27 Composting Facts Explained To Help Save The Environment

There is nothing better than reusing waste to create something new and more useful; composting works in the same manner.

Composting leverages the natural process of food rotting to reap value and use it as a fuel for other growing plants. This mixture of ingredients is powerful food for healthy, luscious produce, free of inorganic catalyzers.

Imagine reusing your vegetables to grow some more healthy, fresh vegetables? Sounds wonderful, right!

In the same manner, composting works to reap benefits from what we deem as waste to help save the environment. Composting is a simple process of using organic waste such as fruit and vegetable waste, food waste, dead leaves, yard wastes, and used tea bags to create a compost pile of it.

These greens and brows, when combined together, are moistened to break down, which then goes on a process of decomposing on its own. Farmers refer to compost as 'Black Gold' as the resultant product is capable of cultivating luscious produce not even chemical fertilizers can reap.

What is composting?

Composting is an entirely natural process of decomposing organic waste into something useful. Every organic matter on this planet is decomposable with help from moisture and beneficial bacteria.

Composting is a simple method of processing compostable waste into valuable organic material to create healthy soil for future produces. Composting process is straightforward and requires only a few resources to get started.

No additional chemicals, tools, or hands are needed. The process can even be done in your backyard, as backyard composting is one of the most common practices local gardeners and community gardeners use.

• The process of composting can include products such as food scraps, yard waste, vegetable waste, municipal solid waste, coffee grounds, wood chips, trash, manure, meat, and other organic residual material.
• The resultant product of composted material after decomposition is natural fertilizer called compost. Compost is full of left-over nutritional benefits of the left-over trash containing organic materials, which can be excellent for the environment.
• The composting process takes longer in cold conditions than hotter ones. The cold composting process slowly breaks down the organic materials naturally hence a time-taking process. On the other hand, the hot composting process requires additional resources to increase the temperature for a rapid composting process.
• The 'Brown' of composting comprises dry materials such as wood chips, wool rags, dead leaves, sticks, and broken branches. These offer a higher carbon supply to the compost pile.
• The 'Green' of composting comprises organic matter such as food scraps, food waste, grass clippings, coffee grounds, and tea bags. These offer the nitrogen supply to the composting process.
• The only disadvantage of composting is the bad smell emitting out during the long composting process as the product included in the process are rotting away slowly with time. Although the smell is bad, it is a good indicator that the compost is going through the anaerobic composting process.

The Benefits Of Composting

The result of composting is what you spend millions of bucks each year to have—a supply of healthy, organic vegetables, fruits, and flowers. Composting is an excellent step towards saving the environment at an individual level, and it does not even require too much effort.

The concerning level of the environmental impact of landfills and their resultant methane emissions can be stopped if each of us takes the pledge to incorporate this simple process.

In addition, Composting is a significant step towards healing contaminated soil and reducing carbon footprint. There are countless benefits of composting, which you can learn through some of these facts about composting.

• Composting helps reduce a large amount of household waste towards the healthy cause. Instead of spreading pollution through waste items and causing the harmful methane emitting landfills to brim with dirty waste, it is wise to include composting as a frequent household practice to get rid of the waste while keeping the environment clean.
• Compost is an excellent replacement for chemical-based fertilizer. Healthy soil is the home for healthy vegetables and foods, and compost is the root of organic vegetable production.
• Frequent use of a fertilizer contaminates the soil and produces. Using compost heals contaminated soil with natural nitrogen supply to the soil through compost. A garden can flourish with the usage of compost so choose compost over any other chemical-charged fertilizer to deal with garden concerns.
• Compost is an excellent fuel for both plants and the soil it uses to grow those plants. Compost has the properties to heal contaminated soil with the help of composted material by increasing its fertility and structure. Helpful microorganisms in soil can then help plants grow better in healthy soil.
• Composting can help save water! Surprising, isn't it? But soil, after being mixed with compost, the soil has shown results as it started retaining more water and consuming less to last for a more extended period of time.
• Using the composted product in a home garden is cost-effective in many households. Instead of spending money and buying fertilizers, artificial compost, and other services, one must incorporate this simple practice to save money and reduce waste.
• Methane emission levels decrease with the help of composting. Landfills, being full of various rotting products and organic materials, can make harmful substances and gasses. The use of composting will mark a significant reduction in the amount of pollution, leading the planet towards a better green than now.

