GRAND TRAVERSE COUNTY—The Michigan Recycling Coalition and the Michigan Organics Council are inviting residents to learn about composting during The Great Michigan Compost Tour, which begins Monday.
SEEDS partnered with the coalition to organize 10 Northern Michigan stops this week for what they call the Compost Crawl.
“These tours are for anyone. You don’t have to be someone that’s actively composting or even knows a lot about it,” said Katelyn Kikstra, EcoStrategies program manager at SEEDS. “If you’re a professional, we also encourage you to come out and hear what other folks are doing so that we can all learn together.”
The tour opens at 11 a.m. Monday with an on-farm composting session at Timothy’s Conscious Compost on Food for Thought Farm in Honor.
Other events include Wednesday morning tours in Interlochen, followed by a Soil Lovers Social. Thursday features a full day in the Traverse City area with an in-vessel composting tour at the library site with the City of Traverse City and Carters Compost, a food rescue visit with Goodwill Northern Michigan and a family fun day at the SEEDS compost petting zoo. The tour wraps up in Emmet County with a look at the county’s compost operation.
Kikstra said the goal is to raise awareness and highlight why composting matters.
“Don’t my food scraps just break down in the landfill and the long, the short story of that is they don’t break down in a way that helps revitalize Michigan soils or feeds animals or goes back into preventing erosion and runoff,” she said.
A complete list of all the events taking place will be available here.