By Anne Rivas

When we moved here four years ago, I was excited about Omaha sending yard waste to a composting facility.  I put my sticks out for pickup with a clear conscience, and composted almost everything else at home.  Now the city is considering an amended contract with the waste hauling that will permanently send yard waste to the landfill.  The methane generated by the landfill is used to create power, but I’d rather not create that power with something that can nourish life.  Watching organic waste become rich soil deepens my faith in the transformative power of rot, and being part of a city that values the production of fertile soil is important to me.  I am deeply disappointed by this suggested change in direction.

So what do we do now with our sticks, branches, and woody prunings?  We can run them through chippers to create our own mulch.  Or, as self-appointed Compost Queen, I suggest we use them in hugelkultur garden beds.

Hugelkultur means “hill mound,” or “hill culture.”  It’s a form of composting that allows us to use leftover firewood, the branches and sticks that fall from our trees every time the wind blows (and when isn’t the wind blowing?), kitchen scraps, yard waste, and garden waste. Start with a layer of logs on the bottom, and then build a lasagna pile of sticks, leaves, grass clippings, kitchen scraps, paper, and compost, ending with a layer of dirt covered by a layer of mulch.  You can plant in it immediately.

Piling the materials into a mound gives you a larger gardening surface without taking more horizontal space.  The branches aerate the soil as they decompose, and the wood holds moisture that is released as the bed dries out, reducing the need for irrigation.  The mound will diminish as it decomposes.  A well-built hugelkultur bed can last 20 years or so without irrigation or fertilizer.  Some intensive work at the beginning will pay dividends for years to come.

I love reading well-written homesteading blogs and have watched this movement grow over the years, but there are limits to what we can each accomplish alone.  By working together on the municipal level through city composting, community gardens, seed libraries, and other common efforts, we will accomplish more than any of us can do by ourselves.

By Melanie Stewart

There is an ongoing discussion in Omaha over what to do with yard waste.  For most of the past year, it has been taken to the landfill to eventually provide power by burning methane.  Before that, it was composted and sold as Oma-Gro.  Yard waste was combined with trash in the landfill as a temporary answer to a shortage of CDL-licensed drivers.

Two new proposals to manage trash and yard waste are being considered, and while neither one includes composting, both involve limiting the amount of trash and yard waste collected.

One of the proposals includes every household in Omaha getting two 96 gallon carts with lids, one for trash and one for recycling. Automation would improve the efficiency of pick-up; the trucks could be powered by compressed natural gas, it might result in more recycling, and this should cut down on litter, all of which are positive.

But what about households that discard more than 96 gallons of trash each week? That’s a lot of trash, but easy to achieve when yard waste is included.

Until now, very little attention has been paid to reducing the amount of materials we discard.  Each of us has probably at one time or another complained about “putting a bandage” on a problem instead of dealing with the big picture.

Could this be one of those cases?  Could we be the solution?

In LiveGreen’s article on the 5R’s, we read that long before we get to recycling, landfilling, or even composting, we can “refuse, reduce, and reuse.”  After that, we can recycle, rot (compost), and then send the rest to the landfill.

In order to reduce the amount of trash leaving our homes we generally have to reduce the amount of materials coming in.  This can be done a variety of ways; by taking reusable bags to the grocery store, buying fresh local produce instead of prepackaged items, buying only what we need, and using a water filter instead of bottled water.  Don’t get me wrong, we’ll still create some waste, but it’s amazing how little effort it takes to produce a little less.  With a little more effort it’s impressive what we can do…and having free compost for the yard is great!  Generally speaking, these choices are healthier, benefit the members of our households, and more of our money stays here, strengthening our local economy.