Layers Of Composting

While composting is simple and does not require any additional resources, the process does need strategic placement of organic material in a uniform way to catalyze the process of recycling. Composting comprises four main components to initiate and slowly accomplish the process- Organic matter, oxygen, moisture, and bacteria.

To let all these components work their magic on compost heaps, layering is one of the most prominently used methods. Let's learn what these layers are and how they help compost piles of compostable materials towards their usable form.

• A compost pile is made up of various organic materials aligned in a pile than compost can quickly deteriorate under carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen's presence. Composting layers are recommended to be uniform and follow a similar pattern to create a compost pile.
• Starting from the bottom, the base layer must be course plants and their branches for oxygen circulation to go up. The next layer must be of finer plant materials. After it, a green layer of rotten vegetables and other kitchen wastes should be added.
• The last three layers of the compost pile are a combination of browns of plants, livestock manure, and kitchen wastes. The compost pile is completed by a top layer of sawdust or wood chips. This uniform pattern must be enclosed within a compost bin and kept away from home to keep the strong odor at a distance.
• If it is an Anaerobic process, one doesn't have to touch the compost. If it is an aerobic composting process, make sure to keep stirring up the bin once in a while for an apt supply of oxygen.
• Layers of composting contain the right amount of brown and green products to keep the circulation of nitrogen, carbon, and oxygen uniform across the entire compost bin.
• Products such as coffee grounds and tea bags offer a plentiful supply of nitrogen to the compost piles; therefore, they must be added to the bin.

Types Of Composting

Composting refers to breaking down organic present in nature. With diverse types of organic material in nature, each takes a different process, temperature, and time to decompose; therefore, there are different types of composting methods. There are three major types of composting: Aerobic, Anaerobic, and Vermicomposting.

• Aerobic composting requires introducing air in a large compost pile to help it break down quickly. You can either use a bin to keep compost piles and keep mixing the content once in a while or use an automatic tumbler for the process.
• In Anaerobic composting, the process only needs to compile food scraps, yard waste, coffee ground, and other food wastes such as tea bags into a compost pile and let them decompose for a year or so. The process takes longer and can often smell bad, but the result without any effort would be equally good!
• The last type of composting is Vermicomposting, which is a process that takes help from organisms such as earthworms, white worms, and various other species of bacterias to slowly make their way through alternate layers of the compost heap and decompose it.
• Along with these three major composting types, there are multiple ways people make use of the organic waste products from their households.
• Composting piles explicitly created to accomplish the tasks can be bought to accelerate the process. These tumblers rotate and provide heat in some instances to increase the decomposition of the compost material.
• In-ground composting is a very popular and common practice in a household with a backyard. One must dig up the ground and layer the given organic waste matter uniformly. Cover the place with the removed soil and let it rest for a long time.
• Livestock manure makes for a great composting material for improving soil health. The nutrients, bacteria, microorganisms, and nitrogen helps revive soil in its natural form to sustain countless healthy produce in gardens.
• Other than the right containing elements and uniformity of compost layers, compost piles require the right temperature, oxygen supply, moisture content, ingredient size, and the proper nutrient balance to make a healthy batch of compost. Gardeners must keep these aspects in mind before preparing the layers.
• Instead of getting bigger bins to initiate the process of composting, one can start with the Onsite composting method. The onsite composting method needs a small quantity of food waste, grass clippings, vegetable scraps, and a few such things to create compost onsite by keeping them in a near bin for a few weeks.
• In-vessel composting is another method used to compost piles by keeping the elements in a drum using the windrow method. This method allows one to regulate aspects such as oxygen supply and temperature.

Did You Know?

Let's read some other interesting facts.

• Composting toilet works by decomposing human waste and minimizing the usage of water.
• Composting saves a tremendous amount of waste. So if we all compost, a lot can be saved.