7.4.1

Individuals, Families, Households



Backyard Composting

Make Your Garden Happy: Turn Your Kitchen and Garden Waster into Good, Rich Compost!

Don't throw those food scraps away in the garbage! You can turn them into a source of good plant nourishment by composting. And you can cut down on transporting waste and the CO2 emissions from garbage trucks, at the same time.

Avoiding waste in its many forms is an important way to reduce the greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change. Transporting waste consumes fossil fuels. And food waste that goes to landfills can generate methane, a greenhouse gas that contributes more to global warming than carbon dioxide. Household composting is one excellent way to reduce waste. Composting food scraps and garden wastes turns these organic materials into a dark, soil-like material that does two very valuable things: it saves on transportation of waste to landfills (reducing fossil fuel use) and it provides a nutrient-filled addition for garden soil.

Nearly one-third of household waste from the kitchen and from the garden is organic material. That means that a significant part of ordinary garbage from the home could be turned into an excellent form of fertilizer instead of sending it on a truck trip to a landfill site.

Composting is a transformation process which seems almost magic. When they are composted, scraps, leaves and other unwanted organic materials turn, over time, into a uniform, black, crumbly, nearly odour-free material called humus, that improves soil in many ways. Household composting is a way of organizing the collection and the management of organic materials so they will compost most effectively.

Finished compost: nice enough to hold in your hand!

SOIL BENEFITS OF COMPOSTING

Adding compost to soil improves it in many ways. Some of the benefits are:

  • Nutrients for plants the mixed ingredients of compost provide a healthy variety of nutrients to plants which grow in it. Compost also releases its nutrients slowly, with allows plants to take them is as they need to during their growth.
  • Improved soil structure organic compost helps to loosen heavy, tightly-packed soils (such as clay soils) to improve air circulation and water absorption; with loose, sandy soils compost can help bind it together to improve moisture retention.
  • Improved water retention when mixed with soil, compost crumbs stores water on their surfaces, increasing the soil's ability to retain water during dry periods.
  • Erosion prevention soils mixed with compost absorb and hold water well, lessening the erosion effects of heavy rain.
  • Mineral storage - elements such as potassium, sodium, calcium magnesium, iron and copper are held in the soil by particles of compost.

  WHAT TO COMPOST …

Good materials for composting are often divided into "green" and "brown." Keeping a good balance between them will help the composting process to work better. Here is a list of some of the things that are good to compost in a backyard composter:

Greens (nitrogen-rich)

From the kitchen:

  • Vegetable scraps
  • Fruit peels
  • Pasta
  • Grains
  • Coffee grounds/filters
  • Tea bags
  • Nut shells
  • Egg shells (crushed)
  • Hair

From the garden:

  • Grass clippings (not too much)
  • Green leaves
  • Flowers
  • Garden wastes
  • Wood ash
  • Feathers
  • Aged manure

Browns (carbon-rich)

  • Dried leaves
  • Wood chips (untreated)
  • Paper
  • Sawdust
  • Dried grass clippings
  • Hardwood ash
  • Corn stalks and straw

… (AND WHAT NOT TO)

Do NOT add:

  • meat
  • bones
  • fat
  • dairy products
  • oil
  • fish scraps
  • pet wastes
  • woody yard wastes
  • mature weed heads with seeds
  • crabgrass
  • diseased plants

to your composter or compost pile. While all organic material eventually breaks down, animal products can attract unwanted pests to your composter, pet wastes can contain harmful bacteria, and weed seeds can sometimes survive the composting process and sprout in your garden where you do not want them.

Ways to Compost

As composting becomes more popular, there are a wide variety of composter models to choose from. Some popular models of composters include:

Build-your-own

  1. a simple compost heap
  2. a wire enclosure
  3. a garbage can with the bottom removed and holes in the sides for ventilation
  4. a wood and wire bin (which may be portable)
  5. a bin made from used pallets
  6. two-bin wooden unit
  7. three-bin wooden unit

Bought units

Many municipalities make compost bins available a very reasonable prices to encourage people to start composting. It is worth consulting the website of your local municipality if you wish to ask for information on what kind of information and equipment they can make available. Composters can also be purchased at hardware stores and through dealers.

Manufactured composter types now include an astonishing range of models. But simple ones can do the job, and include:

  1. a basic plastic, slatted box with a lid and an opening hatch for removing finished compost (for aerobic composting)
  2. the anaerobic (airless) "cone" models are partially buried in the ground (these tend to reduce the composted material to a minimum less produced for gardening additive)
  3. vermicomposters bins for indoor composting, best for low to moderate amounts of waste, require "red wiggler" worms to process the waste. Convenient and odour-free. One supplier for mail-order: Canadian Original Vermicomposter Ltd.  2328 Queen Street East,Toronto, ON  M4G 1G9. Tel: (416) 693-1027  (Kits: small = $55.00, medium = $75.00, or large = $95.00 The kits include the bin, screen, bedding, worms, lid, tray and vermicomposting booklet.  1/4 pound of worms = $11.00.
  4. rotating barrel bins speed up the composting process by increasing aeration

Links and Resources

Composting Council of Canada

Recycling Council of Ontario: Composting Resources and Guides http://www.rco.on.ca/publication/pub/compost.html

Thames Region Ecological Association "Level One composting Program" http://users.imag.net/~lon.trea/level1.htm

Cornell Composting Including School Composting

Vermicomposting, a fact sheet from the Recycling Council of Ontario http://www.rco.on.ca/factsheet/fs_e05.html

Region of Peel: Build-your-own-composter http://www.region.peel.on.ca/pw/waste/resident/build-your-own-composter.htm

Bluewater Recycling Association (BRA) A good worksheet on composting facts, types of composters, dos and don'ts, and answers to frequently asked questions.

Resource Conservation Manitoba: Basic composter types illustrated http://www.resourceconservation.mb.ca/cap/bins101.html

A comprehensive (US) list and illustrations of all kinds of composters (for information or ordering) http://www.composters.com/main.shtml

Features and ratings of different kinds of composters

ACTIVITY 1

  1. Explain how composting food and garden waste can reduce CO2 emissions.
  2. List 3 benefits of adding finished compost to improve your garden soil.
  3. a) Name 3 examples of 'green' items and 3 examples of 'brown' items that can be added to compost.
    b) Why do the 'greens' and 'browns' need to be balanced?
    c) What types of items that should NOT be added to compost.