Americans lead the world when it comes to food waste. Some estimate the waste at half of all food produced or purchased for consumption, with a typical household tossing almost 500 pounds of food a year. Then, to make matters worse, most of this food ends up in the landfill where it decomposes anaerobically (without oxygen, so microbes can't feed on it) and generates methane, a formidable greenhouse gas with more than 20 times the global warming capacity of carbon dioxide.
That's the bad news. The good news is that there's a simple fix. First, we can stop buying more food than we're going to eat. Second, we can turn what scraps we can't eat into nutrient-rich compost. This compost has the ability to improve soil structure for growing plants; plus, it eliminates the need for chemical fertilizers at the same time it enhances moisture retention, reducing the amount of watering needed. It's a win, win, win situation.
Composting done poorly can be a smelly nuisance. Done correctly, you'll produce nutrient-rich humus with little effort. Here's our not-perfect-by-any-means-but-good-enough system for turning food and yard "waste" into "black gold":
That's the bad news. The good news is that there's a simple fix. First, we can stop buying more food than we're going to eat. Second, we can turn what scraps we can't eat into nutrient-rich compost. This compost has the ability to improve soil structure for growing plants; plus, it eliminates the need for chemical fertilizers at the same time it enhances moisture retention, reducing the amount of watering needed. It's a win, win, win situation.
Composting done poorly can be a smelly nuisance. Done correctly, you'll produce nutrient-rich humus with little effort. Here's our not-perfect-by-any-means-but-good-enough system for turning food and yard "waste" into "black gold":
1. Kitchen compost bin. Ours is a sleek stainless model that looks good enough I'm willing to leave it by the sink where we do our food prep. Cutting scraps into small pieces fits more in the bin AND, eventually, decomposes faster. Our can comes with a vented lid complete with a thick filter that keeps bugs out and smells in. We keep it lined with a 3-gallon compostable bag to make dumping it an easy, no-mess operation.
2. Outdoor pile. Our pile is in a box made from shipping pallets (clean ones!). The front is lower than the other three sides to make turning easy. Each time the kitchen bin needs to be emptied, we dig a little hole in the pile and dump in the food waste. To this same pile, we regularly add dried leaves, weeds and other yard waste. We also add shredded newspaper, paper grocery bags and paper scraps. This makes for a good mix of "brown" (carbon) and "green" (nitrogen). We shoot for about 90% brown and 10% green.
3. Creating compost. The pile needs a few things to get the composting process cooking: heat, water and oxygen. Heat: The composting material needs mass to build up internal heat, so we keep things piled up in a sunny location. Water: If it's sunny and dry, we lightly spray our pile with a garden hose from time to time. (We want moist, not wet.) Oxygen: We aerate our pile by turning it. The more often, the better. We keep a pitch fork by the compost pile, and any time I'm walking by I'll mix things up, bringing the more finished compost to the top as I do. I add a shovelful of native soil every week or so, to introduce more microbes to our pile.
4. Multiple piles. We usually have a few bins going at any given time. When a bin is getting full, it's time to start a new one and let the first finish. We keep it moist and keep turning it until it looks like soil; then it's ready to add to our garden. Another note here: we also compost our "black waste" from the toilet. This has a completely separate composting process--and we never use the resulting "humane" in our vegetable garden.
What else? Don't put meat, cheese or oil in your pile. They don't decompose fast enough and they can smell, attracting animals. We occasionally have a raccoon, opossum, deer or bunny forage for food we've left uncovered, but we can prevent that by burying fresh food scraps more thoroughly.
Time is the other requirement to create compost. The smaller the pieces you put in your pile and the hotter it gets, the faster the process. We usually throw in whole leaves; if we shredded the leaves before tossing them in our pile, we'd generate compost faster.