Guy Quenneville
Northern News Services
Wednesday, April 25, 2007

YELLOWKNIFE - Compost. It's stinky, and it's not pretty. It can attract unwanted visitors like the neighborhood dog - or ravens determined to tear it apart.

But according to one avid Yellowknife backyard composter, compost not only encourages the healthy growth of plants in gardens but is, more importantly, an environmentally safe practice that more and more Yellowknifers are learning in order to help reduce waste.

"There's a lot more focus on composting now because there's also a large percentage of municipal waste going to the garbage dump that can be composted," said Jim Sparling, who held a workshop on backyard composting at the Multiplex this past weekend.

"You can remove as much as 30 percent of a total load on landfill sites by getting people composting," Sparling said.

"Especially when you start to think about all the big bags of lawn clippings or leaves that people would put out on the curb. All of that stuff can be composted."

A common complaint from neighbours of people who compost is the smell, said Sparling. But he insisted bad odors emanating from compost heaps can be avoided.

"A good compost is never going to smell," he said. "If it smells, it may be too wet, or it needs oxygen. A good compost heap needs to have oxygen. Also, never put meat scraps and fatty stuff or cooked food scraps.

Those things are going to smell and annoy your neighbors."

The workshop was one of several events that kicked off Ecology North's celebration of Earth Week and drew a crowd of about 25 people, most of whom brought a container with them.

The second portion of the workshop, hosted by longtime worm composter Vicky Johnston, gave attendees the chance to take a sampling of worms home with them.

Johnston said that taking care of worms - whose excretion makes for very good compost - is something that can be done year-round inside people's homes.

Johnston has kept worms inside Rubbermaid containers for years. She's even kept them under her bed, much to her husband's chagrin

"Once I got married, though, my husband forced me to move them elsewhere," she said.

Many of Johnston's suggestions for indoor winter worm composting surprised the attendees, such as her claim that worms actually take quite well to coffee grounds.

"Great!" exclaimed one of the attendees.

Earth Week events will continue until April 29.