can put it they're small enough you can put it right next to your sink or the side of your kitchen counter uh you want to be kind of considering uh things like fruit flies and uh fruit flies like food scraps it's kind of like uh ben and jerry fruit flies food scraps uh this is the answer uh take a take a soda bottle ideally one that's easy to cut around invert it and fill about a quarter of an inch with uh uh apple cider or apple vinegar or wine vinegar or whatever and uh fruit flies really like it and they have a hard time figuring out how to get out of the funnel so uh you know i'm i'm really into the peace love and everything but when it comes to fruit flies put them in here and uh you know you may need a couple depending but the other thing is if you're getting too many fruit flies take your food scraps out more frequently make sure you wash your container and do all that i say that as i know how i have not been doing that all that well put about a quarter of an inch and it'll it'll evaporate and you'll need to replenish it and stuff uh when you're taking when you're taking your food scraps all right when you're taking your compost out out of the bin you're going to want to uh put it on a screen so that where you might have some pieces some chunks left over you can just put them back into the bin afterwards for some further uh breaking down and uh you can get this you can make a larger screen with hardware cloth and laying it right over a wheelbarrow and then just mixing it and dropping it down and going from there it's really you know your own preference uh the use of uh the use of uh the the sieve is more uh i think to give you uh better better uh you know composition of the compost itself and let the rest of it redevelop but you don't need to do that like i say it again becomes personal choice on how you want to work with any of this stuff then we come to the subject that i think everybody has been waiting for mr beer a quick anecdote a couple of weeks ago i had a bear come to my garbage and uh uh it wasn't very much garbage it wasn't i didn't think very tasty but he took my garbage and dragged it up into the woods had his way with it i went up into the woods and took it all back put it back in the garbage can put the cover on put my thing that i had on top of it which didn't matter two days later he came back and did the same thing with the same garbage not added anything to it so you know as far as tastes go they he didn't have much but my reason for saying this is that 20 feet away i had a compost bin and he didn't even touch that and that is because uh number one bears have really good noses you know smoky the bear growling in a howling and sniffing the air well he's sniffing away and they say that a bear can smell food two miles away now with all those choices if you've done your food composting correctly he's going to go to your neighbor and you'll be okay so so the bottom line is you want to damp down the odors and the best way to do that is by ensuring that you've put enough carbon-rich material over any of your food scraps and that will deter the bear and bears are really a creature creature of habit and they will come back and visit again and again if you have been visited so there are a couple of other things that you can do to encourage them going elsewhere you know the sign that's got the picture of the bear with the circle in the slash doesn't work trust me on that uh what you want to look at is uh you can take out some ammonia uh soaked rags and put it around your compost which if i was doing that i wouldn't be composting but some people might not feel that bad about using ammonia uh another thing would be to have uh an electrified fence and then just putting a nice piece of uh peanut butter or bacon right about snoot level and then when the bear comes over and has an opportunity to touch that with his nose or mouth he's going to get a shock and hopefully we'll remember this and exit stage right uh i would just have a regular uh you know like garden garden fence electric fence i don't know what it would be it's uh car battery size so uh that would definitely make a difference but the odor reduction is really the key to dealing with the bears and if they keep coming back consistently you may want to hold off for a bit on uh composting until uh you've gone through a couple of weeks and then you know the bear will have gone off to greener pastures and you can then have a better option for going back to it uh and during that period of time you can use a transfer station or you can store stuff in your freezer if you want to and you know and then it comes down to the winter and what do we do for managing our food scraps in the winter uh i continue to put stuff in my compost uh bins i have more than one uh and it's a you're you're you're going to be really a hard driver if you're able to make your compost happen during the heart of the vermont winter because it really takes uh temperature and mixing and stuff tends to freeze up it really is a an operation where you say i'm just going to add the stuff maybe there'll be a couple of thoughts and things i'll move around you'll be able to get more in but for the most part i put my stuff that's uh food scraps i wait until it's good and cold i put it out in a in a garbage can and just store it in the in an open bay in my garage and the bears ideally have gone to sleep and so i don't have an issue now the thing is you want to make sure you've got the bears talking to you at the right you know level so that you know that they're not going to be getting up before the uh before you're able to put that stuff in the bin so this is this is all part parcel of what we're up to and about uh those are the the main things about the composting i did want to show you the uh changing the subject a little we do in vermont everybody is using recycled product in their in their lives all of our vermont license plates are made with 50 recycled aluminum and i'm really pleased that this has been going on since the 1980s now so this is one thing uh and then i've got i have a few copies of some magnets