I think the dirt is useful. I use 100% of my compost for

1) starting seed

2) broadcast seed in a 1/100 concentration to improve soil contact

3) making sprouts in the house.

In all cases straight compost in non-optimal (too strong), while the dirt part, properly ground by earthworms together with the OM, mixes well and will have valuable spores that will help young plants grow. I add 50% soil, 25% each dried leaves and kitchen scraps. Sift everything one year later.

You need more "browns" ... grass clippings will pack down and start stinking unless you have at least their weight in egg cartons to shred and layer.

Shredded paper, dead leaves, sawdust (water-damaged pellet fuel?), wood chips from tree removal ... all typically free and will counteract the grass clippings.

Glib, it may well be useful to add soil to the compost for various applications after it is made but I understood the OP to be talking about adding it as an ingredient in the process of making compost. In the average garden heap there is plenty of soil going in on roots of weeds and most heaps are made on the ground so soil microbes get in the mix without specific additions. It isn't necessary to add extra to the pile. This thread might be of interest. Do you need to add soil when making compost?

You are right, he wants to use it as an amendment.

Do not forget urine as a useful ingredient - although you may look into purchasing baled straw as a cheap ingredient to balance the "ratios" if you cannot gather fallen tree leaves.

*as a side note* - i have recently learned that corn, although being in the grass family, becomes a "brown" compost ingredient AFTER it begins the fruit/flower stage.

Egg cartons made of pressed paper or molded plastic?

How much grass clippings?

Not a very good mix. Where are the nutrients supposed to come from. Compost should be a mix of a wide variety of vegetative waste.

kimmq is kimmsr

Pressed paper. Nutrients from the grass clippings, OM from the cartons. We simply don't have many options as far as ingredients are concerned. And we have too much work with our own farm and compost to go on material-gathering trips. But urine is an idea. We'd have to smuggle it in, and make sure to use plenty of eggs cartons.

The bins, if we get the funds we need to build them, will be against one wall of the community centre. If we don't get funds we'll use our own bins. There is a lot of suspicion locally about composting - that it attracts pests. So even though the centre includes a cafe, we won't use food scraps unless or until we have rat-proof, bear-proof bins. The egg carton/grass mix seemed clean and simple, least attractive to unwanted visitors. ...I'll read the thread about adding soil to compost piles, thanks.

I would not recommend putting compost bins up against a building. The compost environment is alive - there will be insects and such. Not a cloud of them but they will be there. Also there is moisture and an active microbial environment of bacteria, fungi, etc. It's best located at least a few feet away from buildings.

Otherwise that does sound like a good strategy to get started under the circumstances. I agree with eliminating the soil. It keeps air out and provides no organic matter to the decomposition process.

You might consider a closed plastic bin with a locking lid for kitchen scraps if you want to try them. Something like the Earth Machine or the Home Composter. We use these at my office building to compost about a ton per year of coffee grounds and food waste (fruit and veggie peels, etc.) with no varmint problems. Spend $ on that and get some free pallets to make an open bin for the grass mix. Layer in some browns every time you add a bucket of kitchen scraps. When the bin is full, turn it into one of your pallet bins. By that time it will be composted enough that critters will no longer be attracted to it as food.

It is good to have a variety of ingredients but grass + wood fiber will make compost. It may not be as diverse in nutrients and rich in NPK as some other composts, but let's not forget all the benefits of the organic matter it provides, regardless of all the rest.

If you find yourself with a abundance of grass and you want to compost it down you may want to let it cure in the sun for a few days before you add it into your compost.

I did exactly what John Donovan said to my grasses and weeds. After I put them under the sun to completely dry them up, I soak them in water for a few days to make sure they are completely dead, and they become softer and easier to be "digested" by the micro organisms if I decided to put them to my compost pile. Most of the times I simply spread them on my barren beds as mulch and encourage some things to live underneath the mulch. They kind of just degenerate in situ at the end.

Whether putting a compost pile against the wall of a building is a good or bad idea depends on what the wall is made of. If that wall is wood it is not a good idea but if that wall is concrete block there will be no harm done to the wall.

There is no good reason to "cure" grass clippings in the sun a few days before adding them to a compost pile. Doing so simply wastes valuable nutrients.

kimmq is kimmsr

The earth machines are good but very small. Maybe I can convince the comm. centre to use a couple of them for their scraps, and we'll supply the dry material for covering them. For the egg cartons and grass I was thinking of building a 2 or 3 bay cinderblock composter, with gaps for aeration covered with hardware cloth just in case, and some kind of cover that could be shut or left open. The building walls are wood shingles - good idea to put the composter a distance from the wall, maybe half a foot?
Thanks for the reminder that the grass clippings will also be useful as a mulch for the fruit shrubs we're planting.

I would put a compost heap a lot more then 6 inches from a wooden wall. It will get shady and damp down there, not to mention overspill debris getting behind.

"So even though the centre includes a cafe, we won't use food scraps unless or until we have rat-proof, bear-proof bins"

One way to use the kitchen scraps (everything but dairy, fats, and meat) that is rat-proof and doesn’t attract bears is "trench composting". You dig a trench in the gardening area and dump the day's scraps into it in a layer about 1/2 the trench's depth and cover that part of the trench over with dirt. It's out in the open, so rats will not want to go there, and too much work for bears to dig up.

Do this in an area that will not be planted until next year - an unused plot or two.

My childhood neighbor used to do this ... each year she would trench and fill part of the garden, and the next year she would plant that area.