Few people in the modern world think about what happens to their rubbish once they throw it away. An estimated one-third of the world's food is wasted a year, amounting to 1.3 billion tons.
With a large amount of this ending up in landfills, it’s time to start thinking about creative ways we can utilize our waste for our benefit, that of our community, our environment and our planet.
Community composting is rising in popularity due to increased concerns about sustainability. By creating a communal composting system, you’re able to turn waste into a useful product that can enrich soil, increase biodiversity and allow a community to obtain a yield from communal gardens. It can also serve as a means of bringing together disparate parts of a community, such as local businesses, neighbors and people of different ages.
Let’s look at some of the benefits of starting a community composting initiative.
Key Takeaways
1. Backyard Composting
Waste doesn't exist in natural systems. By recycling our organic material and food waste back into the soil, we can better imitate nature and live more lightly on the planet that sustains us. Humans are the only creatures who create waste, and our current systems of disposal are creating vast amounts of harm when they could be utilized as a valuable resource.
Compost bins reduce food waste and other types of organic waste, for that matter, sent to landfills and can be made in an infinite amount of ways; from fruit and vegetable scraps, unused food, tree and grass clippings and other materials from the garden. Waste is turned into a useful product that can be used in a myriad of ways for the benefit of the whole community of beings, human and non-human alike.
Composting also provides a positive impact on the environment, as it decreases greenhouse gas emissions. The decomposition process produces biogenic carbon dioxide instead of methane emissions, which helps mitigate climate change by supporting a healthier and more resilient ecosystems. Composting improves soil health, and the nutrient rich soil created by finished compost acts as a carbon sink that sequester carbon dioxide from the air and stores it.
Compost can reduce the need for synthetic fertilizers, which are energy-intensive to produce and release greenhouse gases during their manufacturing and transportation.
2. Food Scraps Improve The Soil
Composting happens on its own in natural systems such as forests when organic matter such as leaves and branches fall and decompose. This feeds the soil-food web and increases fertility and thus biodiversity. By mimicking this natural process, we can harness the power of nature and create an abundant harvest for our community, whether that be the growing of seasonal vegetables, herbs and flowers in a community garden, or fertilizing trees and plants for a recreational communal space.
Compost improves soil fertility, structure and nutrients, creating a healthy soil that helps plant life to grow healthier and stronger. It can help backyard farmers and the community reduce their reliance on chemical fertilizers, which require so much energy to produce and emit huge amounts of greenhouse gases.
Compost also helps with water retention and absorption, reducing irrigation needs as well as reducing flooding and erosion risks. Compost can also be used to generate heat, which can be used in a number of creative ways, including heating a greenhouse, or warming up water.
3. The Composting Process Provides Autonomy
Producing your food is an empowering step to take, especially as industrial agriculture wreaks havoc on our health and on that of our planet. Composting can provide vital nutrients needed to feed the soil, which can, in turn, feed you. The scraps from your food and garden waste can then be turned into compost. This cycle can go on infinitely, in what is known as closing the loop. Urban food production can thus help people who may not have access to healthy food otherwise obtain it sustainably.
Community composting can help urban dwellers have easy access to organic soil improvements that can allow them to grow healthy and abundant, nutrient-dense organic food. Without this, city people, with their limited access to land resources could struggle to get the soil to its required fertility levels to reap bountiful harvests.
4. Helps with Education
Community composting and the management of community gardens can help educate urban dwellers and help inspire them to take up more sustainable lifestyles. This can be of incredible benefit to everyone, especially young ones.
By teaching about nutrient cycling, conscious consumption, soil degradation and improvement, and the impacts of a changing climate we can help sow the seeds for a brighter and more sustainable future.
Community members young and old can learn how to cultivate and take care of plants and live a more sustainable, fulfilling and connected life.
5. Brings People Together
Community composting alongside community gardens can help create and maintain social cohesion, which is becoming increasingly important in such fragmented times. It can foster beneficial traits such as working together towards shared goals and bringing a greater sense of environmental responsibility and hands-on participation through volunteering and resource sharing.
6. Economic Benefits
Creating a compost initiative can help create a local waste management system, whereby organic waste which is usually taken away to landfills is used to obtain a yield and provide potential for economic benefits. The initiative can open up countless economic opportunities within the community, from collection to distribution, whilst simultaneously benefiting the environment and local biodiversity.
The resulting compost can be given away freely to participants in the scheme, sold, or used in public spaces as is deemed fit.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Creating a community compost initiative can provide benefits for local residents, improve sustainability, increase biodiversity and help city dwellers to obtain a yield. Not only will it help reduce waste, but can also help bring communities together by creating a greater sense of cohesion, and autonomy in uncertain times, as well as natural world education. The resulting compost can be distributed freely between participants, sold or traded. It could be used to fertilise community vegetable gardens or green spaces for the benefit of all community members.
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