Embrace composting
Call to Action
Hawai‘i County’s Department of Environmental Management proposed a 40-acre site for an island-wide composting facility to reduce the amount of organic waste dumped into landfills. A good start, but small, localized community composting centers, rather than centralized options, may be better as they avoid transporting waste. “Think about rooftop solar panels. Distributed energy is a good strategy and so is distributed composting,” says Mindy Jaffe, program director for the Windward Zero Waste School Hui.
Statewide, barriers to small-scale composting facilities—such as unnecessary permits—should be removed, coupled with programs that make residential composting and vermicomposting easy.
“On a rock where more than anything else we need microbially-active, living soil to support local agriculture, it is insanity to burn food, paper, cardboard, wood, green waste, and manure,” says Jaffe. “These valuable resources should be separated from non-biodegradable items in the waste stream and composted.”
