Miles away from Boise on a farm in Kuna lies a ton of Boise's composted materials, or should we say 3,000 tons to be exact.
That's a lot of material that city leaders are calling a huge success, and the composting program has only been around for a couple months.
"We had anticipated to start out at about 45 tons per day and within the first three weeks we were getting 66 tons per day so it really exceeded everything we thought was possible," said Catherine Chertudi with Boise City Public Works Department.
The contents from your green bin are brought in to the site by truck. The contamination is removed and then it's ground down and placed into rows that are six to eight feet high. The rows are watered and the temperature is checked every day to ensure its kept at the optimum 130-160 degrees.
"That help break down the materials and kill weed seeds and any pest that we might have in the compost," explained Chertudi.
The whole process takes anywhere from 90 to 100 days and then the product will be ready for pickup.
"We are looking at potentially having materials ready for pickup later this fall," said Chertudi.
One of the most notable signs the program is working is the effect on trash collection.
"They were able to reduce the trash routes per day by two routes within just a few weeks of starting the composting program,
and move those trucks over to collecting compost instead of trash. It's been a pretty phenomenal reduction in waste going to the landfill," said Chertudi.
And that means helping future generations.
"I think that is a really good thing that we took care of things today and we made a valuable product out of it rather than leaving it for future generations to manage," said Chartudi.
