Composting is the process of breaking down organic matter and converting it into a humus-like substance that is rich in nutrients. It consists of a three-stage process in which organic material undergoes aerobic bacterial and fungal action.
We take food and other waste consisting of nitrogen-rich materials (called “green”) that we combine with carbon-rich materials (called “brown”). These materials are placed into a pile or container where we allow them to break down using heat, microbes (like bacteria), worms, or combinations. The remaining material is fantastic for gardening, fertilizing, and a number of other uses.
The Many Benefits of Composting
The benefits of composting soil come from different factors. We break them down into a few categories to make them easier to discuss. Our categories for the benefits of composting are
- Soil and Gardening Benefits
- Economic Benefits
- Social Benefits
- Environmental Benefits
Of course, composting leads to a combination of all these things. Often, they overlap. The big part is that composting isn’t just about gardening. It can save money and the environment and even make for a better world for all of us and our children. Yes, it’s that helpful.
Soil Benefits of Composting
Composting leads to a number of benefits for the soil. This is often what people think of when they think of composting. It’s more than just fertilizing, though.
Compost Increases Soil Moisture
Compost has the ability to hold a considerable amount of moisture. It has space within it to absorb and hold moisture. When it’s mixed with soil, it helps the moisture content of that soil.
To mix materials, its ability to absorb moisture and air and the spaces between the various particles within compost help it to hold water. This moisture makes the soil more effective when the compost is added. The moisture feeds the plants, and the compost continues to hold water during rain, runoff, and other events.
Compost Prevents Soil Erosion
Compost has the ability to help prevent soil erosion. It does this through a variety of mechanisms that all work together.
- Slows Water Flow – The ability of compost to hold moisture means that it absorbs more moisture than soil alone, particularly when that soil is naturally dry. This absorption slows the flow of water through the compost.
- Soil Binding – The humus acts like glue for the soil it’s added to. It holds the soil particles together, preventing them from being eroded by moisture passing over it.
- Improved Infiltration – Infiltration is the ability of the soil to allow moisture to move into and through the soil. Compost improves this infiltration, allowing for more moisture to move through the soil with stormwater runoff. Stormwater runoff is a key cause of soil erosion. Adding the compost to dense soil helps to prevent erosion from stormwater runoff.
Fertile Soil Benefits of Composting
When many think of compost, they think of its ability to act as a powerful fertilizer, aiding plants with the nutrients that they need to grow.
Composting adds a variety of nutrients to the soil. To properly compost, you want to add material rich in both nitrogen (greens) and carbon (browns). Then you add in water and oxygen. You are trying to create an ideal environment for microbes to grow and break down the material.
When everything is in the right mixes, and your compost pile works great, you have rich humus with many healthy components that promote plant growth. The nitrogen, carbon, water, and other minerals that result all help to create a great environment for the soil to which you add your compost.
The plants love the compost, and they grow and benefit from it.
Reduces the Need for Chemical Fertilizers
Many gardeners worry that when they add organic matter to the soil, they will lose the ability to get their plants to grow. However, this is not a problem – when you add compost to your soil, the microbes living there undergo a process that turns the organic matter into humus. This material is more stable than many chemical fertilizers and won’t leach out of your soil like phosphates.
Compost is entirely natural. Basically, you are giving the nutrients back to the soil that left it when the plants were grown. It’s a powerful fertilizer in its own right, and if you use compost in your soil, there is less need for potentially harmful (and expensive) chemical fertilizers.
Increases the Absorption of Nutrients
Because compost is rich in nutrients, it gives the plants that you put in it more nutrients to absorb. So, adding compost might be a good idea if your soil drains very well and is full of nutrients. For example, it’s been known that adding compost to the top foot of soil will greatly increase the plant’s nitrogen absorption.
Economic Benefits
Surprisingly, composting has a number of economic benefits. These can be just for you as a person or for the whole community.
It’s a Good Fertilizer for Your Plants
Compost is a fertilizer that is better for your plants than many chemical fertilizers. Chemical fertilizers are based on nitrogen and phosphorous, but compost provides a wide variety of nutrients to your soil. For example, compost contains twenty different minerals and thirteen different types of trace elements. It also contains small amounts of carbon, which gives it an oxygen content similar to large amounts of humus.
This reduces or eliminates the chemical fertilizers you need to buy for your garden or lawn. Composting is all natural and doesn’t have the same potential downsides as chemical fertilizers.
It’s an Excellent Source of Mulch
Besides being a fertilizer, other benefits of composting are making soil stronger. Compost is also a great source of mulch – an agricultural term for a material used to cover the soil. Compost provides your plants with mulch because it holds water. Plant roots can then grow through the compost, which gives them something to attach to and easy access to the soil below.
