Recently I had a facebook conversation (if you call commenting on someone's comment a conversation) about how convenient it would be if what dogs deposit on the lawn would just turn into lawn fertilizer instead of having to be pooper-scooped and re-deposited in a garbage can. That got me started thinking---why does horse or cow manure make great fertilizer? All the farmers I know( my Dad and his Dad) clean it out of the barn, put it in a spreader and hit the fields. Then the grassy grains grow, the cows/horses eat them again, and....you get it. Why does this not work with dogs, cats, parrots or snakes? We of the recycling mind could put the "green lawn" chemical companies out of business and never have to pooper- scoop again!
Well folks, read on, the answer has arrived. Maybe our favorite pets are out of the running for naturally producing fertilizer, but WE aren't! No joke. "Columbus uses sewage-treatment leftovers and yard waste to create a nutritious mulch, on sale to gardeners." pg. 16 of this week's The Booster. Would you like to know what makes up this "nutritious mulch"? Biosolids (what do you think THAT could be) from waste water treatment plants, along with yard waste and wood chips are combined to make a final product called Com-Til, on sale now at your friendly sewage treatment plant!
The article goes on to say that after these two "nutritious" ingredients are aerated, cured and screened, they become "a product that does not belie its origin." Does that mean that although we tell ourselves it is "nutritious" fertilizer, it still looks like sewage, smells like sewage, and, in fact, IS sewage? Hmmm.....I can smell an opportunity for investment in little white nose covers with rubber bands attached---we canl join the Chinese outdoor use of them by donning them every time we step out our front door. But hey, we will be part of the recycling cutting edge. And isn't that every good citizen's dream?
Ok, I am getting the picture that there IS a difference in using cow manure, which I contend, has an unpleasant odor (my husband, who did NOT grow up on a farm, disagrees), but that smell is pleasantly associated with a four-footed creature that gives us milk, butter and cheese; THAT I can live with. Just what do you think the odor ofCom-Til will conjure up in your mind? No, thanks!
So, folks,I may lose my status as recycler of the month (we DO have a compost pile, after all), but I draw the line here: sometimes the circle of life is just...too round.
