LCRC Changes and News

Hello LCRC customers,

I recently started a full-time job in Denver as the social engagement manager for Metro State College's Alumni Association. The curbside pickup service just isn't bringing in enough money for me to pay the bills. The bad news is I will not be able to continue to do pickups on Tuesday mornings. The good news is that:

1. I will do a final pickup of all recycling this Saturday, December 12. I will NOT do recycling pickups after this next Saturday.
2. I will continue to do pickups for compost once per month (as only one of my customers actually needs pickups more than once per month anyway). I would like to continue offering and building this community service because I think it is of great value to Lyons. I will do pickups the last Saturday morning of every month, and I will continue to charge people $5 per one bin picked up. I will only be picking up items that I can compost locally (i.e. after Saturday, I will no longer pick up meat, bones, dairy, etc). Please see website for details on what you can compost: http://www.lyonsrecycling.com/Composting.html.
3. I will continue to pick up tubes and tires from the bike shops on the last Saturday of every month.
4. I will continue to pick up hard-to-recycle materials on the last Saturday of every month.

If you haven't paid for your recycle bins yet, please leave them out next Saturday morning, and I will pick them up along with your recycling.

Thanks!
-Lizzy

New Foreclosure Cleanup Service

In addition to offering garage and home organization and cleanup services, I'm now going to offer foreclosure cleanup services. This means I will come in, organize the entire home, take away all furnishings and other items, recycling/composting/donating as much as possible. Call me for details: 303-903-2768~

I spent all of last Thursday organizing a woman's garage. When we first opened the door, the mountain of phone books and other stuff started to fall out of the garage. By the end of the day I had a space big enough for a large pickup open in the garage. I recycled 40 or so phone books, donated a chair, table and various items to the second-hand store, I composted a half bin of foodstuff and napkins, I recycled one garbage bag of plastic bags, and I recycled four bins of plastic, cans, and bottles. I was left with just one small garbage bag of actual garbage! And it took me just 6.5 hours.

Photos of Compost in action!

Here are some photos Jonathan Dowdell took last week of "composting in action at the Lyons Farmette."

This weekend in Lyons

My business continues to grow slowly. The mayor of Lyons wants to do compost with me. Cool! I am increasingly more excited about doing the compost because I can keep it almost totally local, with a few exceptions when I have to bring meat/bones/dairy compost into Boulder. For the most part, however, I'll be able to turn my customers' compost directly into soil that will enrich the gardens of other residents. I think that's neat.

Yesterday's Tour de Coup, organized by Betsy Burton of the Lyons Farmette, seemed to be quite successful. Lots of people showed up from all over the Front Range. I met people (and lots of kids) from as far away as Denver and Fort Collins. The weather held, though it threatened a bit.

The Duck Race was also fun on Saturday, and we hit the farmer's market downtown for a bit, tried out the delicious crepes and looked at a bit of fun jewelry. We also saw some friends. There are all kinds of interesting things to do in Lyons when I stick around for the weekend. I don't know if I won anything, but I'll check in a few minutes. Happy week!

Getting Paypal on the LCRC Website

Getting a Paypal button on the Lyons Curbside Website is proving to be a big pain. I am working on it. In the meantime, if you want to pay with a credit or debit card, please utilize the Paypal button on the top, right side of the Lyons Curbside blog.

I have one option for $1. Please include the dollar amount on your invoice as the "quantity".

In other news, the first LCRC compost bin is already generating heat, and it's only been one week! It's currently full of apples from the Farmette and from Jo and Dan Greenberg. As well it has squash plants, zukes, straw, some of the Farmette's excellent dirt, and water.

Check out my article on the Lyons Farmette and Mike Whipp and Betsy Burton in this week's Lyons Recorder!

Bin built

I've got the first straw bale bin built (cost about $100), and will be filling it in with some layers of compost starting tomorrow. How exciting! Now I need some folks in town to start composting with me. Here is a photo of the first Farmette Community Compost bin.

