AT HOME, COMPOSTING is easy: toss the gunge in the green bin until a truck hauls it away, and just like that, you’ve Done the Right Thing. “So long, apple cores, broccoli stalks, and fish heads,” you say, adjusting your halo. “Don’t bother to write!”
It’s different at the cottage. Without access to municipal composting, kitchen scraps linger for a garbage-day trip to the dump. Meanwhile, your halo gets tarnished (and a little smelly). Landfilling food and organic waste stinks—and not just for the obvious, olfactory reasons. But what’s the alternative? Didn’t you come to the cottage to escape routines like regular waking hours, sorting organic stuff from the trash, and personal hygiene?
“You came to the cottage to get away and relax,” agrees John Watson, the environmental manager for the Municipality of Dysart et al. But “you also want to enjoy nature,” he adds, pushing the environmental sensitivity button that lurks beneath the skin of most cottagers. “The backyard composter or digester is part than decomposition, the default setting for all things organic? It’s the Cycle of Life, with future generations of mighty white pines springing from the stuff that’s even now turning brown in your crisper. You just have to close the loop linking fridge drawer to forest floor.