here for household batteries and some food scrap decals and i do have a few of these that we could sell yeah and uh i just have my library here of stuff and then recognizing single use re uh versus uh reusable bags i know here in waterberry the rotary club is selling through various stores the single use bags there's a lot of other ones out there everybody now has probably pretty much uh gotten into the the the the rhythm of using reusable bags i mean it's really funny i i look at what's been going on when it comes to recycling 20 or 30 years ago and making people aware of what you can recycle and not recycle and seeing the development of that and how you know there were people who were opposed to doing that stuff and and things changed over time and i and i really think very much that vermoners are more keenly attuned to the the right thing when it comes to this but uh now when it comes to things like composting single use products uh the the circular economy we're right there and we're doing a great job of uh making this happen for our future generations and that's what's important so uh i have a sandwich board up here of some of the stuff that we do in the alliance yeah rounder gray bins to collect scraps uh huh and of course you know they tend to get yucky even if you rinse about after each time then we found um i don't know the brand some green i'll call them plastic for them some green um bags uh bags the bio bags that are called compostable yeah and so i'm curious i've been using those where i take them out and i dump out the stuff so it doesn't say in the bag i explore the bag um have you had experience with those and do they truly degrade or get eaten or do you know what happens with those bags well there's there's a couple of things and it's a great point thank you uh number one uh in commercial uh uh composting operations that aren't organic the bio bags are fine to put in if somebody is doing organic uh composting they have some issues with any type of plastics whether it's a corn based or uh i don't know what the material is that's making the the bags so you know you can use the bag you can pour the stuff out and then just throw the the bag away itself and that's that's another thing when you i i get a real charge out of looking at some of the advertising that's done uh in our stores uh where people are you know touting compostable and then you read the fine print and i tend to stop when i see this and read the fine print that says in an industrial composting operation may not be found in every place that you are able to go to so you know have a joinedest eye uh do your own composting and be aware uh greenwashing does happen in some cases and we try our best to just inform folks as as they go along and our next step is going to be taking on packaging because packaging is another example of where we can do so much better at reducing the amount of stuff that has to be presented in purchasing products yeah ask me to ask you i think whether or not it's all right but the sawdust in the compost and i'm guessing it's okay but in small amounts you don't want to no i give out your address to anybody who wants additional carbon material okay yeah sawdust is great uh you the only place i would uh be a little bit careful would be if it was on a painted material if you you if it had already been treated then you wouldn't want to use it uh in your bin but if it's just you know planing something down sawdust is wonderful uh wood shavings are great it's all good you know go forth and the fact that it's so nice and compact it'll help to damp down the odors what you want to be careful though i mean it's the on the one hand and then on the other hand you want to make sure you don't compact stuff so tightly that air isn't able to flow through your material you want to make sure that your bugs that are doing all the work those fun guy those micro organisms the bacteria are able to munch and don't have to guess for breath so that's part of it yeah like like the sawdust which i think you don't want to clump up you want to spread it around i tend to put in the coffee filter which has a bunch of coffee grounds and i'm thinking that maybe instead i should you know try to you know dump it out so the coffee rounds are scattered or does it make any difference do you think the creature is to to not have a lump of coffee in a coffee filter well you can spread it out and i tear up the filter a bit and put that right in too yeah yeah sure you don't want to put three feet yeah right no no no you want you want you want to make a lasagna you want to you want to put your food scraps you want to put your green stuff then you want to put your brown stuff your nitrogen rich material your carbon rich your nitrogen rich your carbon rich few shots of dirt yeah i was just going to ask you to expand on the carbon rich but i'm gathering that that's the brown that's the brown material dry leaves sawdust shavings paper if you're if you're into shredding financial documents that's a great way to you know take care of your your bank statements and have them do good things newspaper absolutely these days newspaper is not does not have any lead in the in the ink so yeah it's all good yeah is there any benefit to uh we look at the city is there any benefit to putting the bins on pallets i've heard people like to put on pallets um i mean you get air underneath because there are other drawbacks there's there's no drawback other than depending on how you feel about critters well at least we don't have bears but probably have other critters right and and and once again i you know i talked about this kind of bin uh you can make bins with pallets using a couple you can make bins with wire mesh just enclosing them yeah you can you can make bins uh in any number of ways there's a bunch of different uh diagrams in the handout that i gave you so you know everything i'm giving you all permission to do your own thing and be proud of the result i think i think it's important to try and that's all we ask yeah well having having it on the ground wouldn't that even be better because the