Community Composting at the Lyons Farmette, step #1

This week, potentially this weekend, I'm going to start building the compost "bin" at the Farmette (depending on whether or not Mike and Betsy will let me start!) My idea is to build straw bale compost bins. These require quite a bit of space, of which there is plenty at the Farmette. I like this idea because according to this neat book I'm reading, "Four-Season Harvest," by Eliot Coleman, straw is an important component to any compost bin and the straw bales actually serve as part of the composting process.

I'll start by clearing, flattening, digging, and weeding the space allotted for the compost bin. Then I'll build straw bale block walls for a bin in a brickwork mosaic. I'm considering building two "bins" right off the bat, but I'm going to see how much straw bales cost first.

Then, over the course of the next six months to a year, I'll layer in various types of material--regular dirt, green matter (food waste from the community), brown matter (yard waste, grass clippings, etc), and various other things (perhaps sawdust, maybe some horse poop, and I may even try some compostable cups and plates and such). I'll slowly fill the bin with these things, mixing and watering when needed. Eventually, the straw bales will break down, and I'll cut and remove the bailing twine and then mix the composted bales in with the compost.

At this point, there are a few different things that can be done with the compost. It can be spread on the garden as heavily composted mulch, or it can be left for another few months to compost some more. I also may be able to use the straw bales for another round.

I plan on taking photos of this whole process. What a fun adventure this will be!

Community composting at the Lyons Farmette

Lyons Curbside Recycling & Compost will have its own community compost bins based at the Lyons farmette. This will reduce the pickup cost for compost from $9 per pickup to just $5 per pickup. It will also limit the type of food waste that can be composted. For example, people who choose the $5 per pickup option will not be able to compost their meat, dairy products, breads, or bones. However, there is an extensive list of items that can be composted (please see LCRC website Compost Page), and special $9 pickups can still be requested for Zero Waste events and the above-mentioned hard-to-compost items. 

Residents will not be able to utilize the community compost without going through Lyons Curbside Recycling & Compost's pickup service. I will be closely monitoring and managing the bins to ensure they function properly.

-Lizzy Scully

Oops, telephone number

Oops, apparently it's difficult to find my telephone number. Please call me at; 303-903-2768, or check out the Lyons Curbside Recycling & Compost website.

Single-stream recycling

I'm going to offer Single-Stream recycling to all my customers starting today. You no longer have to separate any of your recyclables. Please just remember to rinse and remove the lids/caps from your jars and bottles. Thanks!

Leaf raking and delivery

Lyons Curbside Recycling & Compost will now take care of all your leaf raking and yard cleanup needs, including delivery of the final product to the composting facility, A-1 Organics. Call 303.903.2768 for a quote.

Can metal jar lids be recycled?

Yes, but please remove them from the glass bottles because each recyclable is put into a different hole when it gets recycled. If the lid is still on the glass, it may not get through the correct hole and so may not be properly recycled.

Can you recycle those plastic containers that hold your strawberries and other berries (i.e. clamshell containers)?

Eco-Cycle is accepting these sorts of containers now. The items do not appear on their guideline posters as something they can accept, but they are not on the list of "no's". However, it is not a great plastic, so Eco-Cycle hopes people avoid purchasing it.

What kinds of plastic wrap and bags can be recycled?

#2 and #4 plastics can be recycled. This sort of plastic is softer and tears easily, and it tears in a wavy line. This includes pallet wrap, grocery bags, and bread bags, Ziplock bags (if you take the Ziplock off), and white trash bags.

#5 plastics CAN NOT be recycled. This includes thicker plastics that don't tear, or if they tear they tear in a straight line. This might be: crinkly plastic and the plastic around bundles of flowers and black trash bags. Saran wrap CAN NOT be recycled.

All plastics must be clean and dry to be recycled.

What happens if a customer's recycling bin is overly contaminated?

Some recycling companies will pick up overly contaminated recycling. However, the recyclables will eventually be thrown in the garbage either on the spot or at the recycling center. If someone doesn't rinse a bottle that is fine, but if there are materials in the bins that are on the list that can’t be recycled, including full jars of food or too many plastic bottle lids, they will end up as trash. Thus, none of those items will actually be recycled.

