Composting at home is easy–and doesn’t take up much space!
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There are many issues regarding composting at home:
“I don’t have time.”
“I live in a small apartment.”
“My town doesn’t even have recycling centers, let alone composting.
While these concerns are valid, they can be assuaged with all the opportunities available in communities, big and small, for composting leftover food and yard scraps.
Composting is recycling organic, once-living materials into rich soil. The materials decompose and go back into the Earth, giving soil, plants and trees the nutrients they need to stay alive.
Large cities such as New York and Seattle offer programs and workshops helping residents go green, offering low-cost bins, education materials and other items used for compost. In San Francisco, where composting is mandatory, residents are offered free materials, classes and multiple compost locations in hopes of making it the greenest city in America.
While it is easier when you have the space and land (and, of course, a backyard), you can still compost inside a 500 square foot apartment by using worms.
Yes, worms.
Known as vermicomposting, worms live at the bottom of a shallow bin, swimming among the leaves, food and manure and turning it into the organic plant food you are making within your home. The worms will not crawl out and make your apartment unbearable to live in as long as you get worms that are known surface dwellers, such as red wrigglers. Just place them in a small bin that sits in your kitchen corner, on your window sill or even on your front door stoop. These bins take little room, little time (it’s the same as scraping your food into the trash) and little effort.
Of course, living with more land means you can do it in your back yard, and all you need is a bin and the yard scraps that already exist. Just add in your excess food and voila, you are composting!
Composting lessens the negative effects waste has on landfills, waterways and water treatment facilities. Plus, if you ever get that garden you’ve been wanting (or if you already have one) you’re a step ahead – you will have all the soil and plant food you will ever need.