Composting - August's Sustainable Living Tip

Compost year round to ease the burden on your local landfill while building soil fertility in your own landscape.

Composting Facts

1. Composting is the best way to handle food scraps and other solid waste that can decompose into a beneficial soil amendment.
2. Anything that was once living can be composted, including kitchen scraps, yard clippings, paper, cardboard, meat, fish, bones and wood.
3. The easiest items to compost are vegetables, coffee grounds, leaves, grass clippings, and other soft plant trimmings.
4. A kitchen compost pail makes it convenient to collect and transport food waste to another location for composting.
5. A successful composting process breaks down waste into a rich humus without producing foul odors or attracting pests.
6. Finished compost improves soil fertility, providing minerals and nutrients that are essential for plant growth.
7. Any soil can be improved by adding compost: sandy soils will better retain water and clay soils will become less dense.
8. You can compost outdoors or indoors, in any climate and any season, using a variety of tools, techniques and equipment.
9. Depending on the mix of materials, you will produce about 1 liter of compost for every 8 liters of garbage.
10. According to the EPA, at least 40% of the municipal solid waste stream could be composted instead of landfilled, incinerated, or dumped at sea.
11. It is a common misconception that putting food waste in your garbage helps the operation of incinerators and landfills; it does not.
    
12. Wet food waste reduces the efficiency of incinerators, because water doesn't burn.
13. Rather than breaking down naturally, organic materials in landfills persist and can release dangerous gases and contribute to water pollution.
14. Aerobic (with oxygen) decomposition is faster and does not produce the foul odors associated with anaerobic (without oxygen) decomposition.
15. During an aerobic composting process, microorganisms combine oxygen from the air with hydrogen and carbon in the waste materials, to release energy and water and carbon dioxide gas.
16. During an anaerobic composting process, microorganisms employ slower metabolic pathways to release energy and methane and other gases that do not contain oxygen.
17. Water, air and warm temperatures are necessary for aerobic composting.
18. With suitable composting conditions, you can produce compost in a few days.
19. The fastest and most reliable way to compost all year round is to chop waste into small pieces and use an automatic composter like the NatureMill, which includes a fan, heater and mixer.
20. You can compost in simple piles, burial pits, above-ground digesting bins, tumbling bins, and composting worm bins.
21. Watering and turning a compost pile can dramatically improve the speed and consistency of the results.
22. All organic materials contain varying amounts of nitrogen and carbon. "Green" materials such as plant clippings, kitchen scraps and manure have a higher nitrogen content than "brown" materials such as dry leaves, cardboard and paper.
23. The ideal ratio of nitrogen and carbon for decomposing microorganisms to thrive, requires roughly equal amounts of greens and browns.
24. Storing shredded, dry fall leaves in a garbage can or bag is a good way to keep a ready supply of browns for use in the spring and summer.
25. Tissue paper, paper towels, newspaper, office paper, cardboard, wood chips and sawdust are other sources of browns.
26. If you add too many greens, your mixture may begin to smell bad. If you add too many browns, your mixture will take longer to turn into compost.
27. Finished compost is black or dark brown in color, uniform in consistency, and earthy in odor.
28. Composting recycles nutrients to benefit lawns, gardens, trees and bushes, and houseplants.
29. You can mix compost into your garden soil, use it for sprouting seeds, enrich potting soil with it, apply it as a mulch, or simply spread it on your lawn.