Residents are invited to bring their leftover food to Compost Awareness Day.
The Prince William County Solid Waste Division and its partners Freestate Farms and Virginia Cooperative Extension Master Gardener Volunteers will host the event on Saturday, May 7, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., at the Balls Ford Road Compost Facility, 13000 Balls Ford Road, near Manassas.
Visitors can drop off old food scraps and receive a free compost sample in their bucket, compliments of Freestate Farms. Volunteers from the Virginia Cooperative Extension Master Gardeners program will share materials on the benefits of compost and its use, as well as information on yard waste and food composting at home.
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Compost bins will also be available for purchase. Compost facility tours will begin at 10:30 a.m. and noon.
The Prince William event supports International Compost Awareness Week (ICAW), the largest most comprehensive education initiative of the compost industry. ICAW promotes composting efforts in the back yard and at large scale, commercial composting facilities, like the County’s Balls Ford Road Compost Facility, operated by Freestate Farms.
This year’s theme, “Recipe for Regeneration: COMPOST,” highlights the overall regenerative agriculture movement and how compost and organics recycling fit into that process.
Regenerative agriculture is a system that focuses on improving soil health using agricultural practices with the idea that healthier soil will lead to healthier, more nutrient-rich crops and, ultimately, less carbon in the atmosphere through increased carbon sequestration.
According to Prince William County Solid Waste Division spokeswoman Deborah Campbell, the 2022 theme encourages residents to recognize and promote the importance of composting and compost in growing healthier food, supporting healthier soils, mitigating climate change.
In October 2021, Prince William County implemented a yard waste collection program to manage better this organic resource, which is 13% of the waste stream. Local trash and recycling haulers must now collect yard waste separately from other trash and recycling for composting at the Balls Ford Road Compost Facility versus landfilling.
Residents can also bring yard waste such as leaves, brush, garden, and hedge trimmings to be processed. The compost that is produced at Balls Ford Road Compost Facility can be purchased by the cubic yard at the Balls Ford Road facility or the County landfill.
