Let it rot!

These days, I see a lot of “R”s added to what was originally the sacred trinity of green living: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. My personal favorite is “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Rot,” used to encourage folks to compost their food scraps and yard waste instead of consigning it to the burn pile or the landfill.

Many of us will get our first frost of the season within the next month (I know, where did August go?), which means that yard clean-up is right around the corner. In fact, I’ve already been trimming a lot of spent blossoms and pulling out the end of the spring radishes and lettuce (to replant, of course, with fall veggies!). So now is the perfect time to start composting.

Still not convinced? Here are some scary facts to consider:

• The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that food scraps are the single largest component, by weight, in America’s trash.
• Because landfills create anaerobic (oxygen-free) conditions for these food scraps, they break down into methane gas instead of the world’s best, most natural, free, and totally glorious fertilizer: compost.
• Methane gas is not only a greenhouse gas, but it is three times more potent than Carbon Dioxide.
• Although many folks like to blame commercial agriculture and animal husbandry practices for polluting the environment, at least when it comes to methane emissions, the EPA reports that food scraps in landfills are to blame for almost equivalent methane emissions to enteric fermentation in livestock, manure management, rice cultivation, and agriculture residue burning combined.

While the EPA notes that food recovery efforts such as restaurants and grocery stores donating food when it exceeds its shelf-life instead of throwing it away, it also encourages composting or vermicomposting (i.e. worm composting).

Visit your local Cooperative Extension for the dirt on composting or refer to these additional resources:

• EPA’s Create Your Own Compost Pile
• TreeHugger on Compost
• Chez Artz’s How to Compost

An original 5 Minutes for Going Green post. Julie Artz is a Master Gardener and experienced composter. Read more about her adventures in the garden, eating local, attachment parenting, green living, politics, and whatever else strikes her fancy at Chez Artz.