Garbage That’s Good for the Earth


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compostThis looks disgusting, right? It is called compost. Would you believe me if I told you that these icky banana peels are great for the environment in more ways than one?


Composting is basically a recycling system for food scraps. You can compost fruits, vegetables, breads, and pastas. You also can boil bones, mash them up, and compost that, but that is mainly for experienced composters. If you are doing your own composting at home you can compost dairy and meats, but they smell really bad.


Composting can help fertilize gardens, and reduce garbage. When the food scraps begin to decay, due to bacteria and fungi, you can mix them with soil and the nutrients in the food enrich the soil. It can reduce garbage because 30 percent of the garbage in landfills all over the world could have been composted.


Suburbs and Rural areas: If you have a yard, a pile of food scraps in the backyard works, provided that you mix it with dirt. You can also buy a composting system. My grandparents have one that you turn over and over after putting the compost inside. Then you can use the enriched soil in the garden. If you don’t use a composter, you probably should put a fence or some type of barricade around the compost so you don’t have raccoon parties in the yard.

Cities: Many cities have a Greenmarket composting system. During the week, you collect food scraps in a plastic bag in the freezer. (Otherwise it smells really bad) Then on whichever day your Greenmarket takes place, you bring the bags, and the volunteers there will take the scraps to be composted. In New York City, the Department of Sanitation is working on some large-scale composting experiments, in residential buildings and schools.

So would you believe me now if I told you how great for the environment composting is?