Background and Personal History: Stan Slaughter knows compost. And gardens. And kids. He has made his living since 1990 as a contracted presenter providing waste reduction/composting programs in schools and for adults for cities, counties and states. He has had a contract with Kansas Department of Health and Environment for the past 15 years and visited more than 1,000 schools and 100,000 students in that state. Since 1995 he has presented Compost 101, a workshop at Kansas’ state recycling conference. In 2000 he won the Clary Gregory award as the Nation’s best compost educator. For the past three years he has been active in the U.S. Composting Council, presenting workshops entitled Best Practices in Compost Education at the annual conference. He was the first winner of the Missouri Environmental Educator of the Year award in 1995.

He has written and produced five themed CDs of environmental music, including a genre of compost-related tunes he calls “Rot ‘n’ Roll.”

Current Projects: One of the coolest things Stan does is a service called Sudden Gardens in which he brings a truckload of compost and a tiller, and almost magically turns backyard areas into fertile gardens on the spot. He’s a row leader in friendly competition with seven other individuals to produce food from seven 5’x 200’ rows at The Gardens at Unity Village in Kansas City, and he’s experimenting with vermicomposting food waste in straw bins at his home. Stan has designed and built a prototype of the MOCOTO-(Mobile Composting Toilet) for use in the Third World and is planning further development of this product. He recently produced an all-compost school program for a tour of seven Ozark counties for the Ozark Rivers Solid Waste Management District. This included a skit he wrote called the People Pile (where the students “decompose” on stage) and a look into a redworm colony live with a USB-powered microscope projected onto a big screen.

Stan is co-creator of  “Compost Gin,” a set of playing cards designed to teach the basics of composting. 

More places to find Stan on the Web:
www.Eco-Troubadour.com 

and on Facebook: www.Facebook.com/pages/Compost-Education/121155987895990 

and more on Facebook: www.Facebook.com/pages/The-Circle-Corner/127557223936317