Why should I compost?

Each year, Wisconsin households send 600 million pounds of “food waste” and compostable material to our landfills!

Composting is recycling in the most basic sense. It takes materials from the home and yard and returns them to the environment in a usable form. Composting yard materials and certain food scraps provides a valuable “soil amendment” for gardens and landscaping, while reducing landfill costs. Compost is considered a soil amendment, rather than a fertilizer, because it usually contains only small amounts of nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. Commercial lawn fertilizers contain large amounts of all three.

What should I compost?

• Garden and yard material such as grass clippings, leaves, annual plants, and vegetables

• Kitchen scraps such as vegetables, eggshells, fruit peeling, and coffee grounds

• Manure from plant-eating animals only (NOT from household pets)

• Plants with disease or insect problems (compost only during summer months)

DO NOT COMPOST: bones, meat scraps, dairy, twigs/branches