Backyard Composting Basics
In this webinar, you'll learn how to compost successfully - whether you're starting for the first time, or are a compost veteran. We'll cover cold composting, as well as active and passive management techniques. You'll leave with strategies for jump-starting an old pile, keeping smells down and animals out, and how to compost safely during this time of COVID-19. We'll also review Vermont's food scrap ban from the landfill, and other options for managing food scraps in addition to home composting. Join Cassandra Hemenway, Outreach Manager at the Central Vermont Solid Waste Management District, trained and certified in turning food waste into soil! Also presenting is Theron Lay-Sleeper, CVSWMD outreach coordinator, and lifelong composter.
We had some issues with the recording from this webinar during ICAW, but thankfully the trainers offered another presentation of the same content and shared that recording with CAV to post here. If you’re interested in participating in another live webinar, see the CVSWMD schedule here.
Their Dirt on Composting Guidebook is also a great reference for backyard composting.
Meet your Trainers:
Cassandra Hemenway is the Outreach Manager at Central Vermont Solid Waste Management District. She joined the district in July 2012, as its first Zero Waste Outreach Coordinator. Cassandra has since built the program to include a wide array of composting and recycling education and built an increasing awareness of zero waste concepts in the region. She earned a Master's Degree in communications from Boston University in 1994 after graduating from Smith College with a BA in English Literature. She spent many years as a journalist and free-lance writer while homesteading in rural Vermont. She brings a passion for gardening, composting, and the natural world to the district, with a particular interest in CVSWMD's Zero Waste philosophy.
Theron Lay-Sleeper is the Outreach Coordinator at Central Vermont Solid Waste Management District. He joined the CVSWMD team in September 2019 after serving here for a year as an ECO AmeriCorps member and becoming a fully-fledged trash nerd. He studied international relations, focusing on environmental and energy policy and graduated from Tufts University in Boston in 2015. He is concerned about the way our society has effected climate change and hopes to work to make Vermont a leader in environmental stewardship and sustainability. He is an avid outdoorsman, craftsman, musician, and cook.
