Composting in Greencastle and Other Places

            After reading about how composting can help reduce the releasing of methane gas in landfills, I wanted to find out if there were opportunities for composting on a large scale in Greencastle, similar to ones mentioned in the Connet readings, such as Recology (Connet, 17, ). I only found about eight in the Greencastle area, most of which are not actually in Greencastle, and are focused on farm waste (animal manure, etc.), yard trimmings, and wood scraps.

            Recology is a business in San Francisco.  It is dedicated to helping the city get to a point of Zero Waste. I thought it was cool that the website talks about how the company tries to be as convenient for customers as possible. I think this probably helps it to be successful in helping the environment because people are going to do what is most convenient.

            In addition to the small number of composting opportunities in the area, I also found that out of all of these, an even smaller number is actually willing to accept some outside waste. The Subaru of Indiana Automotive, Inc.,  for example, promotes the Zero Waste to landfill effort, but it only composts waste from its own company. In addition, the composted soil is only available to the employees and landscapers of the business. Regardless of whether or not it is available to the public, it is refreshing to see that a big business like this is trying to make an effort to be more environmentally friendly.

            There was one place that I found called Perkin’s Pride/Perkinslivestock, which sells compost from manure. Although they do not necessarily take food waste to compost—they mainly compost their own farm manure—they still sell compost to the public. It seems like a pretty well run system.

           

            I think that if Greencastle had more convenient composting businesses, more people would try to compost.