Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Pond Boss Trash to recycle, compost, burn?

I already recycle everything I can. The rest is garbage pick up every Friday.

I'm thinking I may be able to preclude garbage pick up by continuing with the recycle but also composting and burning what can't be composted or recycled.

Anybody else do this? Have any tips?

Trying to cut costs and being greener at the same time.

I compost and recycle, and burned everything for years, burning sucks you end up with a barrel full of crap just sucks, I have dumpster service now (no weekly trash pick up)..
I also vermicompost kinda as a hobby been going good for 3-4 months now..

May want to double check the legality of burning trash. Pretty much illegal everywhere now.

Waste disposal companies have special incinerators for this task.

Burning trash may get the Green Police after your butt

JKB, it all depends on the county. While it may be illegal, the county prosecutor may say that the cost for prosecuting is more than the fine would generate and not do a thing about it.

That's the story in my county - I found that out with the new neighbors that I have............ Same story for dumping trash/construction materials/oil & antifreeze containers in the woods behind the house too. State won't get involved unless the pile is 1/4 ac or larger.

Here they charge us $75/year for a recycle fee, but you have to drive to dump the stuff in the recycle bins - no "curbside" pick up.

Only burning allowed is clean wood products.

Nearest scrap yard is about 15 miles away.

Everyone still burns here since there is no weekly trash service pick up in this area so I'm just guessing its legal..

Open burning officially illegal but not enforced.

Sound's familiar although we have recycling here at no cost; it's just a matter of driving into town and dropping it off.

Check this thing out Cesil. I've been thinking about buying one. Way better then a barrel. It's expensive though but would last forever being made out of stainless.
http://www.drpower.com/prdsell.aspx?Name=burncage

Would you like to be the one they start to crack down on?

I have a couple closed steel barrels. I was going to get those conversion kits to turn a steel drum into a wood stove. A place down the road had them on sale, but by the time I got there, they were all gone. I'll still get a pair and build a couple cheap outdoor wood stoves for burning junk. Ken said that he had/has one, but maybe a different brand. This way you can put a chimney with a spark arrester on them. We have burning bans quite frequently due to our location if it is dry out. No ban with a wood stove tho.

Depending on where you are, and how "green" your community is. In our urbanized jungle, I composted practically everything that is natural, and processed from natural sources (paper). Plastics and wax/metals that could not be composted get recycled. Family of 4, we create 1 30-gals bag of non-recycled/non-composting materials per week. Green communities recovers these materials as recoverable-fuel sources for local incinerators.

Burning materials, as they collect together, creating toxic sludge/slags/compounds that will harm you more in the long run than just leaving them to biodegrade over time (thousands to millions of years). This is why burning your trash got banned in most, if not all states. Enforcement is low, since there's no way go to each and every home that burn trashes in this country.

Suggestion: non-recyclable, non-composting materials, but inert enough to be utilized safely both in the environment and to human exposure, grind them up into small sizes. Use them to stabilize barren soils/slopes. The materials can also be used as fluffs, similar to biodegradable compost bedding, to seal in moisture for plants/trees. It also promote vermicomposting bed/shade which you can encourage in an external worm farm. Since the materials will not degrade in the short period of time, the material will act as aeration layer for your composting materials, and leachate drainage.

There are plenty of methodology to use non-composting/non-recyclable materials.

Thank you Leo, jwann, jkb, and others for your suggestions.

Cecil,

I burn everything that I think could ignite or melt in a 55 gallon barrel. I may need to empty it once a year, I just roll it out in the field. The barrel usually lasts me two years, when it rusts out I load it up and take it to the township dump. Our local dump closes Nov-Feb, I went for the first time last Saturday and for the winters non-burnable stuff it cost me $3.00 which I thought was good for about 4 months (one big plastic trash can). It's pretty easy to find free barrels yet these days, I'm lucky as work throws out dozens each week. A little torch work for air holes and you have a nice burn barrel. Good luck.

Bryan