Ezra Joddie Galle

4611512084

Bahasa Inggris III

Our Lifestyle and Evironment: Why We Should Compost

Composting is a sacred act. A person who composts thoughtfully is a shepherd over

the transformation from death into life. Without the holy cycle of decay and rebirth that the
composter harnesses for her garden, life on this planet could not exist.

Composting is far more than just free fertilizer for the garden. It’s a vital and
necessary sustainability strategy for reducing waste, closing the nutrient cycle, and
preventing air pollution that causes climate change.

Composting can remove 20-50% from your household waste stream, reducing the
burden on landfills while replenishing your lawn, trees, houseplants, or garden for free. (And
if you pay for trash pick-up, composting can save you money there, too.)

When organic matter like food waste goes to the landfill, it ends up decomposing
anaerobically—or without oxygen. This process creates methane, a greenhouse gas 20-35
times more potent than carbon dioxide at warming our planet. Landfills are the United States’
third largest source of methane emissions, according to the EPA. If we composted food and
other organic waste instead of throwing it away, we’d need fewer landfills, and they wouldn’t
emit methane. Food does not belong in landfills.

For your soil, there is no more powerful ingredient than compost. Whether you till it
into your garden beds or use it as mulch around shrubs and trees, it is considered essential to
organic and sustainable food production. Once it’s in the soil, finished compost—or humus—
increases fertility, adds both micro- and macronutrients, buffers pH, prevents diseases, breaks
down toxins, and improves soil structure.

But even if you don’t have a garden, composting is still a vitally important practice.
We humans take far more carbon, minerals and organic matter from the soil than we put
back. But without humus, soil becomes dead, inert mineral dust that won’t grow anything but
weeds. Returning as much of our organic waste as we can to the soil will begin to rebalance
the nutrient cycle we depend on for our very survival.

Composting Basics
 The basics of composting are simple. Pretty much anything that once lived or was
made from a living thing can be composted. As long as an item contains all natural
components, it will decay, decompose and break down, returning it’s nutrients to the soil.

A compost pile can be as easy as starting a heap of veggie scraps, dead leaves, and
grass clippings in the far corner of your yard, but most people like to contain their compost in
a neat-looking compost bin.

There are many different kinds of compost bins to fit every living situation: simple
pallet bins, tumblers that make turning the compost easy, towers for urban yards and small
spaces, and even worm composters that will make fast, odorless work of all your table scraps
in the space under your kitchen sink. Select the bin style that works for you, and if it is an
outdoor model, install it near the garden, away from your house.

Once you have reached a critical mass of scraps in your bin (usually about a cubic
yard of material or a 3’x3’x3′ pile), it will begin to noticeably break down. After everything
has decomposed and transformed into dark, rich-smelling, crumbly humus (see picture
above), you can sprinkle it around your trees, lawn, garden or houseplants to help them grow.

Considered “black gold” by most gardeners, even if you don’t garden yourself, you
could easily give your compost away to your neighborhood green thumb! She’d be so
grateful. Avid gardeners never seem to have enough compost.