microbes other things come from the ground and start eating away at compost that's right it it definitely helps yeah it's a good point ignore my last statement that's why i say this is our workshop i want to yeah no that's great okay anything else yeah betty what do you do with the k cups what do you do with the k cups well i you know there's a there's a couple of ways and lately i've been using recyclable you know there's a my k cup which you can pour regular coffee in and then put it into the k cups into the curing machine and then just empty the so the the that in there uh or you can just empty the things out and dump them uh the the train station was taking them and uh i don't know what's going to be with that uh they claim that the polypropylene is all recyclable uh they do have a program to taking back the k cups which i think would be you have to pay for it uh the the problem is the material recovery facility where all of our recyclables go has a limit on screening material it can't take stuff that's less than two inches it can't take stuff that's more than two feet in size so the k cups fall through and that becomes a problem there and so the material is recyclable but you got issues there you know i'm you know i'm a big fan of uh coffee roasters in their and their and their coffee but it is somewhat of a challenge there right and and and i'm glad you know this is not just a compote you can ask me questions black black plastic you know even number two black plastic which is the polyethylene is not recyclable because the color tends to uh distort the products that they're making from that so they tend to say no more black plastic as a result of that and the plastics and i the materials things like the the the plastic is going back and being made into uh uh the trex type wood for decking and uh plastic furniture you see a lot of that around now and so they they the the black just tends to take off the spec on how to do that right and uh the three through sevens they wind up using they can make uh paint cans plastic paint cans out of so you get a variety of different kinds of uh plastics that are bunched together and they uh they reprocess them that way and pelletize yeah i've never used one of the green bones and it seems kind of like magic they didn't throw you know meat products including bones in there you have chicken bones meat bones whatever so how does it how does it work and how long does it take to decompose well it's hard to believe that a bear will fit in one of those but that's where the bears live uh no basically here the uh this is uh it's a two section thing and it's a solar digester so these are out they heat up and the warmth and and there's an activator material that you'd put in with this and you pour some of that in to help start up the process but the warmth uh water going through with the bottom and the uh and the material itself the digestion from the from the the bacteria all starts the breakdown process and that continues as long as there's fresh stuff it'll continue to break it down yeah yeah that's not play you bury well even if it's clay as long as you amend your soil around it you may have to amend a bunch of it yeah yeah and then how many inches it's mine is mine is probably like around here so absolutely yeah you're right you're not going to recover and you know they say every five or so years dig out whatever detritus is left in it uh i've never dug out anything and it continues to work that should be in a sunny spot and what several things you want to consider number one these you can use for like your pet waste you don't want to do that for compost bins but you can for that but you want to look at what's down gradient of where you are you don't want your your your vegetable garden to be the recipient of where all the stuff is going but if you've got flowers that's fine because the digested material is going to add nutrient into the soil so that's the other the other piece of that yeah i have watched the video that you sent along with your email about that thing and i'm super interested i know you had said they may not be available today but i see one here are you able to sell them or i i made i don't want to say i made that mistake but i did sell the last one last year and i wound up having a big borrow and steal to get one yeah what's happened is we ordered a truckload of these uh in march uh from canada and the company in canada where we had been buying them sold the dies to a company in new jersey which last year was fine and we were able to get them fairly rapidly but then the company in new jersey sold them to a company in the united kingdom didn't tell us that and the company we had been dealing with in canada took our orders in march and said yeah no problem and then the pandemic hit and everything stopped they closed the factory in the united kingdom for a couple of weeks and then they got started again and in early june we got a message the green cones have arrived in montreal then they had to go to ottawa where they would be picked up and then driven to vermont uh as of yesterday when i talked to the guy again he said we expect to be having the contractor who does the trucking arrive monday to pick them up it's been a a nightmare of getting them but i expect to have them ideally by next week and i do have uh enough of them this year for uh i think the folks in the workshop the price is going to go up next year because of uh we're going to have to be changing a lot of things because we had to hire a customs broker we had to hire have to pay a tariff now and have to run away all these things that we never considered in terms of the reality of our current world so what i'd like is if you have signed up i'd like you to just add that you would like to get one as well a green cone so i'll put this back over here and uh any other questions i mean it's it's great to have a captive audience or did i said what still go into the trash what some food scraps oh yeah meats meat uh fish bones and oils can still go in the trash yes yeah the foam cups and stuff going trash the foam cups yeah the the black