To Compost, or Not to Compost…

Though I tried to get my family to quit bottled water cold turkey, it didn’t exactly go over as well I had hoped. However, it wasn’t entirely in vain; we did reduce our household’s consumption substantially. I feel that this is going to be an ongoing battle, but one that I’m willing to fight. With that said, I figured it’d be an appropriate time to distract them from being unimpressed by their lack of “convenient” water by sneaking our compost bucket into the kitchen casually. While my mom and I were making dinner a few nights ago, I made a point of tossing all of the peels, egg shells and other compost created into the little bucket, hoping she’d get the idea.

Alas, the European parent is a stubborn one. I talked to her about it afterward and we came to the conclusion that composting is only going to be happening if I’m doing it. Okay, I can deal with this. What this entails is literally flitting around my family during mealtimes and making sure everything compostable is heading into the bucket, rather than the garbage. Sometimes, it seems like all my efforts are in vain, but then I remember thinking this when I first introduced the craaaaazy concept of recycling several years ago. It’ll happen. It’s important I present a valid argument backed up by plenty of facts, and ensure they’re well informed. Once they’re sufficiently educated in the subject, we can go from there…

Working on campus has made me aware of exactly how easy the previously-daunting concept of composting is; there’s nothing scary or complicated about it! The only difficult part is just finding out exactly where your composting has to go to get collected and dealt with. That, and how to avoid having creatures creeping around the bin (hint: if you have bugs hanging around your compost, it’s been sitting there much too long).

…and if you want to find out more about uOttawa’s composting program, click here: http://www.sustainable.uottawa.ca/index.php?module=CMS&func=view&id=59

- vedrana