CoMpOsT


Compost. It is not gross. It is not messy. It can be done no matter what your living situation is. It is nature at work!

I had a run-in with one of my housemates tonight. She confronted me about the food scraps container I started since moving into my new place. It is a simple sealed green Tupperware container where I deposit vegetable and fruit scraps (peels, broccoli stems, etc); it is kept out of the way and pretty much out of sight. However, she insisted that it was gross and must be kept outside. Although there are no foul smells emitting from it, no fruit flies circling it (as there are hovering over our trash bin), and it is just naturally decomposing produce, she still insisted it was the grossest thing she's ever seen.

This is when I promptly realized the reason we need more environmental education in our school system. If kids grow up learning that the decomposition of food is natural and in fact part of nature's cycle to feed the earth, they wouldn't grow up thinking composting is gross! They would instead come home from school to ask their parents to start composting in order to feed their garden of home grown herbs and vegetables, or in order to avoid throwing banana peels away so that they can sit useless in a land fill somewhere; defying their purpose in life. I want to see a future of people who have grown up with sustainable and healthy environmental practices that have been a part of their life since childhood, so that when they move into a group house with someone who wants to garden and compost they can at least not think it's the weirdest thing they've ever seen!
OK, now that I'm done venting about that, I will give you some information on how to compost, how composting works and why it is a great thing to do! Even if you don't have a garden to use the compost in, or you don't have a composting bin, you can still save your food scraps and donate them to a neighbor that is composting. There are all kinds of social networks, like Craigslist, CouchSurfing, and Meetup.com, that make it easy to find people in your area that may be gardening or part of a community/urban garden where a composting system is established and your food scraps would be much appreciated. Otherwise if you do have a garden and would like to feed your soil in the most organic and healthy way possible, or you want to reduce the impact of waste on the environment- compost!

To start visit the EPA's Create Your Own Compost site for some of the great tips below:
  • Select a dry, shady spot near a water source for your compost pile or bin.
  • Add your brown and green materials as you collect them, making sure larger pieces are chopped or shredded.
  • Moisten dry materials as they are added.
  • Once your compost pile is established, mix grass clippings and green waste into the pile and bury fruit and vegetable waste under 10 inches of compost material.
  • Optional: Cover top of compost with a tarp to keep it moist.
  • When the material at the bottom is dark and rich in color, your compost is ready to use (this is usually occurs in two months to two years).
  • The environmental benefits are worth the effort!
The environmental benefits of composting include less water usage on your garden because compost increases the soil's water retention, no need for chemical fertilizers that are toxic to the environment because compost naturally fertilizes, and most significantly it reduces methane, a greenhouse gas that is created by yard clippings sitting in landfills (which is where it all ends up if not composted!)

Take this Quiz now to see which scraps you can throw in your compost pile and which you shouldn't. Then check out all of these links to help you get your compost pile started!
Posted by