Why is composting good for the environment

Every delicious morsel, from the strawberries to the extra crispy piece of bacon, sources itself back to the soil. The soil literally feeds us! Composting is simply returning the favor. Compost is a soil-like mixture of decaying organic matter in the sense of living, not farming practices and a lively set of microbes that help the decomposition process.

The organic materials that make up compost usually include yard trimmings, leaves, mulch, grass clippings, some paper products, and food scraps such as raw and cooked fruits, vegetables and grains, eggshells, coffee grounds, and in some cases, even meat and dairy products! Not the case! Composting is actually an easy and manageable way to make a huge difference in the environmental, economic, and social issues that we face today. Adding this simple step as part of your environmentally friendly habits can go a long way in lowering greenhouse emissions, regenerating the soil, revitalizing water sources, and fostering food security into the future.

Reduce your carbon footprint and join the zero waste movement with simple and convenient composting at home. Any gardener knows that compost is the first soil-ution to almost any problem that pops up in the garden. From protecting against plant disease to treating nutrient- deficiencies, compost is the most used soil amendment for farmers and gardeners alike.

All of the beneficial microbes found in compost help aerate and fertilize the soil. In fact, most plants would not be able to access the nutrients they need without these little fellows helping to break the nutrients down and increasing the surface area of plant roots. 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. By using compost, farmers and gardeners spend less money on expensive fertilizers and pesticides, water, and irrigation and can use that hard-earned cash for expanding their production capacities.

This means more crops to sell and more money to be made. Want to do more to support your local farmers? Shop locally! This will keep you in tune to the needs of your local farms, and more than just helping farmers, your produce is guaranteed to be fresher and tastier! Volunteering is another great way to get involved. Many farmers are so grateful for extra sets of hands and will probably send you home with some of the harvest. At home, composting can give you a much clearer idea about what you are throwing out and can begin to shape your grocery lists and consuming habits to help you save food and money!

Through composting, you may just spend less money on your garbage service bills too! Composting plants have been shown to create more jobs than other disposal facilities, such as landfills or incineration sites!

These new, green jobs are vital in creating a carbon-neutral future and in making the U. Our landfills are filling up. Not to add to your list of concerns, but the U. We could save a ton of space and time by composting our organic waste, instead of sending it to the landfills.

Due to erosion and the widespread use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, soil across the country has lost much of its nutrient content. Carbon and nitrogen support plant growth and photosynthesis. Compost also improves the texture of the soil while introducing beneficial microorganisms to the garden. The microorganisms help aerate the soil, enrich the soil with its wastes, and convert nitrogen into a usable form to prevent plant diseases.

This is a cycle that benefits the plants and their surroundings. Organic wastes that you throw every day only end up taking space in landfills. Particular conditions have to be met to trigger decomposition. If the conditions are not ideal, organic wastes will take much, much longer to decompose. And during the time that organic scraps decompose, certain chemicals could leach into the soil, leading to pollution.

You can simply sort your household wastes some cannot be composted , build a compost pile and add the organic wastes in layers.

Within a couple of months or so, you have rich, organic compost that you can use to feed the garden. When you throw something away - a piece of fruit, a crumpled tissue, dried leaves, etc.

And no one really wonders where trash ends up after being collected by the neighborhood waste management company. If you run out, you have to drive to the supermarket to buy trash bags. Making these trash bags consumes a lot of energy.

Now think about garbage collection: your garbage collectors have to drive to your neighborhood to collect trash and then back to the landfill for processing. Again, this burns enormous energy, especially when done several times per week.

It keeps the organic wastes from being transported. One thing that not a lot of people know is that organic wastes are some of the heaviest wastes to transport.

Transporting bulky waste demands a lot of energy. How is trash processed in landfills? Wastes are burned in an incinerator, a machine that demands a lot of fuel to burn trash. Apart from requiring more energy to process wastes, incinerators are also notorious for producing high volumes of toxic gases like carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide.

Incinerators produce more greenhouse gases than an actual power plant. The material produces methane, another harmful greenhouse gas. By composting, you are minimizing the trash that ends up being incinerated in landfills. This helps reduce the fuel needed to burn mountains of rubbish, leading to reduced greenhouse gasses. You have to amend the soil with fertilizers to boost its nutrient content. Most growers use chemical fertilizers and soil conditioners to keep plants healthy, but the chemicals from these products could end up on your plate.

If you want to grow crops organically, build a compost pile in your garden. You can also buy an outdoor compost bin to make it easier for you. You can start with a composter which can give you plenty of organic fertilizer for several growing seasons.

Composting at home is so easy; anyone can do it.