Why composting is bad

Outdoor composting bins are readily available or can easily and economically be made at home from scrap wood or old garbage cans. If you have limited space or live in an apartment, small composting containers will fit under the kitchen sink. Most vegetable-based food scraps can be used to make compost, including fruit and vegetable waste, egg shells, leftover pasta or rice, coffee grounds and teabags, nut shells and bread.

Grass clippings, leaves, weeds, vacuum and dryer lint and cardboard rolls can also be added to compost piles. It doesn't take much effort -- the bacteria and other microbes responsible for decomposition do the hard work. Health and safety concerns can arise if you don't follow the basic rules of composting.

For example, never add meat or bone scraps, fatty foods, like oils, cheese and whole eggs, to compost. The pile will smell bad and attract unwanted pests like files and rodents. Some advise against using manure in composting, especially if finished compost will be used to grow vegetables, as it can contain bacteria that cause foodborne illnesses, such as Escherichia coli.

Human, cat and dog feces should not used for composting, nor should cat litter, because they can transmit disease. Another disadvantage of composting is the potential for creating a nutrient imbalance when you add finished compost to the soil. Compost has four basic ingredients: nitrogen, carbon, water and air. He dropped the pitchfork, I slammed shut the bin, and we ran inside the house to cower behind the kitchen door. Be prepared by knowing these tips: 10 things nobody tells you about compost.

Does your neighbor brag about producing perfect compost in three months while you, meanwhile, have been nursing an anemic pile of scraps for more than a year with no results? It may take you up to two years to transform trash into lovely black compost. But you can speed up the process—and give your neighbor some competition—if you tweak a few things.

First, the background. To make compost, you need four things: the raw ingredients organic matter, plus water, oxygen, and bacteria the good kind.

Tinker with the mix to see speed things up. For instance, if you shred, chop, or cut up larger materials such as leaves, twigs, and grass clippings, the will break down faster. If your pile seems dry, spray with the hose and mix everything using a pitchfork. If your clothes and bath towels are made of natural fibers such as cotton , the lint that accumulates in the dryer screen can go straight to the compost pile.

Cotton is a plant, after all. If you throw the wrong kind of food scraps—including bread, pizza crusts, meat, or cheese—into a compost bin, consider this an invitation to local rat population to stop by for a meal. And once vermin gets in the bin, those rodents are likely to settle in and get comfortable.

Avoid turning your bin into a rodent motel by limiting the vegetable matter you compost to yard and garden scraps. Also, get a secure bin that closes tightly—on all sides, including the bottom—to keep rodents from slipping in through between the slats. Beyond attracting hungry rodents, certain kinds of food waste can mess with your compost.

For instance, cooking oil can ruin the moisture balance and make it harder to produce compost. To address environmental concerns about food piling up in landfills, several municipalities including Seattle, San Francisco, New York City, and Massachusetts have implemented composting programs asking businesses and residents to put food waste in separate bins.

Some college cafeterias and landfills themselves are working to sort compostable materials from the rest of the trash, as well. But the most recent statistics from the EPA, through , show that still, only five percent of food waste is composted. Keeping food compost separated from the main trash haul has two big advantages: reducing the waste pile-up in already overburdened landfills and adding a secondary source of funding to the local economy, who ultimately benefit from local compost production.

Food waste contributes to methane in landfills, and landfills account for more than 20 percent of methane emissions in the U. Methane, in turn, contributes to global warming.

Food that is purposefully composted in bio-reactors cylinder-shaped machines that look like silos and decompose food waste at high speed produces two energy products that can actually make money for cities. According to the report,. The final product of the compost is a fertilizer that is often sold back to cities to help maintain their public green spaces. Non-profit organizations like City Harvest in New York City also help to limit food waste by reclaiming discarded food from stores and restaurants and using it to feed the hungry.

City Harvest has been in practice for 30 years now, and they claim to rescue at least , pounds of food each day, which feeds more than 1.