Collecting kitchen waste for composting can actually help reduce the quantity of food that you waste.
ENGAGING CHILDREN
Children soon take to the idea of putting waste in a compost bin rather than into the garbage can. This helps to raise awareness of all sorts of other environmental issues vital to their future.
An amazing number of creatures live in a compost heap – from woodlice to toads, from beetles to worms. You can find more in here. This makes compost a fascinating resource for children (and adults) to explore.
BENEFITS TO THE GARDEN
Making compost turns vegetable scraps, cereal boxes, weeds, fruit peels, egg boxes and a host of other unlikely items into that high-quality soil improver and fertility builder, compost. Composting recycles all the plant foods in these “waste products” into a form that can be used again by the millions of tiny creatures that live in the soil, and by the plants growing in it.
Compost could be seen as a “wholefood” providing nutrients in a balanced form, and lots of fiber! When you add compost to your garden, the soil-living creatures get to work to break it down further, meanwhile improving the soil and making nutrients available to growing plants. The chapter entitled “How to use your compost” (see here) explains how compost and other recycled garden products can be used to enhance and improve your garden, whatever its style and size.
Homemade compost is all that these cabbages need to produce a good crop. The benefits to garden flowers are evident too.
How compost benefits the garden
• Makes your garden grow!
• Makes heavy clay soil lighter, so it drains better and is easier for plant roots to penetrate.
• Adds “body” to light soil so that it holds on to water and plant foods, thus reducing the need for feeding and watering.
• Feeds the millions of soil-living creatures that keep the soil healthy.
• Helps plants to resist pest and disease attack.
This crop of sweetcorn and beans has benefited from homemade compost. Herbs and flowers (above) will also show the results of compost use.
NO MORE BONFIRES!
Although bonfires are banned in many areas now, they can still be a common sight (and smell) in some places. This is a waste of resources and is unnecessary, particularly as nearly all weeds and crop wastes can be composted and broken down, returning their nutrients to the soil.
BENEFITS FOR THE FUTURE ENVIRONMENT
We are told that we must make lifestyle changes to reduce the impact of climate change and minimize our personal carbon footprint. How can home composting kitchen scraps and garden rubbish make a difference?
SAVING PEAT BOGS
Homemade compost, leaf mold and mulches can be used in the garden in place of peat and peat-based seed and potting composts used by amateur gardeners.
So why is using peat a problem?
Peat is the result of thousands of years of plants slowly decomposing in waterlogged, acidic conditions. We have been using this resource so quickly in recent times that there is no opportunity for it to replenish itself.
Like the tropical rainforests that so many people have fought to preserve, peat bogs provide the habitat for a huge diversity of plant and animal life, from mosses to birds. These areas should be preserved before they are destroyed forever. Peat extraction not only disturbs rare wildlife but also releases carbon dioxide (one of the main “greenhouse gases” responsible for global warming) into the atmosphere every year. Bogs contain millions of tons of carbon.
WILDLIFE HABITAT
The compost bin itself provides an extra habitat for wildlife in your garden. As well as the millions of microscopic and tiny creatures that do the composting, others, such as worms, lizards and snakes (increasing rarities) may find a compost bin an attractive place to live for a while.
REDUCE GREENHOUSE GASSES
When kitchen scraps and garden prunings (biodegradable waste) are buried in a landfill site they decay without oxygen, unlike composting which is an aerobic (with oxygen) process. This means that methane is produced, another gas that is a major contributor to the greenhouse effect, which causes global warming.
Landfill operators now have measures to capture methane, using it, for example, to power generators on site and also add energy back into the national grid. However, this equipment is costly to install and maintain, and there is still some loss of gas.
SUSTAINABLE AND LOCAL MEANS ENERGY EFFICIENT
Home composting is remarkably energy efficient in several respects. These days an increasing volume of the biodegradable waste collected by local authorities, and that delivered to recycling centers, will be composted. This is much better than putting it into landfill, but it still has an environmental impact in the amount of energy used to transport and process the waste. In some cases you can buy the resulting compost (which is better than using peat) but this is often packaged in plastic sacks and also needs to be transported, thus consuming valuable energy resources.
The only energy required for home composting is yours! Using home compost and other home-recycled products on the garden in place of purchased products will also save the energy required for their production, packaging and distribution. Fertilizers can be very energy-intensive to produce; some are based on dwindling natural resources and may be imported from distant countries.
CUT LANDFILL
Over the last few decades we have been filling up landfill sites (basically holes in the ground) with rubbish. This is not a sustainable option. Landfill sites can pollute the environment and suitable sites are becoming increasingly scarce.
One of the current alternatives to landfill is “Energy from Waste,” which includes incineration. This is not a popular
