Green Composting Ideas for Your Home

Would you like to cut down on the amount of garbage your household generates and make your garden more hearty and flourishing at the same time? Composting your home’s organic waste is the perfect way to do both of these things. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 23% of all waste that ends up in landfills is yard waste or organic food waste that can be used instead to make compost. Compost is simply the decomposition of once living materials into humus, which is an excellent, nutrient filled addition to enrich garden or houseplant soil. It’s easy to do and well worth the effort.
As our planet is running out of landfill space and people everywhere are looking for ways to live green and reduce waste, composting is becoming more and more popular. However, there is nothing new about it. It happens in nature all the time. Rotting leaves are broken down and return to the soil where the nutrients are used to enrich roots and create new life.
Creating a compost pile in your home is a useful way to reuse leftover food scraps, especially fruits and vegetables. It cuts down on the amount of garbage your home generates, which is good for the environment. It also saves money you would normally spend on fertilizer. Plus, it can effectively boost and enrich your garden in a completely natural way with no harsh or dangerous chemicals.
The benefits of composting don’t stop with a fruitful, chemical free home garden. Compost has the natural ability to control pests and plant diseases and pests. On a larger scale, composting can be used as a low-cost way to capture and eliminate most of the industrial volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) in polluted air. It can even assist wetlands restoration, reforestation, and habitat revitalization efforts by mitigating contaminated soil.
To get started creating your own compost pile in your yard, you can build a bin from untreated wood. It only needs to be three feet by three feet and won’t take up much space. You want to balance brown materials like leaves or hay with green materials like grass or vegetable tops by alternating these two material types in layers. Soil or booster can be added to facilitate the decomposition process, but isn’t necessary. It is important to turn the pile multiple times each week so that oxygen can flow and boost the rate of decomposition.

If you don’t have enough space in your yard or don’t have the motivation to build a compost bin, you can do it right in your home. You can get bins designed just for your kitchen that don’t take up much space and help to accelerate the decomposition process while keeping any unpleasant odor from permeating your home. You can keep your kitchen scraps there until you are able to empty the bin onto your compost pile.

As landfill space diminishes and we all look for ways to reduce waste and practice sustainable living to help the environment and save household costs, composting may soon become as common as recycling. Waste can be converted to a valuable resource for a healthy, hearty garden. Why not look into starting your own compost pile or bin?