Composting is good for a variety of reasons. It recycles organic resources, it can often be done right outside in your backyard, it conserves a ton of landfill space, and it saves water by helping the soil hold moisture and reduce water runoff. In return, you can get healthy, nutrient rich soil. But are we giving too much hype to composting?
I think composting is one of the best ways to dispose of waste, however, it doesn’t mean it will save the planet itself, as is true with any one single endeavor. It’s still important to be cautious of the amount we compost and its best if we consume things like food before letting them rot. This blog is not meant to discourage you from composting. It is just meant to help you be aware that we can do things first - like feeding ourselves, donating extra produce, feeding animals, industrial uses - and then resort to composting. There are so many uses for organic matter! Believe it or not, we wasted 80 billion pounds of food in 2020 alone. That is worth hundreds of billions of dollars which proves that if we had a better way of distributing food equally, we would save money, have less waste, and prevent a significant amount of world hunger. Makes you think twice before composting.
One thing that we still need to note when it comes to composting is that it produces methane. If you didn’t know, while CO2 is a major problem, methane is even worse. Methane is known to be 21x worse than CO2. Composting also can take a long time to break down and this varies depending on what you are composting. Sometimes organic matter needs to sit for up to a year to be safe to use in a garden and be valuable. This means you need a site with a lot of space open for a long period of time. It also emits odors if it isn’t done properly. The smell is what often drives people away from the idea of composting in the first place. We also need to consider the cost for site preparation and equipment if you send the compost to a facility. Or, if you go with the backyard compost bin, be cautious of wild animals. They can get vicious, don’t let them access your bin. One tip, if you need to, is to freeze compost and send it to a facility in a bigger batch especially if there isn’t one relatively near you. I will continue to advocate for composting because I believe it is something we will need to keep doing if we want to see positive effects on our planet. Composting might emit methane, however nothing breaks down in a landfill which is even worse.
One thing I will let you know, if you didn’t already, is that you can use pretty much pure compost as soil in a garden if it has been given enough time to fully break down. I say this because I know people who get their compost collected, send it off to a facility, and then buy a bag of compost for their gardens. You can save a significant amount of energy, packaging, and money by just using your own organic waste in your garden. Especially if you have already built the habit of composting.
I hope this was a useful article. Like I said, you need to be cautious with all that you do. You will always have some impact on the environment. You might as well have a positive one and avoid sending waste to landfills and use your compost in a garden. Also, composting does not give you an excuse to overbuy produce. (Just a reminder!). See you back here again next week!
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