Compost.
Did you just picture a stinky pile of rotting fruits and veggies? Then you’re in the same boat as the majority of Americans. Composting sounds scary, but if it’s done right, it’s actually a simple, sustainable, and stink-free way to save money, create less waste, and make your own organically fertilized soil!
At the beginning of the school year, I was eager to try my hand at composting, but I didn’t how to do. After some coaching from Bruce the farm manager though, the Cabin was ready to try composting in the Tumbleweed behind our new home.
The basic principle behind composting is simple: let nature do its work. Soil contains natural microorganisms that break down organic matter, so in order to have a healthy compost pile, you want to make an environment to speed up this process of natural decomposition (as opposed to molding and rotting). For us, this meant getting a mix of partially-decomposed leaves, soil that already contained some compost from the Farm, a few banana peels, and coffee grounds. That was it! And the compost pile was ready to go.
We keep an over-sized mason jar in the fridge to put compostable materials in and then empty it into the tumbleweed about once a week. We compost egg shells, fruit and veggie scraps, tea bags, coffee grounds, and paper napkins but make sure to exclude non-compostable material like meet scraps, dairy products, and very oily or molded foods. Everything seemed to be going according to plan…
Until we started seeing green bags of trash periodically appear in our tumbleweed. Someone in the community must have thought it was a trashcan. To solve the problem, we labeled the compost bin “Not a trashcan!” and when that didn’t work, we tried a different approach: “If you would like to compost with us please contact us at this email address.” We eagerly awaited an email from the mystery want-to-be-composter, but heard nothing. About every week another bag of trash would appear and I would take it out and throw it away. We were stumped.
Finally, we caught the culprit! …who wasn’t actually a culprit… and wasn’t actually putting trash in the compost bin. It turns out, that one of my own cabin mates was using green, compostable plastic bags to bring waste from the environmental science department to add to our compost bin. The mystery was solved! We could once again rest in peace.
Ansley Glenn ’20
source: http://www.bhg.com/gardening/yard/compost/how-to-compost/
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