Keep these treasures out of garbage disposals and landfills and compost them. Other good things to compost include tea with the bag unless the bag is plastic , coffee grounds including paper filters , plant prunings, leaves, and grass cuttings. Make sure to break yard waste into small pieces before throwing into a composting heap and avoid diseased leaves and plants as they may infect your compost.
A common misconception is that biodegradable and compostable mean the same thing. Natural paper products are compostable, but glossy papers should be avoided as they can overwhelm your soil with chemicals that take longer to break down.
Animal products like meat and dairy are compostable but often create foul odors and attract pests like rodents and insects. It is also best to leave these items out of your compost:.
Place items you want to compost together in a bin or pile with plenty of air flow. Creates Nutrient Rich Soil Composting increases the quality of soil by increasing the amount of organic materials and micronutrients. Farms and gardens will thrive with the addition of compost. Helps to Reduce Gross Greenhouse Gas Emissions One of the biggest contributors of greenhouse gases, specifically methane, is our landfills.
If we composted the organic portion of our waste, we could drastically reduce those emissions. Positively Affects Air Quality Many people who don?
Burning yard waste can release the harmful chemicals found in fertilizers, weed killers and bug sprays into the air. Many of the chemicals can lead to health problems such as asthma. Averts Garden Pests Many of the micronutrients in compost have a pesticide-like effect on garden pests. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.
JavaScript appears to be disabled on this computer. Please click here to see any active alerts. Compost is organic material that can be added to soil to help plants grow. Food scraps and yard waste together currently make up more than 30 percent of what we throw away, and could be composted instead. Making compost keeps these materials out of landfills where they take up space and release methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Compost can hold 5- 20x its own weight in water, so adding compost to the soil increases the amount of water that is able to penetrate into the soil.
Not only is this great news for the plants, it also means that water can seep all the way down to the impervious rock layer where it swells up and replenishes local springs , ponds, and lakes. By moving through compost, soil, and rock layers, the water is filtered by the time it makes its way to these water sources. One of the biggest pollutants of the oceans are the acidifying fertilizers and other harsh chemicals used in farming.
Using compost decreases the water run-off that brings these chemicals into the ocean and diminishes the need to add these artificial fertilizers and chemical pesticides in the first place. Most erosion is caused by excess water. Unable to penetrate the ground, water swells up on the surface and rushes down to lower elevations, taking the top soil with it and depleting the land in the process.
Compost acts like a sponge and allows way more water to infiltrate the ground, keeping the topsoil exactly where it belongs…on top! Right now most food and yard waste is sent to landfills.
There, without the proper environment to be composted, they rot, releasing methane and carbon dioxide in the process. Organic matter in landfills is the 3rd leading human-related cause of methane emissions in the U. By diverting your compostable waste from the landfills and back into the soil, you actually decrease the methane and carbon outputs of your local community. Methane gas is a greenhouse gas that is conservatively 28x more potent than CO2 in warming up the planet.
Public interest nonprofit U. PIRG released a report on composting in the U. Compost is home to a variety of friendly beneficial microbes that plants need around to absorb nutrients. To keep these friends around, plant roots will release carbohydrates from their roots to attract and feed the microbes under the soil.
Where do the plants get this tasty party snack? They take CO2 from the air and water from their roots and through photosynthesis, turn it into carbohydrates, or sugars! Together these sugars and the microbes who enjoy them create humus—not another party snack, but the part of the soil that retains soil-structure, nutrients and moisture. Thanks to the ecology that compost promotes, carbon once in the atmosphere can be stored underneath healthy soil where it will be kept with the proper regenerative farming techniques!
Trash is expensive…or at least the transportation and storage of it is. Composting has been shown to decrease landfill costs on a local level. Just think about how much money we could save as a society if more businesses and local governments enacted composting programs!
Here in the U. Composting transforms what literally would have been thrown into the trash into an incredibly valuable resource, one that will generate more food and revenue.
By completing the food cycle, garbage becomes black gold.
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