Kitchen Trimmings

• A kitchen can supply a wealth of trimmings for use in compost. These include used coffee grounds, whole fruits and vegetables or their skins, crushed egg shells, used tea bags or loose tea grounds, pumpkins, peanut shells, egg shells, and any leftover vegetable scraps. They do not include meat scraps or bone, dairy products or cooked leftovers.
  
  

Yard Trimmings

• Yard trimmings include fresh and dried grass clippings, straw animal bedding, hay, dried garden debris, animal feathers, lake vegetation, and manure. Some materials can be composted, but they take longer to decompose, such as corn cobs and stalks, hedge trimmings, peat moss, and wood chips.
  
  

Considerations

• While it makes good ecological and economic sense to recycle many kitchen and yard wastes, any materials that could prove hazardous or harmful should be discarded, including any animal products, bones, invasive weeds, cat litter, charcoal, fish scraps, sludge and diseased plants.