You might find yourself stuck with rotting fruits or vegetables with no clue what to do with all this waste. Composting is a great alternative to simply throwing your food waste in the trash.
Did you know that Canadian landfills accounted for 17% of national methane emissions!
The best way to reduce methane emissions through personal action is to divert it from landfills. In nature, methane is produced by the anaerobic (absence of oxygen) bacterial decomposition of vegetable matter. There are multiple ways to prevent this methane release, and one of those solutions can be beneficial for your garden, and improves your soil, therefore saving you money!
In the pictures above, several food waste items are present.
- Brocoli base
- Expired salad (slimy texture)
- Moldy cucumber
These discarded food items are a great way to add nitrogen in your garden soil!
Here we took the waste and blended it (be mindful that this consumes quite a lot of energy), in order to pour it in our composting pile, mainly composed of leaves that were left over the winter. Critters could potentially be attracted to your compost pile if the smell is too strong, but by having more carbon (leaves) than nitrogen (greens) the smell remains reasonable and because the food has been blended, there is not much for the animals to scavenge.
Nitrogen is vital for plant growth, as it's a major part of chlorophyll, the compound needed for photosynthesis.
Ammonium is also a key source of nitrogen, and if you happen to have a fish tank at home, this means that you have a regular supply of it, as ammonium is excreted as a byproduct of fish metabolism, primarily through their gills, but also through urine and feces. With the regular cleaning of your tank, ammonium can be reused as well as the waste water.
Another way to add nitrogen in your garden is with coffee grounds. However before adding coffee grounds it is important to check the benefits and consequences of adding coffee grounds into your soil, as the grounds can have an important effect on your soil's pH level (acidity).
During your gardening make sure to stay hydrated and safe from the sun (shade, sunscreen or adequate clothing to avoid sunburns). If you need to take a bathroom break, you might want to consider watering your garden, studies have shown that urine if a great fertilizer and can even be more efficient than industrial fertilizers (Ranasinghe et al. 2016).
It is also important to remember that if you cannot reuse your food waste in your own garden, composting is equally as important. If your city or municipality does not have composting facilities look for alternatives (especially in rural areas) or reach out to your local politician to establish a composting infrastructure in your area, which will not only benefit you and those around but also our planet :)
Have a sunny day!
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