Today, April 30, 2011, I graduated from the Master Composter/Recycler Volunteer Program that my City offers each year as a tool to increase citizen participation in effective waste management. It gives volunteers the knowledge and resources they need to be ambassadors for the city, and to share their passion for gardening, Composting, Recycling, Reusing, and much much more. I thought I knew a lot going in, and I learned a lot more than I expected. We each created an Outreach Plan for how we would bring our knowledge back to our communities, and presenting these plans to each other was very inspiring. At some point I will post my overly ambitious, somewhat nebulous Outreach Plan.
By using the tools this MCRP course has given me, I hope to bring hope to those that think all is lost, and to bring change to those that have never asked “Where *does* my garbage go after it leaves the end of my driveway?” I have been an environmentalist since the early 1990s, and composted in the backyard with my parents for our family garden. I embraced the ‘save the world’ and ‘treehugger’ movements, and recycled and reused whenever possible. I tried my first vermicompost bin in 2003, and helped initiate a lunch waste vermicompost bin in the program office of my college. The one thing I’ve decided to do tomorrow is to make my own Bokashi bucket. It is a form of Composting I haven’t tried yet, and I might as well get started while my enthusiasm/drive is still high!
