Why Is Composting Important?
Whether you are an environmental advocate or simply pragmatic, composting at home has many benefits for you and the planet. If you have a backyard with a little bit of space, you can put microorganisms to work breaking down your useless kitchen scraps and yard clippings into rich, naturally fertile soil. Here are some of the reasons composting is important:
Composting reduces landfill waste
Think of all of the organic kitchen scraps you throw away over time: eggshells, fruit and vegetable peels, coffee grounds, tea, wilted or overripe veggies or forgotten legumes. Any food with the exception of meat and bones is perfect for the compost pile. The same applies to yard clippings: all of the branches, leaves, grass, and weeds that you would normally send to the garbage are actually valuable composting components. Composting kitchen and yard scraps not only saves space in landfills, but reduces the amount of fuel used by garbage trucks.
Composting creates organic and fertile soil for your garden
Once you've started your compost pile, the microorganisms that are naturally present in the environment will begin to consume and break down the organic materials until they become a rich, moist soil suitable for any home vegetable or flower garden. You will no longer need to buy commercially produced fertilizers and topsoil trucked in from distant points when you have your own supply in your backyard. Furthermore, you know that your soil is free of artificial chemicals, completely organic, and has no carbon footprint.
Composting is easy
In the same way that we recycle aluminum cans, glass, and paper, we can also recycle our organic materials by composting, and without even leaving our yards. Even young children can learn about environmental stewardship by being taught how to separate their trash, and a compost pile is a good tool for teaching about how bacteria and fungi break down decaying organic matter into useful soil.
