What it's like to compost
I didn’t exactly participate in Plastic Free July, but I was inspired by it. I decided it was time to explore the wonderful world of composting. It’s something I’d never really given much thought seeing as I live in Los Angeles. It’s a massive city and, well, it’s basically a fancy desert so there isn’t a huge culture of growing your own sustenance (at least in my parts).
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me first explain why on (mother) earth I’m talking to you about composting in the first place. “I thought this was supposed to be a response to Plastic Free July,” I imagine you’re yelling at your computer.
It is! And while composting doesn’t immediately seem like an important issue in the world of plastics, let me remind you of two terribly dirty (pun intended) words:
Rubbish
Bags
Rubbish bags are most often made out of plastic and obviously bad for the planet. Anything we can do to reduce their use is a good thing. As of right now, an average of one third of household waste is organic material. When organic wastes are sorted from other wastes that are disposed of, it reduces the volume of trash going to our landfills.
I also discovered that putting your veggie scraps in a plastic bag and burying it in landfill is particularly dangerous. It produces a bunch of methane which happens which has terrible effects on global warming. In fact, this methane is twenty times more harmful than carbon dioxide. Rotting food in landfills is the second largest source of human-made methane emissions. You can get compostable bags, sure, but the material used to make these types of bags is meant to be disposed of in high-heat industrial composting facilities. So it’ll sit in a landfill just like the rest of the usual offenders.
“There’s no organic matter breaking down in the bin, so it basically smells like nothing for weeks and weeks.”
I’ve been trying out my compost game and I’ve been amazed by a few things. Firstly, I've been surprised at how little now goes in my regular trash. This is a helpful chart that I used to determine what is and is not compostable. Once you’ve separated out the recyclables and the veggie matter, there isn’t a whole lot left. I barely ever have to take my trash out, which is great because there’s a pack of feral pigeons in my alley that completely terrify me.
Second is the smell. Or rather, the lack thereof. There’s no organic matter breaking down in the bin, so it basically smells like nothing for weeks and weeks. Which is wonderful! I have a medium size can and I now only have to face the pigeons perhaps once a month.
All in all, composting has been a game changer for me. I highly recommend anyone giving it a try. There are tonnes of sleek compost bins that sit on your countertop, making you look cool and like a really good person. What’s better than that? I guess legislation that keeps giant industries from destroying the planet… but this will have to do for now.
