Everyone should Compost
Composting is a Cornerstone to truly Sustainable Living
We are what we eat. Most of our food is either grown directly in soil, or our food derives its food grown from soil. If we are what we eat, and what we eat comes from the soil, you could easily say that our wellbeing is directly connected to the health of the soil. How is our soil doing?
Our soil today is fed chemical fertilizers. Our soil is eroding at rapid rates. Our soil is weak and breaking down. Modern health issues have skyrocketed in parallel with our chemically fed soil & chemical pesticides. If we are what we eat, and our soil is sick, it’s not a surprise we are sick. Soil is literally the living layer of skin for earth. We need to heal our soils. Everywhere.
Enter: composting.
In the realm of sustainable living, composting holds a unique place. Its transformative power, turning food waste & biomass into fertile soil, not only helps the environment but also closes a loop in the nutrient cycle. This simple practice has the potential to cut down the massive amounts of waste sent to landfills, restore health to our depleted soils, and increase lost biodiversity.
Ten years ago, I started composting with nothing more than a small metal pail and a compost pile in my suburban backyard. Today, my home uses several compost rollers that elegantly contain food scraps, grass clippings, leaves, and biochar without emitting any unpleasant smells. We still use the metal kitchen pail to collect food waste, and we also compost bigger piles of leaves, grass clippings, and biochar with manure. This humble process of decomposition not only nourishes my garden by building soil, but also reduces my resource usage, embodying the essence of sustainable living.
When you don’t compost your food wastes and organic materials, you’re preventing new soil from being created to replace the soil nutrients that was used to grow food. The food waste ultimately grown from soil, but it will no longer return to soil if not composted. More fuel and energy resources are used to truck your food waste to the land fill, and at the land fill methane gas is created by your food waste. Not composting has a series of negative impacts.
The solution? Start composting!
Why Compost?
Every year, approximately 1.3 billion tons of food are wasted worldwide, often ending up in landfills where it releases methane, a potent greenhouse gas. However, this waste is not useless. It is brimming with nutrients that could be used to regenerate our soils and grow healthier, more resilient plants. The composting process turns this "waste" into rich, fertile soil, known as compost.
Composting also has distinct advantages over synthetic fertilizers, which often result in nutrient run-off, polluting waterways and leading to soil degradation. On the contrary, compost improves soil structure, enhances its water-holding capacity, fosters beneficial microorganisms, mycelium growth, and adds nutrients without burning out the soil.
Composting is not only a solution to reduce waste; it's an empowering building block for living freely and restoring healthy soil, and therefore, it aligns perfectly with the principles of sustainable, off-grid living. It's an essential component of a self-sufficient lifestyle, whether you live in a small apartment, a suburban house, or a rural homestead.
Making Composting Accessible
No matter where you live, there's a composting solution for you. Apartment dwellers might not have outdoor space, but they can use compact composting appliances that blend food scraps and then bake them, eliminating odors and making compost disposal easy. Better still, these residents can participate in community composting initiatives. Platforms like MakeSoil.org connect people with local sites to drop off their food waste, making composting more accessible than ever before.
In suburban areas, the possibilities for composting expand. Homeowners can use compost rollers, compost piles, or designated bins to manage their organic waste. These tools can handle not only food scraps but also yard waste, like grass clippings and leaves. The larger volumes of compost produced can nourish gardens or lawns, fostering lush landscapes while reducing landfill contributions.
Rural dwellers have even more opportunities for composting, thanks to the availability of space and organic waste materials like livestock manure, hay, and straw. They can employ large-scale composting systems to manage their waste, reduce their reliance on external inputs, and maintain healthy, productive soils.
Western society has forgotten how to revere and appreciate the galaxy of life within healthy soil. We use the terms “dirt”, “dirty”, and “muddy” in a pejorative sense. This disrespect for soil is truly backwards. Soil, dirt, earth and mud are the substance life is built upon. In the bible God even created mankind from the earth itself. This should be telling - soil is truly a gift to be cared for.
Composting: The Basics
The magic of composting lies in a delicate balance between nitrogen-rich materials (greens) and carbon-rich materials (browns). Greens include items like vegetable scraps, coffee grounds, and fresh grass clippings, while browns are things like dried leaves, straw, and newspaper. A good rule of thumb is to aim for a 3:1 ratio of browns to greens.
Regularly turning or rotating your compost pile promotes aeration, an essential factor since composting is an aerobic process. Oxygen fuels the microbes as they break down the compost materials. The compost pile also needs to be kept moist, as water is necessary for microbial activity.
As the microorganisms work, they generate heat, and a compost pile can reach temperatures of 55-70°C (131-160°F), indicating that the composting process is occurring correctly.
Items that can never be composted include: Plastics, foam, metal, synthetic chemicals, and anything artificial.
Items that do not compost well, or take years to breakdown include: Bones, wood chips, and sticks.
The best things to compost are: Food waste, leaves, shredded paper (no ink), paper towels, grass clippings, biochar, weeds, and manure
Anything biological can technically be composted. It’s not advisable to compost meat, dairy, feathers or bones unless you are a seasoned composter in a rural zone. Here in our suburban home, we feed fresh veggie scraps to our pigs and chickens. We feed old dairy, meat or leftovers to our biogas generator to produce liquid fertilizer and clean burning methane cooking fuel for our grill. We can also feed spoiled food to our Black Soldier Fly pod, to produce grubs for our chickens. Anything not fed to these systems is composted.
Everything has a value and a use, we simply need to understand how to properly use things. Once we understand, we need a system in place to handle each item.
The Impact of Composting: A Real-Life Example
In the heart of our suburban neighborhood stands the testament to the power of composting - our 4000 square foot Acorn Land Lab garden. Last year, using compost exclusively as our fertilizer, we managed to grow over 1000 lbs of fresh, healthy produce. This year, we're on track to more than double that figure, all thanks to the transformative power of composting.
This level of productivity, completely devoid of synthetic fertilizers, speaks volumes about the potential of composting as a sustainable solution for food production. It’s not just about reducing waste or making our gardens flourish; it's about building a future where we live in harmony with the environment, reducing our waste, and improving soil health.
A Composting Conclusion
Composting is much more than a way to dispose of kitchen scraps. It is a lifestyle choice, an act of mindful rebellion against a lazy culture of waste, and an affirmation of our connection to the earth. Whether you are in a compact city apartment or a sprawling rural property, composting offers an achievable stepping stone to sustainable living.
The beauty of composting lies in its simplicity. With a basic understanding of the composting process and some determination, anyone can turn their organic waste into a valuable resource: soil. As we strive towards a more sustainable future, composting emerges as a practice that both heals our soils and cultivates our understanding of the natural world. Join the composting revolution and contribute to a more sustainable world, one compost pile at a time.
Our mission at Acorn Land Labs is to share the ideas, methods, tools & concepts needed for people to leverage off-grid systems to live more freely and affordably. Go build something!
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