Why Compost When I Can Landfill It?

Obviously I'm joking about the title, but people often forget that one of the main benefits of composting relates to greenhouse gas reduction.  How?  You may have wondered about this before...I know I did.  Why would throwing food scraps in my backyard pile be any different than in a landfill? It all started today when I was reading a document about waste treatment methods (my other favorite topic) and I noticed a parallel with composting.  It was comparing the global warming potential of carbon dioxide alongside methane. When waste is incinerated, it creates carbon dioxide amongst many other toxins that are conveniently ignored, although they include lead, mercury, dioxin, furans, and hydrochloric acid amongst others.  Carbon dioxide (CO2) has a global warming potential of 1.0. On the other hand, landfilling…

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An Often Overlooked Advantage of Compost Is… (video)

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4vb3uuWXfE During my Clash of the Composts experiment, I reaffirmed the conclusion that compost is awesome, and during this huge storm we had recently, got to observe how compost helps prevent erosion. Notice that the only pot without compost (the control on the left) has an inch of water on top, while the other 4 basil plots with compost have no problem dealing with a heavy downpour.  Compost helps build your soil's structure by increasing its fertility while resisting erosion quite nicely.

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