CITY TO GIVE AWAY COMPOST BINS TODAY

Cape Girardeau and Southeast Missouri State University will give away 400 wire-mesh compost bins today to encourage residents to compost leaves and other yard waste.

Residents can pick up the bins at the Capaha Park compost demonstration site next to the Rose Garden, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Residents also will receive a free composting wheel with step-by-step instructions on home composting.

The bins are an effort to educate people about composting and encourage them to turn yard waste into mulch, said Butch Stidham of the city's public works department. He is coordinating the program.

The university and the city received an $8,784 state grant through the Southeast Missouri Waste Management District to finance project.

Besides the bins and instruction wheels, the city and university will distribute 200 copies of a "Turn Your Spoils To Soils" compost video to public libraries, schools and chambers of commerce in Southeast Missouri. The compost video is geared to children and will be made available, Stidham said.

The project should be completed by the end of November.

The city used to haul leaves and other yard waste to the landfill, but government regulations prohibit that now.

Cape Girardeau dumps such yard waste at its compost site on South West End Boulevard, across from Pinewood Mobile Home Park.

"Then once or twice a year we get a tub grinder to come in and grind it all up, and make it into mulch that we make available to citizens at the south end of Arena Park," Stidham said.

Some of the mulch comes from all the leaves the city picks up at curbside during the annual leaf pick-up program in the fall.

But if residents would compost leaves themselves, it would reduce the amount of yard waste city crews handle and save the city money, Stidham said.

The leaf pick-up program won't begin until November, but residents can haul leaves to the compost site, beginning Monday.

The compost site will be open from noon to 5 weekdays and from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturdays through Dec. 22.