Home composting is an effective way to hugely reduce your household waste and turn it into compost at home. This has become a lot more popular, and people are finally becoming more aware of it and seeing the benefits at home.
By recycling food and other organic materials (example: Lawn and tree trimmings, fruit and vegetable scraps, wood shavings etc.) from your everyday use at home, you can turn this into compost and then use it in your garden, to help improve plant growth and reduce carbon dioxide.
Home composting can easily be started at home on bare earth or by using an enclosed bin or compost tumbler. If you do go the route of creating a compost pile at home, then there is a process to follow:
- Start by laying twigs or straw a few inches deep first, this helps with drainage and aeration of the pile.
- Then add the compost layers. Make sure to cover it with wood, carpet to help retain moisture and heat and to prevent too much moisture from the rain.
For all home compost, make sure you have a good amount of both carbon (sawdust, dry leaves, coffee grounds) and nitrogen (food scraps, lawn trimmings, kitchen waste) matter and alternate moist (food materials, tea bags) and dry (sawdust, straw, leaves) layers of waste.
There are lots of different methods and tools that you can use but, in the end, you will be left with compost that will benefit both your garden and the environment.
Home composting is a great way to help reduce landfill but there are other ways you can do this too. Here are a few other ways that YOU can reduce landfill:
- Recycle – keep a recycling bin in your kitchen or garage for all glass, cans, etc.
- Reuse products or items, eg. shopping bags.
- Use concentrated products, this allows you to get plenty more uses out of the same container as you often have to mix it with water.
- Save leftovers for the next day and eat it for lunch. This will also save you money.
- Donate clothes – instead of throwing out the clothes that no longer fit you or have a small hole in it, think again. There are so many people out there who would benefit from those unwanted clothes that end up in the bin and from there, into landfill.
- Should you be unable to make your own compost pile, but you want to divert food waste from landfill, you can always put it into your weekly garden refuse bag, which will make its way to us! TIP: To prevent flies or smells, you can collect your waste in a bag in your freezer and then tip it into the refuse bag on your allocated collection day.
These are just a few ideas that can help.
Landfill is a major source of pollution and rubbish buried in landfill takes ages to break down and remains a problem for many years to come. Large wild areas need to be cleared to accommodate landfills, leading to loss of habitat and they are renowned for causing a range of environmental and health issues, not to mention the unpleasant odour and methane they produce.
As you can see, we can all do our bit by reducing the amount of waste produced and trying our best to practice a few of the points mentioned above. We, at Living Earth, strive to be as sustainable as possible. Our compost is made up of 70% organic garden refuse and 30% food and liquid waste. We have an option to take compost loose for the most environmentally friendly way, but that we do also offer reuse of our unbranded bags and our plastic bags are recyclable.