Dirt Y Girls provides free composting for part of east El Paso
EL PASO, Texas -- Two east El Paso women have taken it upon themselves to make their neighborhood a little greener. Not literally green, but by turning kitchen scraps into freshly composted soil.
If you are unfamiliar with composting, that is the process of taking food scraps and turning them into nutrient rich soil.
Each Saturday morning, Veronica Perez and her partner Patricia Garcia, drive around their community to pick up bins filled with kitchen scraps from those who utilize their composting business.
From there, they take it to Perez's land outside her backyard, and start the composting process.
"We add a little bit of mulch to it with some leaves, and pine needles, and with some water and we flip it every other day so about 3 to 4 times a week. We flip this and eventually all these old, busted vegetables start breaking down into an organic fertilizer," Perez said.
To convert solid foods into soil takes about 4 to 5 months. Then, they'll sift the soil to take out any rocks or additional seeds or foods not broken down, and return the latter items to another compost pile. An additional 4 to 6 weeks are needed to allow the soil to cure. The soil will have too much energy initially, which could potentially harm any plants if they are planted in the soil too soon.
Dirt Y Girls does this free service for their neighborhood, but will occasionally take donations. The Beth El Bible Church recently donated several pumpkins to the Dirt Y Girls for the second year in a row.
"I didn't want them to go rot in some landfill, because I know that's bad," said the church's Maribel Valdivia.
"She came in her pickup, I mean we helped her, but honestly she did most of the work. She's a rock star. I offered her some gloves, she's like, "I'm so used to this." She just grabbed the pumpkins, some of them were just falling apart. I asked her, "will she be able to use all of them?" Valdivia said. "Our flowers are going to be beautiful.""
If you live south of Alameda, and in between Midway and Zaragoza, you can participate in the Dirt Y Girls composting business for free. They will provide you your own bin to put left over food scraps in, and turn it in to soil. Perhaps the coolest part of it all is that they will return the freshly composted soil to you to use for your own gardening or house plants.
If you are interested in getting your scraps composted, or just want to reach out to the Dirt Y Girls, here is a link to their Facebook page.
