Learn more about how you and your family can go green by composting kitchen scraps and reducing your carbon footprint.
If you are seeking new and easy ways to reduce your environmental impact as much as you can, finding simple and effortless solutions that can help make recycling easier is the way to go. Recycling the glass and plastic that you use in the home is a great start, but composting your leftover food scraps is a great way to use otherwise unwanted food items. If you know what to compost, have proper equipment to store food scraps and manage your compost correctly, you can easily have nutrient-rich compost for your home or garden. Here are tips to help you figure out the process.
Know what foods to compost
While certain foods can create a rich and nutrient-rich soil for plants, other foods can ruin a compost project and leave you with a stinky compost pail with little nutrients for plants. Foods you should use in your compost include grains like rice and oats, old breads, fruit and vegetable scraps, egg shells and even coffee grounds and teas bags. Items you must never compost are meat products, fish and shellfish, dairy products like butter, cheese, and yogourt, and oils or fats of any kind. Using these items will throw off the balance of nutrients in the compost, attract rodents and maggots, and will smell terrible.
Use the correct equipment
Make sure to buy a pail with a secure lid to keep out pests. A great tip is to line the lid with newspaper to keep out fruit flies. Get a pail with enough storage for your food scraps and buy one with a handle for easy transportation. Size may matter in your kitchen, so a pail that can fit under the sink is a good option. Outside your home it's recommended to build a larger compost bin where you can bring your kitchen compost, but you can also use a large plastic bin just as easily.
Managing your compost
As your pail fills up, take the compost outside to your larger compost bin and scatter it evenly. Depending on how many food scraps your house creates, you may need to empty your food scrap pail daily or every few days. Then add a layer of dirt, leaves, or sawdust on top. As you continue to add food scraps to the bin and layer it with organic material, the scraps will begin to breakdown into nutrient-rich soil.
With just a few items you can begin making your own nutrient-rich compost for your home or garden giving you rich soil for gardening projects or household plants.
