To the Editor:

As co-recipients of the recent award [“Leadership Awards Recognize Efforts of Environmentalists,” page 1, Feb 4], we want to thank Sustainable Princeton and take the opportunity to spread the word about the ease and benefits of our community’s Municipal Curbside Composting Program. More important, we want to urge readers to join in the effort.

We owe our award to 23 property owners in Constitution Hill where we live, and several in Governor’s Lane, who in the last months have changed lifelong habits and started composting, i.e. scraping the remnants of their meals into a small container usually placed under the sink and then taking them once-a-week to the curb for collection. These friends and neighbors now understand several important environmental truths: the need to save diminishing landfill space; and the return in the form of a chemical-free, natural product that is a cost effective material for nourishing parks, playgrounds, and public and private gardens. Composting on a weekly basis can help protect the environment for our children, grandchildren, and generations to come.

Here’s how composting works: you extend recycling by further sorting your waste and separating out everything organic so that little is left to go to the landfill. Composting once a week, plus recycling once every two weeks, will result in so little trash that we will eventually be able to reduce its collection to every other week, reducing the item in the budget (this schedule is followed in many cities in the U.S., mostly in the west, and in parts of Canada as well.) Each household pays a yearly fee of $65 to participate in the program.

Our hope is that this message will inspire others to join the more than 1000 households already in the Curbside Municipal Composting program, and that “compost fever” will spread from neighborhood to neighborhood. If you are interested in knowing more about the program, or, better still, signing up to scrape your plates and fill your bucket, given free by Princeton, please call Janet Pellichero, who is in charge of composting, at Monument Hall: (609) 688-2566. Working together we can move our entire community forward and closer to total sustainability. One of these years, the entire community will receive the Sustainable Princeton award.

Penny Thomas, Susie Wilson

Constitution Hill West