Compost Awareness Day Saturday, May 6

The Prince William County Solid Waste Division will host a Compost Awareness Day event on Saturday, May 6, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. with its partners Freestate Farms, Virginia Cooperative Extension Master Gardener Volunteers, and Keep Prince William Beautiful. The event will be held at the Balls Ford Road Compost Facility, 13000 Balls Ford Road, Manassas.

Attendees can learn about backyard composting, ask questions, and find out about the composting process at the County’s state-of-the-art facility.

Event includes:

• Free compost samples (bring your own 5 gallon bucket)Compost bin sales
  Compost and gardening information
• Community beautification information
• Compost facility tours at 10:30 a.m. and noon
• Food scraps collection

Volunteers from the VA Cooperative Extension Master Gardeners program will be present to share materials on the benefits of composting and its use and information on yard waste and food composting at home.

Keep Prince William Beautiful volunteers will share community beautification ideas and opportunities. In addition, attendees can take home a free compost sample in their own bucket, compliments of Freestate Farms. Residents can also drop off food scraps to be composted. Backyard compost bins will also be available for purchase. Compost facility walking tours will begin at 10:30 a.m. and 12 noon.

This Prince William County event supports International Compost Awareness Week (ICAW), the compost industry’s largest and most comprehensive education initiative. ICAW promotes composting efforts in the backyard and, at large scale, commercial composting facilities, like the County’s Balls Ford Road Compost Facility, operated by Freestate Farms.

This year’s theme, “For Healthier Soil, Healthier Food…Compost!” According to the Compost Research & Education Foundation, the theme was chosen based on a serious world-wide issue that every nation, unfortunately, experiences: hunger.” The 2023 theme best reflects the goal of focusing on how compost can have a role in helping feed the world by making our soil healthier, which produces healthier food. By recycling organics into compost and using it on our farmlands, we create healthy soils that produce healthier food and higher yields. It also reduces the need for fertilizer and pesticides, improves water quality, conserves water, and stores carbon in soil – helping to reduce climate change. Compost not only helps the environment but also helps to decrease food shortages experienced around the world.

In October 2021, Prince William County implemented a yard waste collection program to better manage this organic resource, which is 13% of the waste stream. Local trash and recycling haulers 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 the Balls Ford Road facility or the County Landfill to be processed. The resulting compost and mulch products can be purchased at either Solid Waste facilities.

Attend Compost Awareness Day on May 6 and learn more about composting. Visit pwcva.gov/trashandrecycling for more information about yard waste collection regulations and other Solid Waste services.