Composting

Composting has been going on for as long as life has been on the planet, and more recently, the benefits of composting is coming back into the forefront of consciousness in our society. There are however huge leaps to be made about the misconceptions and difficulty of composting. Currently, 60 percent of household waste could be diverted from land fills by composting or recycling, but only 8 percent is. When yard clippings, and house hold food wastes are thrown into the trash, they decompose into dark, nutrient rich soil, which is then thrown into a landfill mixed with motor oil, paints, radon, and other heavy metals and toxic chemicals. An otherwise ideal growing medium is rendered useless in an irreversible process of indiscriminatory waste practices.

The purpose of composting, is to provide a constant supply of nutrient rich soil, as well as to prevent our local dumps from filling up with still useable matter. In many places across the country, a limit is placed on the amount of garbage each household can produce. The less curbside collection municipalities have to do, the less it costs to run a curbside program, and the slower dumping grounds are filled up.

While there are numerable benefits to composting, the process is not without it’s own set of issues. Breaking the habit of throwing every waste item into one bin can be a large challenge for most, as throwing things away has become such an automated part of our day. Deciding what is compostable can also be an issue. Generally, any food or paper product such as banana peels, paper towels and napkins can be easily composted. If you find that very little of what you throw away on a daily basis is compostable, consider changing your purchasing habits to include more biodegradable products.

Smell is often cited as a concern for someone considering a composter, but thankfully smells can all but be eliminated with a proper composting bin. The bacteria which cause the overwhelming smells we can sometimes get when we find expired food in the fridge, actually thrives because of low oxygen levels, where as composting excels in an oxygen rich environment. Most composting bins will provide ample holes and slots for air to circulate inside a composter, preventing bacterial build up causing smells.

Wild animals in urban or rural settings can also provide a challenger to would be composters. This can easily be remedied by a simple lid and locking mechanism that prevents racoons and other clever wild life from opening your composter, gorging on the contents and leaving a huge mess in their wake. Make sure to not leave any food scraps outside a composter, otherwise nightly visits by wild animals may become the norm.

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