News Release

October 1, 2020 - Composting can help reduce waste and solve landfill problems in urban environments. The Soil Science Society of America’s (SSSA) October 1^st Soils Matter Blog explores how cities such as San Antonio are using composting initiatives to reduce waste and recycle raw materials.

Blogger Maxine J. Levin explains, “San Antonio is one of the few cities that provides a separate green cart just for organic material. All San Antonio residents can receive a green organics recycling cart as part of the new Pay As You Throw (PAYT) program. ‘If a worm can’t eat it, it doesn’t go in the cart’ is their moto and direction to customers.”

The city collects yard waste such as leaves and grass, as well as kitchen wastes such as food scraps and used napkins. A nearby composting facility creates large piles of mixed and ground dry waste, and adds biosolids. It’s important for the piles to reach high temperatures, which kills bad microbes and leaves the good ones. The compost is eventually used by urban gardeners and is used by the city in various ways as well. To learn more about composting in San Antonio, read the entire blog post: https://soilsmatter.wordpress.com/2020/10/01/how-is-san-antonio-reducing-its-solid-waste/

Follow SSSA on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/SSSA.soils, Twitter at SSSA_Soils. SSSA has soils information on www.soils.org/discover-soils, for teachers at www.soils4teachers.org, and for students through 12^th grade, www.soils4kids.org.