To Compost or Not to Compost...There is No Question

"My whole life has been spent waiting for an epiphany, a manifestation of God's presence, the kind of transcendent, magical experience that let's you see your place in the big picture. And that is what I had with my first compost heap." - Bette Midler

I missed my journal entry for last week, but I am so glad that I waited because I came across something today that I wanted to discuss. I found another blog with an environmental theme (from the UK):

http://resource-efficiency.blogspot.com/

There was an entry from last March titled "Compost - A Rotten Idea". I was intrigued and not just because I work as a compost technician, but because I am always curious about different perspectives on things. I love when something makes me go, "Wow, I never thought about it like that." I feel like having this kind of epiphany in the past has allowed me to broaden my horizons and learn so much more; there is such power in open-mindedness. Unfortunately, this article did not make feel more open, it did however make me want to pull my hair out and scream in frustration (a very mature reaction if I do say so myself). As the title suggests, the entry is about why composting is a bad idea. It pains me to know that there are people out there who feel that way and I honestly feel it is because they are misinformed, but who am I to judge?

Composting is such a great way to keep organics out of landfills (due to the anaerobic conditions in landfills organics produce the very potent greenhouse gas methane) and it is just a really amazing process. It fascinates me that there are billions of microorganisms at work (completely invisible to the human eye without a microscope) in a compost pile and they can turn my apple core into earthy soil that I can use in my garden. If you have a garden that has poor quality, compost can be used to to help rejuvenate it (just google composting for tips on how to actually do this and why it works). Large scale compost operations can handle organic wastes and their contaminants very easily, plus they produce compost on a much larger scale. Compost operations are subject to certain regulations to ensure their compost is good quality, so it can be used in community betterment projects, for erosion control, and for farmland regeneration. I am trying to be unbiased here, but I am just not convinced there is a better (more environmentally friendly or efficient) way to handle this type of waste.

One of my goals for the year, is to reduce the amount of waste I produce and that includes compostable waste. I am very happy though that there is an environmentally friendly way to deal with the organic waste I do produce.

Here are a couple of things I will be doing (and hope you will too!):

1) Reducing organic wastes by using as many of my food scraps as possible
- I use the material produced in my juicer to make muffins. Have you ever had a lemon,
cucumber, apple, carrot, orange muffin? So yummy!
- I save the scraps from chopping vegetables, like carrot greens and celery tops (I just
put them in a bowl in the freezer) and use them to make soup stock

2) Purchasing soil blends for my garden and potted plants that contain compost