Recycle: Composting Your Food Waste

Every year Americans put thousands of tons of waste into landfills.  Although government standards have become more strict on the way our trash gets placed into landfills, such as eliminating items that won’t biodegrade within a reasonable amount of time, lining landfills so harmful chemicals that did make it through do not end up in our water supply and so on, the fact is we can do so much more.

Even though we can do more, when you present most people with the question or the responsibility of doing more to keep trash out of landfills, almost invariably the first question they will ask is, “what’s it going to cost me?”

That is a fact of life and who can blame them.  A lot of people are on tight budgets just to feed their families or keep a roof over their heads, so spending extra money on recycling is not an option. 

So to make it clear, the information that I am about to give you, so you can help reduce the amount of waste that ends up in landfills, will not cost you a dime.  The only thing it will cost you is a couple of minutes of your day.

I am talking about recycling your food waste.  You can do this in a couple of different ways.  Although both ways are called vermicomposting, the first way is what deem as managed composting.  This is where you build a box, or have some kind of container, and in that container you have worms known as red wigglers (commonly used for fishing).   These aren’t some wild species of worms, you probably or should I say more than likely have thousands in your ground right now, and that is a good thing.

You add your food waste to your container of worms, cover the waste with damp shredded newspaper so the smell of the food waste does not seep out and you are done.  In about 60 days the worms will have consumed all the waste, leaving behind their castings.  It is these castings that you add to your flower beds, and gardens as it is the best type of fertilizer you can give them.  What you have just done is keep the food waste out of the landfill, feed worms and they in turn gave you great compost.  It is a win-win for everybody (or everything).

Of course the managed way will required you to keep monitoring the container so the worms are never without food.  You will need a container, you will need to keep it damp as worms like moist environments, and of course it needs to stay dark at all times.

However there is an easier way.  If you have a section of your yard that you use as a vegetable garden or flower bed, you can simply dig a hole about a foot to 3 feet deep (depending on the amount of food waste you have), and bury your food scraps.  The worms (and bacteria, fungi and other helpful creatures in the ecosystem) will find your food scraps, eat them and leave their castings in the soil.  Then all you have to do is turn your soil over to mix the castings and whoala you are done!

You should pick the scenario that best fits your situation and of course budget.  But as you can see both options are very beneficial to the environment by adding much need nutrients to your soil and keeping the food waste out of a landfill.

About the Author:
Mr. Tucker is a regular contributor on Bukisa, an online community for writers that pays them for their articles.  You can also follow Bruce on Twitter.

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