Composting food scraps and yard trimmings reduces what is thrown in the trash, reduce your garbage collection costs and is great for gardens and landscaping. To promote waste reduction and recycling in Sunnyvale, the City's Recycling Program offers monthly composting workshops to residents at no charge. Volunteer Master Composters teach and use hands-on demonstrations to show how mixing grass clippings, leaves, yard trimmings and food scraps produces a nutrient-rich soil amendment called compost. A portion of the class is also dedicated to worm composting (vermi-composting).
The SMaRT Station provides compost at no charge to residents of Palo Alto, Los Altos, Mountain View and Sunnyvale. Trucks, trailers and SUVs are limited to picking up three 32-gallons of compost per week. Passenger cars are limited to one load per week. Materials are available on a first-come, first-served basis. Contact the SMaRT Station at (408) 752-8530 to confirm availability and remember to bring your own shovel!
Benefits of composting include:
- suppressing weeds and controlling soil erosion;
- making nutrients available to plants;
- retaining moisture and reducing water consumption;
- loosening clay and compacted soils for better drainage;
- reducing waste to landfill; and
- restoring and revitalizing the earth's top soil.
Registration required to attend a workshop.
February through November
Every second Saturday
10 a.m. to noon
Murphy Park - Park Building
250 N. Sunnyvale Ave.
Register no later than 3 p.m. the Friday prior to the workshop. Walk-in registration is permitted only if space is available. Workshops fill quickly so register today! All attending residents may purchase an Earth Machine backyard composting bin for $55 and/or a worm bin for $13 following the workshop. Attendees interested in worm-composting may also purchase a pound of red worms from TheWormDude for $25.
- Milpitas residents are eligible for one pound of worms at no charge with proof of residency.
- Cupertino residents may contact Recology, (408) 725-4020, to request compost bin delivery upon workshop attendance verification.
Visit Jerry Gach, The Worm Dude, to learn more about worm composting, purchase worms or an alternative worm composting bin.
If you have attended a workshop, already know how to compost, or would like to review composting techniques, the following additional resources are available courtesy of the Master Composters:
If you have questions about composting or simply want to share your experiences, join Master Composter, Dan Hafeman, who conducts an online Yahoo! compost group discussion. If you don't have a Yahoo! account, you can easily create one. Click "Join Group" and Dan will send you an invitation. Everyone is welcome!
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