Why Bother Composting

Why bother composting?

Organic Waste

A question l am quite often asked is why do l bother composting anyway? What good is it really doing for the planet?

It’s a fair question, although l suppose l am surprised that more people don’t see the benefits of composting as much as l do. But, l thoroughly enjoy the craft of creating brown gold’ and treat it as a hobby, exercise, and form of well-being and mindfulness regarding my mental health.

Gardening is well known alone for being a great form of therapy for depression and stress reduction. So is composting and, to a certain degree, worm farming – for me composting is relaxing. For many, composting is addictive too.

Compost or brown gold to gardeners [vermicast being the actual black gold in my eyes] is organic waste broken down and decomposed into a nutrient fertiliser that can be used to enrich our garden soils. Making something valuable out of something that was once organic waste is an absolute delight.

I think once more people see composting as more than just throwing away kitchen or green trash, then l think more people will appreciate all the benefits of compost.

There is no denying that creating your compost is hugely beneficial to the growth of plants – be this flowers, vegetables, herbs or fruits, not forgetting the valuable nutrients it adds to our soils. Why buy bagged compost when we can create it ourselves?

Organic compost helps us help our planet and the environment. We can avoid adding our waste to massive landfills if we recycle more.

Landfills filled with materials such as kitchen wastes don’t always break down effectively because they decompose without oxygen and start releasing methane gas, which is highly harmful and, worse than that, flammable!

Have you ever heard of those massive fires that break out in landfill sites and wondered how?? Well, methane is one surefire culprit! Methane gasses are also responsible for heating the atmosphere and are one of the factors of climate change. If the gas isn’t enough of a problem, then there are other equally unpleasant reasons for NOT sending waste to the landfill.

Like, leakage! No ONE likes leakage! There is a lot of moisture in waste foods, and where do you think that goes? It seeps into the ground beneath the landfill, creating an enormous ‘orrible’ puddle! This puddle is deadly and probably potent enough to kill zombies. Yep! It is that bad. It is filled with high levels of liquid toxicity!

The biggest problem is that this ‘leachate’ can further poison our waterways and kill us – never mind the zombies!

Landfill waste is just adding more pollution to our planet! So when there is an environmentally friendly way of dealing with these wastes like composting, we should take advantage of it more and reduce our impact on landfills.

We can avoid creating more harmful gasses on the planet by composting our wastes at home or finding an allotment or community garden or another home gardener who also composts who might like our scraps if we can’t compost ourselves due to space restrictions.

When we compost our wastes in the best way possible, by using oxygen, we allow the aerobic system to break the wastes down and produce very minimal amounts of methane.

There are many reasons to compost – if not as discussed already for mindfulness, mental therapy or even for a quirky exercise routine [digging], then so to consider the fact that it’s a great way of producing your ‘own’ personal brand of fertiliser that your plants will love as well as boost their growth.

Start a new addictive hobby, and also learn about the whole process and observe the bug and microbial life forms you’ll encounter. Learning to compost means you begin the journey to understand and educate others on how their positive action can significantly impact the environment.

These alone are all great reasons to consider composting for yourself. But if so far you are still hesitant, well, there’s this … composting is incredible fun!