The Hinton Parklander
Eric Plummer- Tuesday, April 23, 2013 2:14:17 MDT PM
The municipal library’s Teck Coal Room was filled with locals interested in the possibilities of composting last week. The audience listened intently to presentations on backyard composting and indoor vermicomposting, which uses worms in dirt-filled containers to consume and decompose kitchen waste. Apparently the worms are capable of eating half their weight each day.
Such concepts and the interest they have generated are welcome news in Hinton, which generates about 10,000 tonnes of garbage each year. The town has been looking into means of efficiently decomposing the organic portion of this waste, and infrastructure services estimates at least one quarter of the town’s garbage could be diverted from the landfill by composting.
Meanwhile I’m trying to figure out how to make headway on a smaller scale. Last summer I built a large compost bin in between the community greenhouses in town. The nine-foot structure was adapted from designs I had collected, a careful composition of pine, wire mesh and Plexiglas.
My task for this spring and summer is to make it work, which seems daunting in this harsh mountain climate. For the organic matter to break down the right combination of heat and oxygen is needed, but in Hinton the ground can freeze at any time of the year. At most we can hope for four months of gardening weather, leading me to expect just one yield of good soil composted from the kitchen and garden waste collected. I have managed to produce good compostable soil before, but that was in the more workable climate of Vancouver.
Big cities seem to be at an advantage for getting citizens in line with waste reduction initiatives. For several years Toronto residents have been provided a green bin to collect kitchen scraps for curbside collection. Over the last year 7,500 homes in Calgary took part in a curbside composting project that proved to reduce the test neighbourhood’s waste by 42 per cent.
But despite the composting keeners at the library last week, it appears that large-scale waste diversion initiatives in Hinton can easily face resistance. Even a mere $5 fee to discourage residents from bringing their excess garbage to the landfill south of town has proven to be too much of a change in habits for many locals to bear. Concerned that illegally discarded garbage will build up outside of the dump site, Coun. Dale Currie proposed to reverse council’s decision to introduce the dumping fee in May. Since the $5 charge was decided on in December, Currie had heard from 200 locals opposing the fee. After some debate council voted to cancel the dump fee on April 16.
While these waste issues unfold, a supremely efficient composting system surrounds us. Hinton is a narrow opening in the forest, and one can easily venture away from the settlement to step into an ecosystem where nothing goes to waste. The wilderness around Hinton is an unceasing organic machine of death, decomposition, birth and growth. Anything that dies will bring life in one form or another.
It seems that our consumerist culture has accustomed us to the belief that discarding things will somehow make them disappear. And in this way of living we have forgotten the basic principle that something must originate from something else, and rotting can be a good thing.
Link to original Hinton Parklander Article