Earth Day is April 22. A commitment to composting reduces your family’s household waste and reuses that waste in a healthy manner. It’s the simplest, lowest cost thing your family can do to make a positive impact on the environment.

What is composting?

Composting is when you turn your organic waste-vegetable scraps, coffee grounds and yard waste- into a nutrient rich substance that helps other plants grow. This is a natural process… you just need to give Mother Nature the opportunity to work her magic!

Why compost?

I used to think it didn’t matter if I sent organic waste to the landfill because it would decompose anyway. Not true. Organics can only decompose when water and oxygen are present. Since the garbage in landfills is tightly compressed, water and oxygen can’t get in. Eventually the organics will break down but the by-products are methane (a greenhouse gas 20 times stronger than carbon dioxide) and leachate (a toxic garbage soup). Our landfills produce 38% of Canada's methane emissions, which is a major contributor to global warming.

About 40% of household waste is compostable food and yard waste. So you can cut the amount of garbage your family sends to the landfill nearly in half by composting! The less garbage you send to the landfill, the less money your municipality will spend on waste management expenses like garbage pick-up, transportation and landfill costs. More municipalities are implementing limits on how much trash they will pick up each week for just this reason. For example, residents of Airdrie & Cochrane (just outside of Calgary) are limited to 2 bags of trash per week, and must pay more for any additional bags.

Unless you live in the City of Toronto, composting organic waste is the responsibility of individual residents. Like many other cities, Toronto has run out of local landfill space. They now truck all their municipal waste to Michigan at a vastly increased cost.

Toronto’s goal is to divert 70% of their waste from landfills by 2010. A major aspect of this plan includes their Green Bin Program, where single-family households can put organics out for collection alongside garbage and recycling. Check out all the things that can go into the Toronto Green Bins:

• meat, fruits, shellfish, fish products
• pasta, bread, cereal
• dairy products, egg shells
• coffee grounds, filters, tea bags
• soiled paper like fast food paper packaging and ice cream boxes
• soiled paper towels, tissues
• paper coffee cups, paper plates
• household plants, including soil
• diapers, sanitary products
• animal waste, bedding (e.g. from bird/hamster cages)
• kitty litter
• pet food

While not all these items can go into your home composter because of odor and pest problems, it gives you an idea of how much waste can actually be diverted from landfills and turned into something useful.

Another great reason to compost is that when added to your yard and garden it helps create healthy soil. Adding compost to soil helps break up clay, adds nutrients and increases water retention for healthier plants. And the best part about creating your own compost at home is that it is free fertilizer! Even better, you know exactly where the compost came from, what’s in it.

Getting Started:

Start by choosing the method of composting that’s right for you: traditional back yard composting, vermicomposting or using the seasonal yard waste collection programs offered by most cities.

Most cities provide ample resources to help you get started with traditional back yard composting. Many sell city-subsidized composting bins. For example, The City of Calgary offers residents Earth Machine composting bins for only $25. They describe step-by-step how to compost in their easy to follow “Composting in Calgary” brochure (www.calgary.ca search “What is Composting” and select the “Composting in Calgary) and sponsor frequent and free composting workshops (call 311 or Clean Calgary Association). The cities of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver all have similar resources so check their websites for more information.

If you don’t have a yard or have wild animals in your neighbourhood then vermicomposting might be for you. Vermicomposting is when you feed your organic kitchen waste- again to red wiggler worms. The worms literally eat your garbage and break it down into fertilizer!

The Province of Alberta has a guide to vermicomposting outlining all the basics. Go to www.environment.gov.ab.ca, search “Vermicomposting” and look for the link to the booklet “Taking Action Through Vermicomposting to Reduce Kitchen Waste”. Or consult the book Worms Eat My Garbage by Mary Appelhof.

For seasonal yard waste collection programs (Christmas trees, leaves, pumpkins) search your city’s website for collection sites.

If you already consider yourself a master composter and want to take it to the next level you can compost pet waste and meat products in a separate composter called The Digester. It’s available in Calgary from the Clean Calgary Ecostore (www.cleancalgary.org).

Lauren Maris is the author of Live Green, Calgary! and owner of EarthWise Solutions. She helps Calgarians use less energy, produce less waste and save money. She can be contacted at info@livegreencalgary.com.