Pay Dirt : City of Ventura workshops will help residents learn about back-yard composting to turn ‘green waste’ into soil enrichment.

One of the problems bedeviling the recycler’s world is finding a market for the material they amass. No problem with aluminum cans. They’re almost worth more cash dead than alive. The same is true of newspapers. This very page is probably experiencing its second or third printing.

But what about yard clippings? Indeed, who cares anything at all about yard clippings? Except about getting rid of them. And how do we do that? We embalm them in non-degradable plastic--or photo-degradable plastic--and send them off to the dump.

What a waste of a resource. This “green waste” is the most recyclable stuff there is.

“If you’re an organic waste recycler, it compacts itself,” says Eric Werbalowsky, recycling coordinator for the city of Ventura.

“It just sits there cooking down and producing stuff for you to restore the Earth at home,” he added.

Nature’s compactor? A nice idea. Nature is full of good ideas. Even the formal EPA definition of composting as “controlled biological decomposition of organic materials in the waste stream to produce a product for agricultural and other soil amendment use” reveals that nature does most of the work.

In other words, good dirt for your yard. Free, too. In a column last year I described the “industrial-strength” composting being done in the county.

But this column is about home or back-yard composting--specifically, the city of Ventura’s series of composting workshops being launched this Saturday.

I asked Werbalowsky if this was just a plot to get gullible locals to hold onto their own green waste rather than dumping it on his already overloaded city trucks and landfills.

Impervious to my insinuations, he said, “Longtime home composters never produce enough material even if they use every leaf that falls on the yard. Compost is like money in the bank. You never have enough and always have to borrow--or buy from the garden supply.”

OK, so we’re not going to be buried in our own rose clippings, and Eric’s city dump will meet its quota of cutting 25% of its intake within the next few years. (That’s California law, by the way.)

But is this homemade compost going to do us any good? I only use mine to spread under fruit trees to promote water retention and to mix with mulch to reduce weeds.

Eric, despite his reputation as the Barnum of the recycling business, was silent on this matter. I had to go to his colleague, city consultant John Roulac, for dirt on Eric’s dirt. “Ask him to tell you about the prize he got for the biggest onion at the Ventura County Fair.”

So I did. And he did. And blushed. A modest Barnum.

Werbalowsky then showed me a copy of a brand-new book on back-yard composting. It will be available free to city of Ventura residents who participate in his workshops when they buy a compost bin--sold at special wholesale prices from $10 to $60 at the workshop or at Green Thumb or Mound Garden Center.

Published by an outfit in Ojai called Harmonious Technologies and compiled by Roulac, who is a nationally recognized expert in the field, the book tells how to catch the wave of back-yard composting that’s been growing since the ‘80s.

* FYI

* “The Next Wave in Ventura Recycling”--free monthly composting workshops beginning Saturday sponsored by the city of Ventura. 10 a.m. at Cornucopia Community Garden, Telephone Road east of Johnson Drive. For details, call 650-0884.

* For information on home composting programs in your community and a copy (free to City of Ventura residents) of “Waste Efficient Yard Care” or “Compost Bin Manufacturers-Distributors,” call 654-2889.

* Moorpark’s composting program begins next month. For information, call Carolyn Greene at 529-6864.

* Simi Valley’s program is recruiting participants. Call Jocelyn Reed at 583-6753.

* Thousand Oaks residents get information at their City Hall, Graeham Watt, 497-8611.

* John Roulac’s book “Back Yard Composting,” published by Harmonious Technologies ($6.95) is available at local independent bookstores and Green Thumb and Mound Garden Center, or by calling 646-8030.