Composting: Part 1 - Reasons Why It’s Important

Composting is an essential part in eliminating organic waste and fertilizing soil with new nutrients while helping the Earth be healthier. Composting is essentially taking raw material such as leaves, dead plants, and kitchen scraps and using them to fertilize soil organically for healthier plants and a healthier planet. Still not convinced? Here are some reasons why composting is important:

1. Taking care of waste to fuel plants

Since composting is all about using scrap raw material, it means even waste is put to good use. Leaf clippings, dead plants, and kitchen scraps such as inedible parts of fruit and vegetables, stems, and cores can all be used to make your garden plants flourish even better than before. Not only are you boosting your plants’ health, but you’re also taking care of a lot of the food waste that would otherwise fill landfills.

2. Saving money

When people want to boost their soil’s nutrients, some tend to not think much about it and just go to the store to buy soil or microbe boosters. The money spent on these isn’t justifiable when you could easily do it yourself at home. You have the simple ingredients every day in your own kitchen and in your garden as well. Why not just use the scraps to enrich your soil instead of spending more money than you have to?

3. Making micro-organisms thrive

Plants are easily prone to disease, but if your soil is rich in micro-organisms, that’ll help them flourish. These microbes thrive in compost simply because you feed them when needed, which drastically increases their populations. As a result of promoting biodiversity, your plants stay healthier longer and have fewer problems in the future.

4. Fighting climate change

Climate change and global warming are real problems in this world, but there are ways to fight these problems if we just take initiative. Landfills are the biggest emitters of methane gases, which directly affects climate change. Composting plays a small but crucial role in helping protect our planet from further damage.

There are tons of other reasons why composting should be adopted by everybody. If you’d like to know more about it and find out ways you can do it, try reading Composting for Dummies, by Cathy Cromell. This book gives a great overview of composting, and ways to grow a healthy garden using your kitchen and garden waste. Find that and more about gardening and helping the earth in our online library, www.spiritti.com. There are many ways to compost, outdoors and indoors, so if you’re interested, stay tuned for the second part to this composting series where we’ll discuss the different ways you can compost!