On this page, you can learn:

• What is Composting
• The benefits of composting
• What should be composted
• How to make a compost pile
• How to use the finished compost
• Composting without a yard
• How to get a compost bin from the city

What is Composting?

Composting is the controlled decomposition of organic material. Naturally occurring soil organisms recycle nitrogen, potash, phosphorus, and other plant nutrients as they convert the organic material into rich soil.

Back to top

Benefits of Composting

Composting is a convenient, beneficial and inexpensive way to handle your organic waste and help the environment. Composting:

• reduces the volume of garbage requiring disposal;
• saves money for you and your community in reduced soil purchases and reduced local disposal costs; and
• enriches the soil. Using compost adds essential nutrients, improves soil structure, which allows better root growth, and increases moisture and nutrient retention in the soil. Plants love compost!

Back to top

What You Should Compost

Yard wastes such as leaves, grass clippings and weeds make excellent compost. All fruit and vegetable scraps, plus food wastes such as coffee grounds, tea bags, and eggs shells, can be composted. To keep animals and odors out of your pile, do not add meat, bones, fatty food wastes (such as cheese, grease and oils), dog and cat litter, and diseased plants. Do not add invasive weeds and weeds that have gone to seed.

Back to top

How to Make a Compost Pile

There are as many different ways to make compost as there are people who do it. The following guidelines will get you started, but soon your own experience will help you tailor a method that best fits your needs.

Step 1: Build or purchase a compost bin.

Composting bins are available for sale to the public for $35.

There are two types: New Age Composter & the Earth Machine. Both work equally well in composting and creating soil for gardens, etc. The New Age Composter is shaped like a cylinder and can be adjusted to four different sizes. If you need a large composter, this would be the one. The Earth Machine is circular, and comes in one size only, suitable for normal capacity. It has an added feature of a sliding door on the bottom, which makes it easier to remove soil.

If you would like to purchase a bin, you should send a check for $35 made payable to "City of Lowell - Recycling", along with your name, address, phone number, and choice of bin. <ORDER FORM> As soon as we receive the check, the DPW will drop off the bin at the resident's home.

If you would prefer to purchase the bin in person, please call the DPW Street department to let them know you'll be stopping by. They will know the current inventory position of both composter types.

Enclosed, or covered compost piles keep out pests, hold heat and moisture in, and have a neat appearance. Bins can also be simply made of wire, wood, pallets, concrete blocks, even garbage cans with drainage holes drilled in them. In urban areas, rodent-resistant compost bins - having a secure cover and floor and openings no wider than one-half inch - must be used.

Step 2: Set up the bin in a convenient, shady area with good drainage. A pile that is about three feet square and three feet high will help maintain the heat generated by the composting organisms throughout the winter. Although a smaller pile may not retain heat, it will compost.

Step 3: Start the pile with a layer of coarse material such as corn stalks to build in air passages. Add alternating layers of "brown" and "green" materials and mix them together. Sprinkle with soil every 12 inches. Be sure to bury food scraps in the center of the pile. Shred leaves or run over them with a lawn mower to shorten the composting time. Save several bags of leaves to add in the spring and summer when "browns" are scarce.

High Nitrogen "Green" Ingredients

• Grass Clippings
• Weeds
• Food Wastes (fruit & vegetables, coffee grounds, tea bags, egg shells)
• Manure (cow, horse, chicken, rabbit)
• Seaweed
• Alfalfa Hay/Meal
• Blood Meal

High Carbon "Brown" Ingredients Autumn Leaves

• Straw
• Paper/Cardboard: paper towels, napkins, bags, plates, coffee filters, tissue and newspaper
• Cornstalks
• Wood chips
• Saw Dust
• Pine Needles

Step 4: Add water as you build the pile if the materials are dry.

Step 5: As time goes on, keep oxygen available to the compost critters by fluffing the pile with a hoe or compost turning tool each time you add material. A complete turning of the pile - so the top becomes the bottom - in spring and fall should result in finished compost within a year. More frequent turning will shorten the composting time.

Back to top

How to Use Compost

When the composted materials look like rich, brown soil, it is ready to use. Apply one-half to three inches of finished compost and mix it in with the top four inches of soil about one month before planting. Compost can be applied as a top dressing in the garden throughout the summer. Compost is excellent for reseeding lawns, and it can be spread one-quarter inch deep over the entire lawn to rejuvenate the turf. To make potting soil, mix equal parts compost, sand and loam. You may put the compost through a screen to remove large particles - these can go back into the pile.

Back to top

Composting Without a Yard

Composting can be done indoors using an earthworm farm. Not only can you recycle your food scraps, you can also have a steady supply of fishing bait! For more information link DEP's Vermicomposting page.

Back to top

How to get a Compost bin

The City buys two types of Compost Bins at a discount from the State and makes them available to residents for only $35.  These same bins can cost $75 to $100 when purchased from a retail store.

You can see the two different bins by looking at the Composting information on the Department of Environmental Protection's webside, and if you still have questions about which been is better for you, give the Recycling Coordinator a call. 

Print out the Order Form, send in your check, you will receive a call to schedule a day to pick up your compost bin.  You can pick one up from the Public Works office at 1365 Middlesex Street, Mon-Fri 7AM - 3:45PM except on Holidays, or you can have one delivered to your home by mailing a check, made out to "City of Lowell -- Recycling"  for $35 to the Recycling Coordinator c/o Solid Waste & Recycling Office, Health Dept., 341 Pine St., Lowell, MA 01851.  If you choose home delivery, make sure you indicate which model you'd like.

Back to top