Compost
If you live in the country or have a big back yard, you can have a fairly big compost pile. See these links:
Compost
A Taste of Gardening

"But I live in the city!"

If you live in a city or you just want to compost on a smaller scale, you can build a composting bin to fit under your sink. Here's how:

Home Composting
1. Rinse out a 1-gallon plastic milk container.
2. Have an adult help you cut around the top part of the container, leaving the handle attached. This will allow you to add material, air, and moisture to your pile.
3. Using Professor Redworm's compost recipe, mix 3 parts brown material such as fruit and vegetable scraps and eggshells, with 3 parts green materials such as leaves, shredded newspaper and twigs. Add a handful of soil.
4. Remember to quench the microorganisms thirst by adding water sometimes (just don't let the pile dry-up).
5. Give them some fresh air by mixing your pile with a fork. If you do steps 4 and 6. regularly there should be no odors coming from your container.
7. In a few weeks or months your pile will be dark and crumbly and will feel spongy.

Voilá! You have compost!

You can add this compost to a garden if you have one. If not, you can add it to any potted plants you might have around the house.

Another activity you can do in your home is to monitor your trash flow. It's fun and easy. Here's how:

Trash Countdown
1. Count how many bags of garbage your family throws away in 1 week. Write it down.
2. Think of different things you can do to throw away less trash. Try to REDUCE trash by buying products with minimal packaging; REUSE plastic and glass containers and plastic bags; and RECYCLE glass, plastic, cans, and paper.
3. With all of this in mind, during the next week record how much trash you throw away. Do it for 3 more weeks. You will be surprised by how much you can reduce the amount of trash you produce. Imagine if every family in the world reduced the amount of trash they produce by just 1 bag per week. That would result in millions of bags!

Find out if your school cafeteria is recycling. If not, your biggest challenge will be to organize fellow classmates to work with your teachers, principal, and janitorial staff to start a recycling program and to get bins set up through the school for "Paper," "Cans," "Glass," "Plastic," and "Food Scraps."

Learn how to start your own composting project. Read on.

School Composting Project
Are you ready to tackle the challenge of setting up a Composting Task Force in your school? You can do it! Here's how:

1. Organize your teacher and classmates and educate them about composting.
2. Organize a meeting with the help of your teacher to speak to your school cafeteria workers to present plans to conduct a waste audit of your school cafeteria.
3. Plan to set up bins to separate compostablefrom non-compostable materials. Figure out the proportion of school lunch trash that could potentially be composted.
4. Present this information to your principal or school board, as well as your ideas for where a compost pile could be on your school grounds, and an outline for maintenance.
5. List the benefits of composting food scraps from the cafeteria (less trash bags, hands-on science lessons, use as a lawn fertilizer, etc.).

For more information about composting in schools visit:
Cornell Composting

What happens to the grass clippings, leaves, and other yard wastes in your neighborhood? Does your city have a composting project? You might call your local Department of Sanitation to find out. If your community does not, get started on calling your community to action!

Sample Letter
Here's an example of the type of letter you might write to your Mayor or the local newspaper, to start some discussion:

Dear _________,

I have found out that our community is not composting organic matters such as grass clippings and leaves. In thousands of places around this country, people in cities and towns are able to put their yard waste out for collection. We should, too! Otherwise, we are filling our landfills up with perfectly recyclable garbage-what a waste! Please do something about it for the Earth's sake.

Sincerely,

______________ (Your name)