Try something on a smaller scale

Thank you, Claudia Hanson Thiem (Insight, “Time for transit to move beyond the train,” Feb. 21), for challenging the renewed push to complete the Nor thwest Rail project. She makes a compelling argument for bus rapid transit (BR T) as the best way to deliver transit ser vice to the most people at the least cost.

This same type of critical thinking should be applied to Boulder County’s industrial composting debate. What is the best and most cost-ef fective way to achieve our composting goals?

It’s possible that reaching those goals means building a large, centralized composting facility for the whole county, maintaining a fleet of large trucks to deliver the compostables to the site, and shipping the finished compost to county customers (or have customers pick it up on site), but let’s not treat it like a foregone conclusion.

Like BR T in the transportation equation, I think that there is another choice wor thy of consideration in the composting debate — smaller scale, localized, industrial compost facilities. Tidy Planet ( tidyplanet.co.uk), for example, is a company that sells industrial compost solutions of all sizes and has a distributor in the U.S.

Surely we might consider, say, four or five locations in Boulder that could serve different geographic par ts of the county while at the same time incentivizing local landowners to compost ever ything that they can and use the compost in their own gardens?

This type of approach, being more “visible” and local, might also improve community composting buy-in as opposed to the pushback being experienced by the proposed Rainbow Nurser y site. PETECHANDLER

Boulder