prAna: Sustainable Clothing

One of the most enjoyable things in our day is answering letters from our young prAna supporters. In this case composting was the subject and we thought we would share our reply…

Dear Hanh,Thank you so much for your letter about our compost here at prAna. I am so glad your Mom told you about what we do here at our office. You had a lot of great questions that I would like to answer individually.

Hanh: I was wondering who mixes your compost?

There are a couple of people at the office who mix it.  I do it along with our warehouse manager.  We don’t mix it that often, so it is not a big chore.

Hanh: Do you know any tips on composting?

From our experience here at the office we have learned that it is important to balance out the “greens” with the “browns”.  As you may or may not know a good compost has a mix of greens which are things like leftovers of our fruits, vegetables, and coffee grounds and browns are things like dried leaves, sawdust, shredded paper for example.  It is the mix of these that allow proper decomposition and a well balanced soil.

Another important lesson we have learned is to keep our compost wet, it can dry out easily in the sun, and this helps with decomposition as well.

Hanh: Do you have a box or a garden to do your compost?

We actually have a bio-box from Smith and Hawken.  The city of Encinitas where I live actually helps subsidize the purchase of a composter, so we picked one up for the office.  Also because we don’t have a lot of ground space at our office the bio box works really well for us.  But the soil that is created from the compost can be used in a garden.

Hanh: Where do you find your worms?

Our compost sits directly on the ground, so worms are able to come up through the ground into the compost.  They quite like it because there are lots of yummy things for them to eat.  In addition a woman in our office who also has a compost brought in a bucket of worms to add to our worm population.

Hanh: Do you bring things for the compost?

The compost was originally created at prAna to help us with our goal of reducing the amount of waste we send the landfill, so it was for organic material from employees lunches, and coffee grounds from our coffee makers.  However we realized that we could use a lot of the paper that we shred to help add browns to the mix of our compost, so we use that too.  And many of our employees do bring in things from their homes if they have collected a bunch of compostable scraps that they don’t want to throw away and we encourage this.

I am so glad you like to compost.  I think it is great that your school has a compost and that you and your classmates are learning how to compost.  Composting is a great way to reduce waste that goes to landfills and to improve soil quality for gardens.

I want to invite you and your classmates some time to come to our office and see how our compost works.

Take care & come visit soon,

Nicole