Composting in the City

  • Backyard composting isn't quite as inticing a hobby in the wintertime. (Photo by Karen Kelly)

Composting has always been a part of farm life, but a growing number of city folks are trying it as well. The GLRC’s Karen Kelly is one of those city dwellers. And she found if composting isn’t convenient, it doesn’t get done:

Transcript

Composting has always been a part of farm life, but a growing
number of city folks are trying it as well. The GLRC’s Karen
Kelly is one of those city dwellers, and she found if composting
isn’t convenient, it doesn’t get done:


“So we’re going to put in our banana peels, and the oatmeal that
nobody ate, and I’m going to break some of this up because apparently
it breaks down faster if it’s in smaller pieces. So right now we’ve got,
half a scone, a bowl of oatmeal, some banana peel… ”


It’s just after breakfast and my kitchen is covered with dirty dishes.
Some of the food is heading into the garbage, the rest I’m going
toss into the composter. It kind of looks like a brown garbage can
with a lid, but it takes about half my garbage and turns it back into
soil.


I started about a year ago, when I finally got a small backyard
where I live here in Ottawa, Canada’s capital city. First, I asked
my friends Connie and Dan how they do it.


“How would you guys describe your approach?”


“Laissez faire.”


“Yeah. It’s really a shame that everybody doesn’t do this because it can
be really easy. Just put it in a box and let it sit there.”


I liked the sound of that hands-off approach, but I was also
wondering what to put in and what I needed to leave out. So, I gave
George Reimer a call. He’s the city of Ottawa’s composting expert.


“ust stick with kitchen scraps, vegetables, fruit scraps…plants that
you have from the gardening season, that type of thing.”


“Okay, okay. So no animal products basically?”


“Exactly.”


Once you have a good mix of kitchen scraps, leaves and grass, the
best thing for compost is to mix it around on a regular basis. When
you add that oxygen to the microorganisms already in the garbage,
it breaks the waste down even faster.


It’s not as easy as it sounds – especially if you compost in a plastic
drum. Just imagine sticking a pitchfork into your garbage can and
trying to flip over a pile of wet dirt.


So, armed with that information, I asked George if he could take a
look at our progress after our first week of composting. He stooped
over to pull open a sliding door at the bottom of the container.


“Oh, you haven’t got anything in there, have you?”


“Well I did put some things in there…”


“Yeah, you need to put a slab down or dig it into the ground
because obviously something’s gone in there and removed it all.”


“Yeah, there’s no food in there. Okay. All right then. That was
a week’s worth of squirrel feeding.”


“Yeah exactly.”


(Sound of bricks laying)


So, the next day we go to a big box store to get some bricks. We
lay them all around the base of the composter. The squirrels are defeated.
A few weeks later, I see a huge raccoon shuffling across the backyard.
It knocks the top off the composter and climbs in.


We drive back to the big box store and buy some flat, heavy bricks
to lay on top of the lid. We also buy a few bags of fertilizer, of
course because we still have no compost. I think, this is starting to
feel like work and to be honest – I find it disgusting.


(Sound of brick noise)


“So now, it’s even more challenging to do this.”


(Sound of dumping)


“Ewww. A lot of it is sticking to the pot, which is disgusting but
alright. Uhh, brick back up, auxiliary bricks, okay.”


Now that I had to move those bricks, I was less likely to run out
with just the dinner scraps, and we weren’t mixing the compost very
often, either. So, I tried to remind myself of why I started doing this.


For one, it seemed like a shame to throw vegetable scraps into a
plastic bag and send them to a landfill. Especially when landfill
space is so tight that some Canadian cities are shipping their
garbage to the U.S.


Plus, we have a garden, which could use the nutrients from the
compost. According to George Reimer, those nutrients stick
around a lot longer than the ones found in commercial fertilizer.


I knew all that, and yet, on a stinking hot day in July – and the
composter was stinking because we rarely turned it – I officially
stopped. For a while… for six months. Until recently, when my
guilty conscience prodded me out the door with a bowl of kitchen
scraps.


(Sound of walking in snow)


“We’ve got snow on the ground and a bowl of fresh vegetable
scraps. Umm, interesting. It’s about a third full so there must be
compost under there somewhere.”


Last time I looked, the container had twice that amount in it.
Which makes me think that most of the food has broken down into
something we can finally use on the garden. It gives me an
incentive to start over. Plus, in a few years, I’ll have to compost.


