Make a down payment on your own soil's fertility by
composting.
My new neighbor
knocked on my door and introduced herself as the vice president of the local
homeowner’s association. “How friendly!” I thought. “She’s welcoming me to the
neighborhood.”
Then she wrinkled her
nose and motioned toward an enclosed bin on my porch, saying, “Your — what is
it? Came-post? That’s not allowed here. You’ll need to get rid of it.”
My compost bin,
designed to allow air and water in while keeping rodents out, was no nuisance
whatsoever, but the HOA had decided it was unsightly. In my opinion, they had
pretty odd standards about what constituted “unsightly” since they banned
basketball hoops too.
That incident happened years ago when I first started composting. I never gave up, but I’ve encountered plenty of pushback despite the spread of this increasingly routine waste management practice. Once, a neighbor actually dumped rat poison into my compost bin after blaming it for her home’s rat problems. I have three cats and they hunt. We were not harboring rats, I guarantee it.
Another person I met
while trying to be “green” and efficient paid over $100 for an electric compost
machine that accomplishes the same thing that nature does for free.
Why are we so
squeamish about our waste, especially when our food and yard waste turns into
such a valuable gardening resource? Often, it’s the fear of foul odors.
When it’s done wrong,
compost can certainly stink. But when done right, compost doesn’t stink. It has
a mild, earthy aroma that I actually like. The solution is simple. Just add
more cardboard, paper, twigs, wood chips, dead leaves, and other carbon-rich
materials that will freshen the pile as they decompose. Plus, you can build or
buy a bin that keeps rodents out if you worry about that.
Out of the 250 million tons of waste Americans produced in 2010, compostable materials like yard
waste and food scraps made up 27 percent. Another 29 percent was paper and
cardboard and six percent was wood. Together, compostable materials make up
more than half of our waste — 155 million tons. And, while we recycle and
compost some of it, a lot of it goes into landfills.
Then, after throwing
away these valuable resources, Americans go out and buy garden and landscape
products like compost, topsoil, and fertilizer. Why don’t we simply compost the
food scraps, yard waste, and cardboard that we routinely throw away instead?
Besides, composting
feels magical. You toss your unwanted waste into a pile or a bin, wait several
months, and — voila! —you’ve got something that will make your soil amazing.
Your old banana peels and coffee grounds can help grow food and flowers in your
garden.
I admit I’m a little
weird, but I love digging through my pile to smell the earthy aroma, feel the
heat of my food breaking down, see how my waste is turning into rich, valuable
compost, and check out what kinds of worms and other beneficial critters are
making their homes there.
If you want to have
even more fun, make a worm bin with a group of kids. I’ve never seen second
graders pay such rapt attention to anything like they did to the red wriggler
worms and the apple cores, grass trimmings, and newspaper scraps we fed them.
The kids got so excited that they even began naming the individual worms and
proposing to take them home as pets.
This spring, make a
down payment on your own soil’s fertility by starting a compost pile. You’ll
send less trash to the landfill, keep the stuff that rots and stinks out of
your garbage can, and if you garden, your finished compost is sure to help you
grow juicy heirloom tomatoes and delicious herbs.
OtherWords columnist Jill
Richardson is the author of Recipe
for America: Why Our Food System Is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It. OtherWords.org
