Spoil your garden rotten

The benefits of recycling glass and paper are well known, but many cities are just realizing the value of recycling banana peels and coffee grounds.

Many organic materials -- possibly 30-50% of the waste we produce -- pile up in expensive and environmentally-unfriendly landfills when they could be composted and turned into something useful.

Composting has been around for thousands of years, and requires just a few simple things: air, water, carbon ("brown" materials, like leaves or straw), and nitrogen ("green" materials, such as food scraps). A good balance of those elements provides a suitable home for a host of microorganisms and invertebrates that are only too happy to help turn organic waste into nutrient-rich compost.

Composting also has a certain DIY appeal for many gardeners. It's easy to do at home, and not as messy or smelly as you might think. Even urban gardeners can set up simple home composters, and with a little care, the neighbors will never notice that box of decomposing orange rinds on the back porch. Some cities have even launched curbside compost programs so that city dwellers can put their putrescible kitchen scraps to good use.

Why feed a landfill when you could feed a garden instead?

• HowToCompost.org - instructions and links to get you started.
• Introduction to Composting - a step-by-step guide to starting your own compost system.
• Food Waste Recovery - case studies of three successful California composting programs.
• Cornell Composting - the science behind composting, plus tips for composting in schools and at home.

Directory categories: Composting, Composting Equipment, Worm Composting, Worms for Sale

Originally posted on The Spark, a daily blog where Yahoo! Directory editors highlight new and interesting content on the Web.