Ottawa will join at least 18 other Canadian cities where residents
are required to throw food scraps into a separate container, and
hey, if all else fails, there’s nothing like a new law to get you
motivated.


For the GLRC, I’m Karen Kelly.

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Rats Scurrying to the Suburbs

  • Life in the suburbs is idyllic to some people... (Photo by Bon Searle)

Unusually heavy rains this summer are partly to blame
for rats pouring out of the sewers in droves all over the country, and the nasty vermin are relocating to some of the most pristine
neighborhoods. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Joyce
Kryszak explains what caused the rat invasion and
what’s being done to evict them:

Transcript

Unusually heavy rains this summer are partly to blame for rats pouring out of the sewers
in droves all over the country. And the nasty vermin are relocating to some of the most
pristine neighborhoods. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Joyce Kryszak explains what
caused the rat invasion and what’s being done to evict them:


Piercing blue autumn skies and billowing white clouds drift across the chimneys of this modest,
but perfectly manicured suburb. There aren’t even many leaves crunching under foot. Town workers
have already come and vacuumed them all away. But there’s a nasty little secret scurrying under
the porches and behind the garden sheds in this Western New York town. County Sanitation Chief
Peter Tripi takes us for a peek.


“Can you see the teeth marks here? That’s actually rat gnaw marks. And there’s the garbage bag.
And that’s what we found when we went to this property.”


Now, you might be thinking that we trudged through derelict grass and scattered debris to find
these rat clues. Nope. This is a gorgeous, manicured yard – with not a blade of grass out of
place. But Tripi says rats aren’t choosy.


“You would never think by looking side to side that there would be a rat problem in this yard.
Doesn’t matter what neighborhood you live in, or how much money you’ve got. There’s no difference.
They just like your food.”


And you’d be surprised where rats can find food. A garbage can left even briefly uncovered, a
neglected bird feeder, uhhh… dog feces… and even a compost pile.


“Absolutely. This is a rat condo. It’s a grass-clipping compost pile that basically housed rats
to go a hundred yard radius all the way around to the different houses.”


Tripi says rats had to get creative with their housing. A summer of extremely heavy rains drove
the out of the sewers and into some previously rat-free neighborhoods. And with the West Nile
virus killing off millions of birds, the rats have less competition for the food they’re finding
above ground. The consequence is a virtual rat infestation all the way from New York and Illinois
to Virginia, Michigan and L.A. In Kenmore, there have been four thousand rat complaints – nearly
double last year.


(Sound of garbage truck)


Of course, none of this is news to the garbage collectors. They see the problem up close and
personal. Twenty-year veteran Louie Tadaro says this past summer is the worst he’s ever seen.


“Across the street there’s an alleyway and there had to be like ten of them in there, And we
started chasing them with garbage cans trying to kill them, but we couldn’t. By the time we
got there they just split.”


The problem is, they don’t split for long. Vector Control Chief Tripi says now that the rats
have relocated from the sewers to upscale accommodations, they kind of like it.


“And what that means is that they want to live with us. They want to be near our garbage and
our bird feeders. The problem with that is that rats carry diseases.”


We all know about stuff like typhus and the bubonic plague. But there are emerging diseases,
such as a pet-killer called Leptospiroris. It’s killing dogs all across the country. Tripi
says they need to get rid of the rats before the disease starts spreading to humans. So, his
team is taking the rats on, one yard at a time.


Tripi and his Vector control team set rat traps, they fill bait boxes with poison, and – when
they have to – they issue citations to residents who don’t heed the town’s new “rat control rules.” Covered garbage cans only. Clear away all brush. Clean up scattered bird seed and dog feces. Slowly, the rules seem to be working.


(sound of Tripi looking into rat trap)


Still Tripi says it’s mostly educational warfare. And he says now – heading into winter – is the
best time to nip the problem. If the rats get cozy, not only will they stay, they will multiply.
Fully nourished, one adult rat can breed up to sixty baby rats a year.


“The adult rat can live on a little bit of food, but he can’t procreate unless he has a lot of
food source. And they can’t live through the winter unless they’re warm and fattened up.”


So now is the time to – quite literally – put a lid on it. Keep those garbage cans covered, unless
you want some uninvited furry guests this winter, and many, many more come spring.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Joyce Kryszak.

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