I do a lot of cooking from scratch, so inevitably I have a lot of food scraps like peels, egg shells and stems. When I lived at home in Alberta, we always composted these scraps or fed them to pigs or chickens. However, in the city having pigs, chickens or even an outdoor compost heap isn't an option.
Last year at Queen's I was privileged to be the Residence Advisor on the "Green Floor" where we had our very own vermicompster - courtesy of an absolutely amazing group of people who worked hard to have the trial project run in residences. It was a great success, and you can see the results from the one year pilot project here where we diverted about 44 kg of waste from landfills and could have done way more had we had a bigger composter.
Vermicomposters are great -they can be kept indoors and are almost completely odorless. The one we had in rez was housed in a beautiful wooden box that looked a bit like a chest of drawers. Vermicomposting, for those of you who don't know, is the process of having worms (usually red-wrigglers) process our organic waste and turn in in great fertilizer for our plants! You can't put as much stuff in it as you would an ordinary compost heap, but we don't all have room for a compost heap. If properly maintained, there will be no oder or fruit flies, and in the end you will have some great soil for your plants!
Many cities have composting programs as well, but I think that if you can have a worm box or a compost-heap out back that is even better because Green-Bin collection programs needs fossil fuels to transport the waste and in the end you don't get to use the soil for your garden and plants!
My housemate right now has a wormbox for our apartment, and it is a great way to cut down on our waste. Remember, organic waste trapped in a plastic garbage bag cannot decompose properly and will release a lot of methane gas!
There are a lot of resources out on the web to help you with creating your own composting solution, whether it be vermicomposting, a compost heap or participating in a Green-Bin collection program. As for me, I think I will go feed the worms and not the landfill.
Landfill methane gas can be captured and used for energy! I just went on a tour of the Waterloo landfill that are doing just that! Although, I agree that REDUCING is always the best choice.
ReplyDeleteThat's super cool! However, it seems to me that they are treating a symptom rather than a cause -though I wish all landfills would/could capture methane gas to use for energy!
ReplyDelete