If you aren't composting already, now is a great time to start! Contact your local hardware store, garden center, or city yard to find the materials you'll need to succeed.

Compost is the global term used for organic waste-yard clippings, vegetable peels, coffee grounds, and other biodegradable material-that decomposes over time into a nutrient-rich mulch. If you begin composting your organic waste this fall, you could have so much soil by planting season that you won't need to buy bagged planting mix in the spring.　

If just 10 percent of all organic waste that is placed in the garbage each year was backyard-composted instead, more than 4.5 billion pounds of materials could be diverted from the nation's landfills and incinerators annually.　

Landfills charge waste haulers steep tipping fees to dump their garbage. That means by diverting that 4.5 billion pounds of waste out of landfills and turning it into useful backyard soil, our green thumb effort could save nearly $70 million a year.

California Integrated Waste Management Board

Environmental Protection Agency