The best way to transform poor soil into healthy soil is with compost, which begins with both green clippings such as leaves and grass, and food scraps. Your neighborhood should have a central compost station using green clippings from parks, streets, and other public areas plus food scraps from neighborhood restaurants. If you live in a house cluster like a bungalow court, cottage court, or apartment building, you and your neighbors should compost together. Composting on your own lot is easy. And regardless of the scale, composting green clippings keeps them out of the storm sewers, lakes, streams and rivers where they cause algae growth and aquatic weeds, and composting food scraps keeps them out of landfills, where they not only take up space, but release climate change gases.
Who can do this? You can, on your lot. For cluster-sized or neighborhood-sized composting, you and your neighbors may want to go together and hire a landscape company to do it.
What does it cost? A good pair of compost drums can cost as little as $100 or less. After you buy the drums, there is no cost except for your time.
Who can help? There are a number of composting resource organizations, but you may not need them. Composting is really simple: use roughly half kitchen scraps and half garden clippings. Add to one drum regularly; turn both drums every time you add to the new drum. Once the new drum is full, empty the old drum into your garden and the emptied drum becomes your new drum. That’s pretty much it.