Composting isn’t a new idea, of course, but few people may know that for more than 20 years, Organics by Gosh has been the leader in commercial composting in Central Texas—offering service to a variety of businesses and industries from hotels, schools and cafeterias to manufacturers and grocery stores. The company hauls just about anything that was once alive, including plants, trees, grass, shrubs and food. They collect it and place it in mound upon mound of composting earth. The finished product results in an entire retail selection of potting soils, fertilizer and decorative “stone,” much of which is sold to landscaping companies as well as area nurseries and large home-improvement stores such as Home Depot and Lowe’s.

Owner Phil Gosh has been in the composting business most of his life—taking over his father’s Houston-area business in the 1970s and launching Organics by Gosh in Austin in 1995. For Gosh, the business is simply about managing our resources well. “We’ve created a program that allows us to take a product and create a higher value out of it,” says Gosh. “All of our composting material comes from within a 30-mile radius to keep our energy local. Instead of trash, it’s a resource…a treasure.”

Just this year, Gosh’s business became the first in Central Texas to receive the necessary permits to compost meats, fats and dairy products, and has since launched a food waste-diversion program to service restaurants and hotels. “This has put us into a much bigger arena,” says Gosh’s organic recycling coordinator Gina Spratt. “Food coming out of our waste stream is a big deal. It’s the next big step, besides single-stream recycling, and we’re excited to put that onto the plants of Austin instead of having these things going into our landfills.”

Making a difference in Austin is a primary goal for Gosh. The City of Austin has an official goal of diverting waste from landfills and incinerators by 75 percent by 2020, and 90 percent by 2040. Organics are believed to make up between 50 to 70 percent of our overall waste stream. Taking everything from backyard land debris to food waste out of the general waste-disposal stream would leave significantly less to pile up in landfills.

Read the whole article!

I’ll let it settle for a few more days on the plastic tarp I collected it on before I add it to one of my gardens.  Go me! Click here to learn more about rebates the city of Austin has for compost bins as well as free composting classes the city offers, which is how I got a $75 rebate on my compost bin.

Home composting piles are not typically large enough to combust. Compost piles heat up when microorganisms, such as bacteria and fungi, reproduce and break down organic material at a rapid pace. If a compost pile is more than 12-feet-high and the materials are relatively dry, the pile may self-heat to a temperature high enough to spontaneously combust.

Solid Waste Services recommends the following tips to keep compost piles safe during these hot summer months:

• Compost piles should be no larger than a cubic yard (3 feet by 3 feet by 3 feet)
• Turn piles weekly during high temperatures
• Keep the pile moist
• A compost thermometer may be used but is not essential; turn the pile when it reaches 160 degrees Farenheit

Residents can learn more about how to compost properly at free composting classes offered by SWS. The classes are part of the City’s composting rebate program, which challenges Austinites to complete a free composting class, downsize to a green, 32-gallon trash cart and purchase a home composting system. SWS curbside customers who do these three things are eligible for a rebate of 75 percent up to $75 off the cost of their new home composting system.

Free composting classes sponsored by the City of Austin are scheduled through the summer. Solid Waste Services city planners are trying to encourage residents to compost at home by offering a rebate for compost bins. Residents can get up to 75 percent back on what they spent buying a bin.

The City of Austin has an ambitious goal of diverting 90 percent of waste from landfills by 2040. Already compostable paper, yard trimmings and food make up 47 percent of what is collected from Austin residents. By offering free classes and rebates, the city hopes it can encourage residents to compost to reach its zero waste goal.

“People are generating a lot of compostable food scraps that is a resource that shouldn’t go to waste,” said Woody Raine, Waste Diversion Planner with the City of Austin’s Solid Waste Services department.

I’m still regularly composting, and it’s going well.  The bin we bought has 2 compartments so you can work on 2 batches at a time.  I still keep a small metal canister with a lid under my kitchen sink where I collect scraps, and I empty it probably every 4 days – it doesn’t smell bad under there because it has a little filter built into the lid (I bought mine from Bed Bath and Beyond).  Because we compost and recycle so much, we only have to empty our kitchen trash can once a week (no need to take it out more often because (1) it’s not full and (2) because no scraps go into out kitchen trash can, it doesn’t make the kitchen smell bad).  Thus we’re saving on kitchen bags, which otherwise would be getting full/more importantly smelly in our kitchen, necessitating replacing the kitchen trash bag every 1-2 days. And we’re getting some compost for our garden and lawn out of it, although not as much compost as initially expected (we’ve gotten 3 batches in 14 months – things don’t break down as quickly as our composting bin advertised).  So it’s been a good experience and compared to constantly replacing the trash bag in the kitchen, it’s really not been an inconvenience at all to take the food scraps out to the compost bin every few days.

Schedule of Upcoming Composting Classes

For more information on class locations, visit the Austin Farmers’ Market website.

Online Composting Class

1. Go to the Channel 6 site: www.cityofaustin.org/channel6
2. Click on the Videos tab in the green navigation menu (6th tab to the right)
3. Select the “Green30 Challenge, Composting Training” Video link (a new window will appear)
4. Watch the video in English or Spanish by clicking on the light blue Play button to the left of each language option
5. Answer the questions in the Green30 Challenge Questionnaire (PDF, 42 KB) (Spanish Questionnaire – PDF, 9 KB)
6. Send in your questionnaire along with your application packet to either of the following:
7. ATTN: Green30 Challenge
   City of Austin Solid Waste Services
   P.O. Box 1088
   Austin, TX 78767
   composting@austinrecycles.com

1. Downsize to a 30-gallon green garbage cart
2. Take a free basic backyard composting class
3. Purchase a home composting system

If you already use a 30 gallon cart, you just need to take the class to get the rebate.  You can check out this website for more details from he city of Austin. If you’re interested, there is a class on August 28th in order to complete the requirements by September 3rd.  I got my rebate several weeks ago, and forgot to post about it, but the process of applying for the rebate was very easy and I think the city is doing a good job with it.

Also, my husband let me know that today the website WOOT has the Orb composter for sale for $99 today until they run out.  Since you can get a rebate for 75% off from the City,  the composter would only be
$25+$5 shipping. And if you use the woot coupon code TAXSUCKS you can get a $5 discount.

here's my awesome composter in the back yard

This website says that

Temperature plays an important role in the composting process. Decomposition occurs most rapidly between 110° to 160°F. Within two weeks, a properly made compost pile will reach these temperatures

so I’ve been hoping my compost pile will get warmer. Thanks to a handy laser thermometer my husband has which allows you to measure temperatures without any contact with the material, we know that the highest temperature the pile reached was 130° last weekend, but yesterday it was back down to the mid-90s.

The downside to composting? There are a lot of maggots in the compost pile. I naively did not realize there would be any bugs in the compost pile, or thought that if there were bugs, there would be just a few. But I’m not grossed out by it, I just quickly empty my compost bucket each day and give the compost bin a quick spin, and haven’t had any bug contact yet.  When that day comes, I will be grossed out.

For info on why composting is good for the environment, check out this EPA link (“Yard trimmings and food residuals together constitute 26 percent of the U.S. municipal solid waste stream. That’s a lot of waste to send to landfills when it could become useful and environmentally beneficial compost instead! Composting offers the obvious benefits of resource efficiency and creating a useful product from organic waste that would otherwise have been landfilled.”)