Yesterday, I was at an event that focused on the sad state of overfishing globally. When I asked the speaker whether he thought that Canada is ready to step up to the plate (which in a couple of decades will be close to empty fish-wise if we don't get control of the fishing frenzy), his answer contained a couple of sentences which resonate equally well in the world of composting:

i. What did you know?
ii. What did you do about it?

It is comforting to be part of an organization that has seen the inherent value and merit in recycling organic residuals versus burying them. When I get asked about our organization, the many faces and huge commitment that each of our members has made to get composting moving from coast-to-coast serve as fuel to passionate answers.

Last week was International Compost Awareness Week and it was such a good, good celebration. One of the new people in our office, Jim, who is helping to bump up our website presence, asked a while back: "What do you do during Compost Week?" My quick answer back to him was "We eat cake". And while we do a lot of more celebrating than that .... cake does have a way of showing up at our events.

There were compost cupcakes (chocolate cake muffins, iced with chocolate, sprinkled with chocolate graham crackers with a gummy worm coming out of the middle) at the Memorial University of Newfoundland's Botanical Gardens event to kick off the week on Sunday May 4th. Despite a flooded city, we had carrot cake at Envirem Technologies in Fredericton following a lunch to recognize the Fredericton Backyard Composters and their many years of cajoling and educating residents about the power of organics recycling and compost.

Green Manitoba had, aside-from-my-Mom's, the best date squares at our meeting on Tuesday; the folks at SWANA Northern Lights invited us to help "spread the compost" message at their annual conference in Regina (serving a fabulous dessert complete with a chocolate iced wafer shaped as a RCMP hat at their evening festivities --- which admittedly wasn't exactly for Compost Week ... but everything counts in my opinion). We ended the week in Toronto at the Leslie Street Allotment Gardens on the Saturday with store-bought cookies from us (ok, so I didn't bake them myself. I pride myself in living up to one of my mottos that "it takes just as much talent to know where to buy it as to how to bake it").

A fun week that basically means a lot of walking for the next couple to wear off the celebratory pounds.

As a final footnote to this entry, the following formed part of our "formal" communication for last week's efforts.

International Compost Awareness Week, an event that started here in Canada in 1995, will be celebrated both here as well in the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia from May 4th – 10th, 2008.

This year, our message is simple: Compost! Recycle Your Organics.

And, in the tradition of Top 10 lists, here are some of the reasons to become part of the “Green Wave of Recycling”.

1. Send less to landfill. Organics represent over one-third of the materials being sent to landfills. Whether through backyard or large-scale composting or anaerobic digestion, those banana peels, apple cores and other organic materials can be recycled.
2. Reduce greenhouse gases. According to Environment Canada, landfill sites account for about 38 per cent of Canada's total methane emissions. It’s the organics that are buried in the landfill that are a key contributor to this production of greenhouse gases.
3. Recover valuable materials. Composting produces compost, the single most important ingredient for healthy and productive soil.
4. Decrease soil erosion. Soil erosion can remove nutrients from the soil, reducing its productivity, as well as reducing runoff that can carry sediment, nutrients and chemicals into waterways thereby creating new sources of pollution. Compost helps enhance soil structure and binds soil particles together.
5. Revitalize soil. Compost helps provide sustenance for the very necessary biological diversity in the soil. Plants depend on this to convert materials into plant available nutrients and to keep the soil well aerated.
6. Reduce the need to water. By improving the soil structure through the addition of compost, water is retained and available for plants.
7. Reduce the need for pesticides. Compost can help suppress plant diseases.
8. Save money. Through backyard composting, you can turn your leftover organics into a valuable soil amendment without spending a dime.
9. Make your garden grow. Compost provides essential organic matter for the soil, which is of fundamental importance to its’ health, vitality and fertility.
10. Make a positive environmental difference. With compost, you can take resources otherwise regarded as waste – organic residuals - and turn them into something of value while at the same time realizing landfill and greenhouse gas reductions, improved soil productivity and water quality.

Compost … For the Love of the Earth !

.... and as a sign off today re: next steps ...

i. What did you know?
ii. What did you do about it?

COMPOST!