Composting, landfill fee increases and Leif Erickson

News to keep you apprised of: Composting workshop, fee increase at County Recycling Centers and Leif Erickson!

On Thursday, Oct. 13, 2022, Gaston County Recycling will be offering two workshops for Backyard Composting. We will hold both events at the Citizens Resource Center, 1303 Dallas Cherryville Highway, Dallas.

The first will be 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. and the second workshop will be held 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.

We will be honored to have as our guest lecturer, Jim Burke, master composter and a man with more knowledge and skill in so many arenas. Jim has retired from his career at the Cooperative Extension facility; he is very active with Master Gardeners, Gaston Beekeepers, Keep Gastonia Beautiful and a host of other very important organizations.

I have a composter in my yard, that’s my claim to fame. Jim will instruct us in the fine points as well as the basics of composting.

Why should we compost? Well, the EPA suggests that 30 to 40% of our garbage is food waste; maybe half of that is coming from grocery store and institutional facility; the rest is waste that we generate.

Shy of a curbside collection, which is a nightmare to operate (we couldn’t do single stream recycling correct) backyard composting is an excellent opportunity to again do your part to reuse and recycle food as soil amendments.

Please email me at nan.kirlin@gastongov.com to register! It will be informative and beneficial to all gardeners and folks interested in the soil. Please indicate on your email which session you will attend.

Next, back in July, our county commissioners approved of a fee increase at our convenience sites, and we are finally able to kick this off; we were waiting for appropriate signage for the sites.

Mattresses and box springs will cost $10 to dispose of; you will need to purchase three $4 garb cards, and our site attendants will punch the third card with two punches for the fill price (or one $8 and one $4…same math applies). There were no other increases in fees, and in our world of inflation today, we are pleased with that single increase.

Mattresses and box springs are the bane of landfills; they never compress and take up more space than most landfill garbage. Please be aware and understanding as we institute this change.

Third, Oct. 10 is celebrated as Columbus Day, Indigenous Peoples’ day and in some parts of our country, Leif Erickson day! Being that I am of Italian heritage, I was always proud to know that Christopher Columbus hailed from Italy, and we were the ones who discovered America.

As time passes, we realize that this land was not discovered, as indigenous people were here from the get-go, and was “discovered” by folks looking for other lands. Now, just back from Iceland, we have “discovered” that Leif Erickson sailed from Greenland to Norway, was blown off course and is thought to have been the first to discover North America.

According to the Saga of Eric the Red, around 1,000 Leif made three different landings, one in Vinland (where wild grapes were abundant and very fertile soil was perfect for growing) one in Newfoundland and in Labrador.

This was just about four centuries before Columbus’s arrival in 1492. In the early 1060’s excavations in Newfoundland have turned up evidence of a base camp, thought to be that of 11th-century Viking explorers.

Many Nordic Americans celebrate Leif Erickson as the first European explorer of the New world; in fact, President Calvin Coolidge announced in 1925 that Erickson was the first to find North America to a crowd in Minnesota.

In September of 1964, Congress approved a resolution authorizing President Lyndon B. Johnson to declare Oct. 9 as Leif Erickson Day.

Regardless of the European explorers, the indigenous people were the first folks here; we continue to discover the ways that humanity conquer others, and that history continues to repeat itself. Enjoy this day as a day of discovery or appreciation for the grandeur of our country.

Nan Kirlin is Gaston County's recycling coordinator.

This article originally appeared on The Gaston Gazette: Composting, landfill fee increases and Leif Erickson