Can the plastic rings around your bottles be recycled?

They are considered the contaminants by Eco-Cycle, but we ask people only to take off the caps. Eco-Cycle does allow for a small amount of contamination.

Recycling starts next week, Compost September

I will start recycling for my newest customers next Monday August 10th. I plan on beginning compost pickups by August 31st. Until I have more customers, I'm going to take care of all recycling and compost on Mondays. Thanks to my first four customers!

Green Lyons, local news for the eco-conscious Lyons resident

Letter from the owner & Green Lyons news…

I fell in love with Lyons after running on the sweet-smelling desert trails of Hall Ranch, hanging on the deck at Oskars after long climbing days, and reading the paper and drinking Chai at the Stone Cup on my way to work in Longmont. Since moving here, I’ve found Lyons offers more than I originally anticipated, including excellent gardening opportunities, tubing, plenty of really neat people, and the most eco-conscious community I’ve ever been a part of.

In fact, I discovered earlier this year that 120 Lyons residents reduced their overall energy consumption by 11 percent in 2008 (see article later this week). And we have businesses that are models of sustainability, such as A Spice of Life (see article later this week). Lyons is hip, and it’s green.

However, it could be even greener if more residents recycled and composted their food waste.
According to www.Cool2012.com, biodegradable materials amount to half of our country’s discarded resources. Unfortunately, that stuff doesn’t break down as it would in a compost pile. Instead, your veggie leftovers, breads, and paper plates “decompose anaerobically, without oxygen, and in the process become the number one source of human-caused methane and a major player in climate change.” Plus, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, basic recycling reduced the country’s carbon emissions by 49 million metric tones in 2005.

So, in an effort to finally put my money where my eco-mouth is and to support Lyons’ ongoing sustainability efforts, I’ve started a curbside recycling and compost business. Lyons Curbside Recycling and Compost will be locally oriented and green as possible. I’ll buy what I need from local business, and once I have 35 customers signed up I’ll hire someone from Lyons to work with me. Once I have 100 customers I’ll buy a diesel-engine truck, which I will run on bio-fuel.

I need 15 people to sign up to get started. Join me in making Lyons a greener place!

-Lizzy Scully

Budgeting and other stuff

I've just completed the budget plan. 

* In order to start picking up compost and recycling, I need at least 15 customers. I will start picking up recycling on August 3rd or as soon as 15 people sign up for recycling and/or compost

* Once I have 35-50 customers, I can hire someone to work four days per month

* Once I have 75-100 customers, I can hire someone to work eight days per month

* Once I have 150-200 customers, I can hire someone to work 16 days per month

I will hire a Lyons resident.

Additionally, once I have 100 customers I can purchase a used diesel engine truck, which I can run on biodiesal, thus further supporting the sustainability of my business, the community, and the environment.

A note on the costs of pick-up services:

Compost is significantly more expensive than recycling because it costs money to drive to and drop compost off at A1 Organics. Once I get 250 customers, I'll be able to cut the cost of composting from $18 to $16 per month (from $9 to $8 per pick up). If people sign up for the recycling and compost services in equal numbers, I will be able to cut the recycling cost from $11 to $10 per month (from $5.5 to $4.5 per pick up).

In addition to standard pick-up services, I will offer a monthly newsletter with information about community sustainability efforts.

Why should you compost?

PROBLEM: Landfilling food and paper is heating the planet.

As communities work to decrease greenhouse gas emissions, the first place to look is in the garbage can.

Every day, communities across the U.S. send tens of thousands of trucks to bury biodegradable materials such as paper products, food scraps and yard trimmings. These materials amount to half of our discarded resources. When buried in a landfill, those lettuce heads, grass clippings and paper boxes don’t just break down as they would in nature or in a compost pile. They decompose anaerobically, without oxygen, and in the process become the number one source of human-caused methane and a major player in climate change...

For more infomation and to read the entire article, please visit the Cool2012 Website.