Is hate too strong a word? Maybe it’s more of a general disinterest in gardening as a hobby or lack of confidence in our ability to make a garden a reliable source of food.
I see you, non-gardener.
I’ll tell you a secret, I’m not a gardener either. More often than not, my starts don’t start or I forget to water things or a bear eats everything that makes it past July.
But here’s another secret: We don’t have to win at gardening to benefit directly from composting.
Here’s how it works: In our kitchen, there’s a paper bag on the floor. This is our bespoke compost bin. It’s also free.
You might choose to use a five-gallon bucket with a twist-off lid or a plastic Tupperware you keep in the freezer or one of those fancy stainless steel countertop canisters you get on West Elm. It doesn’t matter.
There’s a ripped-up cereal box at the bottom of the bag, a shredded pasta box, and last week’s newspaper ripped in strips. On top of that is a waxed butter wrapper and the shredded pieces of the box it came in.
Then orange peels. Salmon skin. And yes, chicken bones, steak bones, fat from ham. Moldy bread. Soggy cereal. Even the hair from the dog’s brush. Lint from the dryer. Paper towels and paper plates. It’s a week of family kitchen scraps. You get the idea.
Most things that were once alive can be composted. It’s more than you’d think.
All this could be landfilled, where we pay in the short term for the privilege of never seeing it again, and pay in the long term for the methane it becomes.
Alternatively, we can sort our compost and bring it to food scrap drop-off every weekend. This is the only work you need to do to rescue a valuable resource. Choosing to save money and sort compost at home gives food scraps the chance to be recycled into stable, carbon-sequestering soil rather than wasted and landfilled.
Think of it as a long-term gift to the earth in the form of our collective future and as a short-term gift to yourself in the form of all the pizza you can buy with the money you save. No gardening required.
Food scraps are a valuable resource for building soil to grow more food, whether we’re the ones who grow it or not. There’s a job for everyone, and we don’t have to do it all to do the right thing.
If you’ve been thinking about composting in your home, this is the season. Who knows, maybe it’ll make you want to start a garden.
How and where to drop off household food scraps: hainescompost.com
Questions welcome: [email protected]