It Helps You Harvest More Produce
If you have a large garden, you might be interested in having all your plants grow as quickly as possible. The best way to do this is by digging up all the topsoil and adding it to your compost pile. After doing this, put a layer of compost on top of the soil and another layer of soil.
Cut Waste Management Costs
The average American produces approximately 3/4 of a ton per year. That’s just one person in one country! Approximately one-third of that is compostable. The economic cost of landfills is immense. Composting reduces the amount of material sent to landfills, reducing our costs as taxpayers and as citizens. Not to mention that it’s far more efficient and better for the environment.
Environmental Benefits of Composting
Environmental Benefits of Composting are handy as it keeps the environment clean and healthy.
Composting Reduces Methane Emissions at Landfills
According to statistics, the United States produces about thirty million cubic meters of organic waste each year. Of this, twenty million cubic meters are dumped into landfills. Landfills are the third largest producer of human-related methane gases. To make matters worse, when this methane reaches the stratosphere, it can also damage ozone layers that protect us from ultraviolet rays that come from the sun. Composting reduces the amount of material in landfills and reduces methane emissions.
It Can Sequester More Carbon From the Air
If you have a large garden and fill it with compost, you’ll be able to sequester carbon better. Carbon sequestration is a process that involves removing carbon from the air, burying it below the ground, or storing it in active forests. According to studies, if you add ten percent of compost to your soil, you will be able to sequester more carbon than if you used one hundred percent of chemical fertilizers.
Composting Makes Use of Agricultural Waste
The majority of organic waste that is produced in the United States comes from animal sources. According to statistics, in 2007, ten billion pounds of organic waste got produced in the U.S., but only four hundred thousand acres of land were used to grow food for human consumption. If all this organic waste could be made into compost, these farms could be used to grow food for human consumption instead of being turned into landfills for human waste or burned for energy.
Social Benefits
It’s a Great Way to Save for the Future
Saving for your future is a good way of ensuring you will have enough money to live off of when you retire. However, if you’re interested in doing this, it might be best to start composting. This is because you’ll need fewer supplies by putting your organic waste into your compost pile and turning it into fertilizer and mulch. This makes a better future for ourselves, our children, and our grandchildren.
It Increases Food Security
Composting is a great way of increasing food security. Farms are more productive and more efficient. They can produce more food for less money and land. Commercial farms aren’t the only ones that benefit. Local and home-based farms can do better as well. Through efficient composting, you can grow more fruits and vegetables on the same land, even on your own land. This helps to make people self-sufficient and improves food security.
Greener Neighborhoods
If you’re interested in making your neighborhood greener, you might want to start composting. As a bonus, if your neighbors start to see you doing this, they’ll also be more likely to start composting. In this way, you will have created a community interested in making the world a better place for future generations. Having Greener neighborhoods are one of the benefits of composting at home.
We share in reducing waste, improving the environment, and saving money through greener neighborhoods.
Sets a Good Example for Our Children and Shows Them Science in Action
Our children learn from our actions. When our children see us composting because we care about the environment, it helps inspire the same in them. This is exponentially greater when they see the entire neighborhood participating. Social adaption normalizes the behavior and teaches our children the benefits of taking care of the environment, recycling, reducing waste, and growing our own food.
Maybe, more importantly, it teaches them how they can do these things. It’s easy to say that you care about the environment, but it’s quite another to show our children how they can do it. Composting, gardening, and taking care of our waste give them actions that they can take to care for our world.
Reduce, reuse, and recycle moves from being a slogan to actions they take and, eventually, a lifestyle.
Composting Makes Good Food
Composting is a great way of making delicious food. Compost is a valuable resource that can be used in many different ways. Vegetables and fruits can be fermented into alcohol by adding them to compost and then allowing them to ferment for a while. This process makes these foods much more wholesome and nutritious than they were before. People have also used commercial compost for making beer, wine, soap, paper, fuel, and many other products that people enjoy eating today.
Composting More Than Just Food Waste
It’s not just about reducing food waste. Composting can also be done with household waste, such as paper products. Many people today prefer to use recycled paper over commercial products. If they choose recycled paper, they should compost it once they’re done using it. Add it to a compost pile, and turn it into fertilizer and mulch for your garden.
Composting Is Easy
Most people don’t compost because they think it’s not easy. But if you’re new to it, you should know that composting is easy. This is because to compost, you don’t need complicated tools or anything like that. All the tools you’ll need are available for just a few dollars. You will also be able to make all kinds of wonderful foods with minimal effort, which are other benefits of composting at home.
The Many Benefits of Composting
These are some of the many benefits of composting. We often think of composting as a way to fertilize our garden. Perhaps we know that it helps to reduce our waste. However, these are part of a much larger group of benefits to us as individuals and the world as a whole. Composting is a wonderful way to care for our world while also improving our gardening and lawn. Often, this takes very little work.