Anyone walking by our home can see a stacked row of kraft yard waste bags against the north side. Recently, an entrepreneurial fellow stopped by to ask if we would like to pay him to haul them away. Maybe now is a good time to start to explain.

I am a master composter. I studied plant ecology and soil microbiology, and I’ve been composting for close to 35 years (the astute know that I’ve been married for “only” 27 years). The leaves are part of that. As a hobby (if you want to call it that), composting helps me relax and unwind. But it goes far deeper.

Let’s talk about the dollars and cents first. Neighbors also notice that we don’t put out a trash container. Ever. We use Western’s prepaid bag program: 10 bags for $87.67 ($8.77/bag). We put one out about every quarter, so we pay about $35 a year for our refuse service. With this comes as much recycling and organics pickup as we can use. In comparison, their smallest trash service, 32 gallons/week, is $114.15/quarter, or $456.60/year; 64 gallons/week is $668.40/year; and 96 gallons/week is $880.20/year. (Don’t get me started about how you should have to pay MORE per gallon the more you throw rather than less.) That’s all well and good, but considering that curbside organics collection (compost) is included in our $35/year, why don’t we just max out our container with woody debris, weeds, food scraps, and so on?

I am also a master gardener and native plant master (if you live in the neighborhood, you know I took several years off getting my severe yellow jacket allergy under control). I care for established trees and shrubs and am establishing new habitat for insects and birds, which uses a fair amount of compost and mulch. Western offers CMI Silver compost for self-haulers at $36.75/cubic yard and mulch at $7/cubic yard, which aren’t bad prices and don’t come wrapped in plastic. However, I’m not impressed with the compost analytics (that’s another post). Last year, I used at least 8 cubic yards of compost and at least 20 cubic yards of free/almost free local mulch ($294 + $140 = $434 at Western’s rates). A1 Organics’ best compost is $52/cubic yard plus $245 for delivery (up to 15 cubic yards), and mulch is $42.50/cubic yard plus $370 for delivery (up to 45 cubic yards). Eight cubic yards of compost is $661, and twenty yards of their mulch is $1200. Bagged compost and mulch cost even more and involves massive plastic waste. One cubic yard of Home Depot’s rock bottom (problematic) compost is $174.69 (and 27 plastic bags). One cubic yard of their rock bottom (problematic) mulch is $45 (and 13 1/2 plastic bags). That’s almost $1400 for (crappy) compost and $900 for (crappy) mulch and 486 total plastic bags.

So… I paid $35 plus elbow grease plus $20 for one Chip Drop last year to make my own compost and use local mulch and relax and unwind. I saved a minimum of $400 in supplies and over $400 in refuse fees. I’ll go more into the quality control (and the leaves) in my next Pollinator Post.