Composting Yard Debris

Portland is awesome for so many reasons, one of them being that the city collects yard debris and composts it. Yard waste that gets thrown in with the regular trash ends up in landfills that are devoid of water and oxygen (both essential components of composting). This means that your yard waste, when thrown in the garbage, will get compressed, but will only decompose very, very slowly (like over hundreds of years). And, since landfills are lined to prevent any contaminants from leaching into water sources, those nutrients in your yard waste will never return back to the earth.
Does your city compost yard debris? If not, could they? think about proposing the idea to your local government and seeing if you can make a change!
If not, how about starting your own compost pile and keeping your yard debris out of the trash! To learn more about how to build your own compost bin, click here.