plastic goes in trash styrofoam goes in trash and it's not and we're we're getting away from that stuff yeah yeah you know the problem is styrofoam is recyclable you want to remember styrofoam is like potato chips the size the volume of material is so large for so light of material that the density has to be increased and to buy a densifier is outside of our fiscal ability in this neck of the woods so it really it it didn't pay to try and work through that but some places have actually recycled styrofoam and you can use it to make wainscoting and you can use it for picture frames and things like that yeah so it's interesting recycling also um at some point i was telling you know we're trying to separate what can be recycled we can't sure and at some point i was told that paper things i think of Ben and Jerry's uh you know mine container paper things that have a coating on it cannot be put in recycling and so do you know if that is true that so i've been putting the Ben and Jerry's things in in the regular trash because i sort of shouldn't go yeah there are there are certain things that uh the wax coatings create problems with processing and whether it's a Ben and Jerry's uh i don't know as they've got the same but like uh some of the the gable tops of milk containers milk cartons uh juice cartons yeah yeah and uh you know you look look closely at the material and uh once again you are the consumer you are the judge of what you're bringing home and i think that's the important message to bring to all of you is you are what you eat and you are what you recycle and re you know restore and and the resources are in your hands trust me i recycled a lot more than you yeah we are what we do so anything else ready one of the big things is with the church yep how do you handle things right now you can't make anything at church our church is closed the center church you can't make anything but you can bring in i guess of things that are wrapped up and and they can have snack with that but once we open up again the the girls have thought that if we had a container that we could put in the freezer for when they had a little a phase or something they could put the food in that and then eventually take it to the oh you mean the the scraps otherwise you know right now we recycle bottles and i sold a can right but we have an a groups that come in the church you know and it's gonna be interesting well the uh handle things as far as the food scraps you can put things in your freezer it's the same as the food before you we processed it and used it uh and then you can take it either to the transfer station or your compost and since you're going to be composting more now and go from there so i i don't think that'll be a big issue and uh with a i would assume that they're not eating a lot of food i would think it's just well i think you just say to whoever we've told them they can't do anything yeah i just i would just say tell them their response like the state parks pack it in pack it out so that when they're done with their meeting whoever's the organizer that person is responsible for taking the material away that should solve that problem okay anything else well i want to thank you all i appreciate on a beautiful saturday morning spending your time i just have to unpack everything and put it all together it'll probably be about a half an hour so go grab a uh a revivifier yep or for the green cones what would you like us to indicate how would you we don't know right green container no just put gc uh next to your name and uh if you've got your phone number there and your email i will get in touch with you i will have them over at the uh armory and and basically i get downtown most every day so when i know i've got a window of time i'll just try and get everybody uh notice on what day would work and if that doesn't work for everybody we'll find another time these are 125 uh normally they're 150 if you go online you're going to find they're more than like 200 dollars and unfortunately after this year i think they're going to be more than and the uh these things we're actually selling it under our cost for the folks that take the workshop because anybody that puts up with me making a presentation has to get paid something these are 35 for people who have taken the workshop and 52 is our normal truckload sale which is actually about half what they are if you go to a place like gardener's supply yeah one of the things you mentioned i'm glad you covered bears but um winter probably so i'll put our bin where it's close enough i can get to it even in the winter and i'll shovel around it um is the only thing i have to think of is paper for dry material to put in as well as food scraps during the winter or do you just don't worry about it just put in the food scraps what i i say i take and pick up a lot of bags of dry leaves in the fall and i just put them in these cannot contractor bags put them in the open bay in my garage and then you know when it's time i always add that and if you're if you're close enough to your house that you can do it in the winter that means you may have time to be able to stir stuff to keep everything going but things will slow down i mean i don't want to paint any rosy picture it's uh it's vermont in its winter and global warming hasn't hit the compost bin quite as well yeah those you know because they are below grade they are going to be uh more effective but you want to be careful because if you start putting all your food scraps in there they say not to put much more than two or three pounds a day in and uh you can fill it and then you're going to lose your effectiveness so you want to be careful yeah so i have two of this and then use one in the winter and then one regular you can never have too many compost bins no you can you can do that you can also have a garbage can and store your uh you know a closeable lockable type uh garbage can to keep the critters away so anyway well thank you all i appreciate your time i never am going to say no to that it'll make it go faster but i do have to take some things apart okay thank you thank you