The joys of composting
When my family was in between homes this past summer, we lived with my parents. The city my parents live in allows you to pay a monthly fee for trash collection, or you can pay per orange trash bag that you fill. Since my parents produce so little trash, they pay per bag (which, by the way, I think is a great idea. Can you imagine how much less wasteful America would be if we had to pay for the volume of trash our household produced?) But when my family of four moved in, suddenly we were producing a lot more trash. I commented that the majority of what we were throwing away was compostable and soon, my husband and father were creating a compost pile in the backyard. Even now that we’ve moved out, my parents continue to compost and my father has even cleared areas in his yard to start a garden this spring. All of this because we wanted to throw away a little less trash.
Two years ago, my husband built a compost bin using these plans he found online. I absolutely love having a compost bin. We cook a lot and therefore, a lot of our waste is food scraps. It’s so much more enjoyable to toss onion skins, carrot peels, and orange rinds into a compost bin than into the trash. Large amounts of what Americans throw away is in fact compostable (including cardboard toilet paper rolls!) and my family was proof of that. Between recycling and composting, my family of four can easily produce only one bag of garbage per week! And we found composting to be a breeze. There are a few guidelines that should be followed–you want a balance of scraps that contain carbon and nitrogen, it’s a good idea to cover your compost with a layer of dirt to prevent odors and keep the rodents out, and the compost needs to be rotated occasionally. But sure enough, within about 9 months, when I went near the compost bin, it suddenly smelled like I was in a lush forest. My waste had miraculously turned into beautiful, nutritious, rich soil. It’s really impressive how large piles of scraps can break down into a small pile of dark dirt. And then we used the compost to plant flowers and veggies. What a better end result than a landfill!!
I urge you to consider starting a compost bin of your own this spring. It doesn’t have to be as fancy as the one we built. It can even be a pile contained by mesh wire. I can honestly say that I really enjoy composting. In fact, for the past few months, our beast of a bin was in a neighbor’s yard and I missed it so much. Now that it’s back, I’m happily taking out the trash much less and gladly dumping most of our waste in the compost bin again.
Filed under: Environment on February 19th, 2009
At the ecology school I attended last fall they recommended putting worms in the compost. They help to speed up the process and helps to keep the odor down. The worms help the compost to “naturally” rotate. Any night crawler worm will do. We are starting a compost this spring as well!
Thanks for this article! I started looking into composting when we moved in, and now is the time to get going with it.
I am glad you wrote about this! We have been composting for over a year now. We will be able to use the soil in our garden this spring! So exciting to see our “garbage” turn into something that grows our fruits and vegetables! We also are lucky to have a friend raise horses. We get their manure to use in our compost. It’s a win-win! They can get rid of some waste, and we turn it into happy dirt!