RE: Green Waste Recycling: One Community Gets With The Program.
A few years back it was easy to get manure from farmers. Now, so many people garden organically you have to have your own animals or a good connection. But that's moving in the right direction and there are lots of ways to grow your "manure" in place.
Most city people in this town are moving toward "low maintenance" yards, which means putting down weed barrier and then covering their yard with gravel or rock. Now instead of mowing their lawn, they're spraying their gravel with Roundup. I often wonder why they don't just move to a condo or and apartment.
But there are a few, like that guy in the picture shoveling compost into his truck, who appreciate this great soil amendment, despite its potential hazards. I'm the kind of person who believes that composting overcomes toxicity to some degree, though I personally wouldn't use this particular mulch in a food garden. It's probably wonderful for trees and flowering shrubs, however.
The animals are pretty critical to the operation. The good thing is goats and chickens put out a very large amount of manure. I wonder if you could buy a farmer some bedding and in exchange take their used.
Like I said, if the compost is coming from city yards, let it go back to city yards. From my experience, most folks in the city view their yards as problematic or a nuisance. Some even pay others to completely care for it, yes, what is the point!?
Most farmers would be happy to sell you manure because most farming is about making money. The really big farming operations compost and package their manure. You can buy that at most big box stores or landscape supply.