I’ve been posting weekly, but I was away last week trying something new – SCUBA!  So, before I “dive” into today’s topic, with a nod to the incredible world under the sea, I want to say thanks.  I was one of those people that said, “I’m not a water person.  So, that’s not something I’ll ever do.”  Well, I did it.  Thanks to the encouragement of my husband and the patient guidance of Brian at Huron Scuba, and Emma & Josh at Low Key Watersports on St. John, USVI, I was able to visit with sting rays, a turtle, a blowfish, sharks, lobsters, starfish, and breathtaking coral “gardens.”  First, see how silly I look, but also how happy I am in the photo below.  Next, consider trying something new like this.  It was like being on another planet – it was truly amazing. It’s hard to imagine all that beauty disappearing.  But the excess carbon we’ve put into the atmosphere has led to the acidification of the oceans and is predicted to be responsible for a mass extinction if we don’t restore the balance of carbon in the atmosphere.  Thankfully, the topic today, composting, helps with that.   

The What

I want to talk today about composting because compost is an essential source of life. It is also part of a cycle that has been broken.  I get it, it’s a dirty business.  It tends to smell.  It evokes the gag reflex for some of us.  For those of us that love a clean and tidy home, and struggle enough as it is to maintain that to some degree (even if it’s for the 5 minutes between when you finish tidying up and when the kids/dog/spouse/roommates swoop back in),  I get that the idea of keeping “trash” around for any longer than is necessary just seems counter-intuitive.  And it just feels like one more thing, right?

The Why

I’ve got more than one, and I’m sure I’m leaving some gems on the shelf. 

1. Composting food scraps alone can reduce trash that goes to landfills by 30%. 
2. To restore our world’s soils so that they can once again produce nutritious food, we need to return what once was living to the soil.  We’ve by and large stopped doing that almost completely.
3. By starting something as simple as composting, we are acknowledging as a species that we are a PART of the earth, a PART of nature – not separate from it.  It’s a mindset shift.

Just the facts ma’am

Composting is good – let’s start there.

When our food waste is allowed to decompose into compost – rather than sit in a landfill, where it can’t easily do that – we get a by-product that feeds our soils and makes us healthier food, and the gas by-products are better for the environment.  It has the potential to displace 60 billion pounds of waste annually from our landfills.  It can restore our soils.  When we do not compost, we continue to fracture the cycle that needs to be mended.  Help restore the cycle.

Because composting is so good, I’ve made this section full of options for you to start composting.   

Composting is easy.

You can:

Compost in your backyard.

Compost in your kitchen.

Drive your food waste to a local garden or farm.

Send your food waste to the city –  Some cities allow you to drop it off, and some cities will pick it up in a bin, that you place out on the curb like your trash or recycling.

You can:

Spend money on your chosen composting journey.

Spend zero money on your composting journey.

What I do:

We live in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where there is a city pick-up.  So we bought the countertop bin above, but you can use any container you have handy.  We use compostable bags so the bin is easy to empty.  We empty it at least once per day.  There’s never a smell.  We put it outside in our bin, which we keep closer to the door because we deposit there more frequently.  We put it out on the curb with our trash cans and the city picks it up. 

If you think you’ve got the gist and feel ready to start composting, jump on down to What You Can Do.  It’s pretty simple and so important.  If you want to understand why composting food waste is so impactful, read on.

Let’s go down the rabbit hole, shall we?

When we send compostable food to landfills, it is pulled out of the cycle.  The food that is thrown away, is often in plastic bags or simply deprived of oxygen.  Therefore, much of it that can decompose does so anaerobically, or without oxygen.  Anaerobic decomposition emits methane.  Methane is more than 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.

When formally living matter returns to the atmosphere via aerobic decomposition, in the presence of oxygen, the main by-product is carbon dioxide – the greenhouse gas effect is less intense than with methane but lasts longer in the atmosphere before breaking down.  Neither is ideal but the latter is much better and a preferred component of the carbon cycle for plants on Earth.

When the living matter can decompose and then is returned to the soil, some of that carbon, rather than being released into the atmosphere, gets utilized.  The creatures that photosynthesize and decompose use carbon to make food, and some of that gets stored as hummus in the soil.  This is the most ideal scenario because it returns nutrients to the cycle referred to above, and it sequesters (holds in and stores) carbon that would otherwise go into the atmosphere and contribute to the warming effect that is increasing global temperatures, or global warming. 

So to summarize – In the landfill, food waste does not return to the cycle and its byproduct is mainly methane, which has a more intense impact on global warming.  When food waste is instead composted, the carbon and nutrients return to the cycle and its byproduct is mainly carbon dioxide, which has a less intense impact on global warming and can be used in photosynthesis.  In addition, some of the carbon, instead of being released as a gas at all, is sequestered in the soil. 

A parting thought – there are 8 billion humans on Earth.  We, by and large, pull resources from the planet and do not return much of any.  We send our poop and pee away.  We get buried in concrete boxes to preserve our remains.  We send our food scraps and tree products to a landfill where they can’t properly return to the soil they came from.  And then we start looking to other planets to potentially sustain our species in the future.  We don’t have to use up the earth.  We can restore the cycle.  We have the information we need to do so.  So, here’s step one.

I took a soil health class last fall through Kiss the Ground with Finian Makepeace.  The class had farmers, city officials, educators, and future leaders in regenerative agriculture.  And before he sent us off at the last class, he recommended our next step.  He said before you do anything else, if you don’t already, start composting.  So let’s do it.

What You Can Do

1. Google it – there are an innumerable amount of websites and videos to help you get started.
2. If you still have questions, go to Common Compost Questions at ZeroWaste.Org.   I have to mention, I contributed to it. 
3. Talk!  Ask other people what they do and share what you are doing.  I found out how to manage smells and bugs in my bin outside by chatting with others I saw doing it. (Hint – add newspaper or cardboard between the layers!)
4. Just do it.  It feels so good.  It helps so much.  It’s easy.