(originally sent March 9, 2017)
PEDAL PEOPLE NEWS WINTER 2017 Greetings from the Pedal People Press: ... a simple, informative newsletter to support our collective path to sustainability... Contents: * Easthampton Expansion for Compost Service * Composting * 70 Years of Cat Litter * Pedal People Yard Care * Meet the Pedal People ** EASTHAMPTON EXPANSION FOR COMPOST SERVICE ** We are expanding our services to Easthampton beginning in April with compost only service! Please spread the word to friends, family, and colleagues who may be interested. More information: https://www.pedalpeople.coop/index.php?page=81 ** COMPOSTING ** Thank you to all of our current composting customers! We were recently in the Advocate for our composting program. Here is a link in case you missed it: http://valleyadvocate.com/2017/01/09/when-life-gives-you-lemon-peels-make-compost/ We are working to make composting easy and efficient for our community. We now offer a monthly clean compost bucket swap for a small fee. Note also that our Yard Care services include compost bin construction if you wish to compost at home. Compost to... * create nutrient rich soil & save our diminishing topsoil! * have zero-stink household trash! * decrease landfill and incinerated waste! * reduce greenhouse emissions! * decrease trash fees at the transfer station! Contact us if you are a current customer who would like to compost (it is included with trash and recycling service). Spread the word to your neighbors for an account credit. ** 70 YEARS OF CAT LITTER ** It's the 70th anniversary of clay cat litter. Did you know that's 5 billion pounds of clay, annually, coming from the mines to the stores to your house?... and it feels like a million when your Pedal Person bikes it away for the next leg of its journey. Please consider non-clay-based litter options, which are light and biodegradable. Some people are even composting their cat poop/litter: https://glenbrookzerowaste.wordpress.com/2010/03/30/how-to-compost-your-cats-litter/ ** PEDAL PEOPLE YARD CARE ** Our Pedal People Yard and Garden Care services are gearing up for the spring! We offer quiet, clean, human-powered mowing, weeding, digging, planting, spring cleanups, and general maintenance. We also offer raking and leaf hauling services and compost bin construction. Call or email us today for more information: (413) 586-8591 or see our contact page. ** MEET THE PEDAL PEOPLE ** Meet Clarissa Lyons: Clarissa spends her days on her bike singing songs badly to herself, puffing slowly up hills, having internal debates over car bumper stickers that fly by, then having internal debates about cars, and lastly, thinking about trash. She believes that we can all make positively impactful choices by reducing the amount of our waste that goes to landfills. Among the various ways to do this is the separation of compost from the trash. About her motivation to promote composting, she says, "When I was a kid I took a tour of a landfill local to me. We stood at the edge of a big trash pit, and from it, warming under the hot sun, came the distinctive stench of trash - a smell I'd say I'm pretty familiar with now. I learned that we are the #1 trash-producing country in the world, and while I like winning a lot, that rapidly growing pile of oozing trash did not look like winning to me. And when you look at the numbers, it doesn't look good either: 72% of the municipal waste stream going to landfills is organic, and 12% of that is food scraps. All this organic waste sits around in landfills producing methane. Landfills are the single largest source of methane, and methane is a greenhouse gas that is 23 times more potent than carbon dioxide. What would our world look like if we radically reduced this single largest source of methane?"