What is the Need of Composting Garden Waste

The need to compost garden waste is clearly expressed by a wide range of benefits associated with it. This natural process saves you resources, improves the quality of your soil, and it reduces environmental degradation. The moment you understand the benefits, you will always find it to be something worthwhile to do.

Composting is responsible for fertilizing your garden. It enriches the soil with various nutrients and valuable microorganisms that enhance the growth of your plants. Whenever you need to boost productivity of you land, you will not need to resort to the use of chemical fertilizers that end up polluting your environment. Composting is also known to improve the stability of your soil, facilitates drainage as well as moisture retention.

You will need to compost because it is the most effective way of reducing the amount of waste that your family or your community can take to the landfill. According to Environmental Protection Agency, about 30% of all waste released to the environment is food waste. Apart from reducing harmful gases that are responsible for global warming, composting food waste also controls the litter and the odor in the environment.

You can easily justify the need to compost garden waste with the following reasons:

It saves you money because -:

You will not need to purchase chemical fertilizers when compost manure is freely available.

The ability of your soil to retain moisture improves. This therefore reduces the amount of water you may need to supply for irrigation.

The nutrients from the compost do not go to waste because they are not prone to erosion.

It saves you other resources because:

With compost you can keep a vital resource outside the landfill.

You will require less water for use in your garden because compost has moisture retention properties.

The costs associated with waste collection will definitely reduce, and there would be no need for use of any type of fuel.

Compost can lengthen the life of landfills. You will note that garden waste consists of 40% organic materials, 42% potentially recyclable materials, and 18% of other materials.

It improves your soil fertility because:

Compost replenishes important nutrients in the soil. This helps in maintaining the quality and the fertility of them soil.

Compost is known to be mild, natural fertilizer which is released slowly into the soil. It does not damage the soil in the manner that chemical fertilizers do.

Compost makes the texture of the soil better. It also improves air circulation in heavy soils.

Compost supplies valuable organic materials and humus that make plants to flourish. This increases farm productivity.

Compost helps in controlling weeds leading to improved health of plants.

It reduces negative environmental impact because:

Green House Gases (GHGs) are reduced in the following two ways :

A. Composting eliminates transportation of the food waste. Therefore, the carbon dioxide (CO2) that would have been emitted to the environment by motor vehicles is avoided.

B. Composting curtails anaerobic breaking down of organic matter in the landfills. Therefore, there would not be any methane gas emitted to the environment. Methane is known to be 21 times more harmful than carbon dioxide.

Since composting limits the use of chemical fertilizers, water sources such as rivers, lakes, and streams are not polluted.

The possibility of ground water pollution is less because composting prevents buried organic matter reacting with metals to create toxic leachate.

Garbage volume in the environment becomes less.

The beauty of composting is that you create a natural cycle whereby you return the plants you grow back to the soil and use them to grow a new generation of plants, some of which come back to the table as food. You just need to make a small investment of time so that you can make a valuable contribution to your community.

You will be able to solve for them the problem of waste disposal and at the same time enrich the soil, improve the productivity of your yard as you protect the environment. Composting Garden waste in particular may not be a pleasant endeavor, but the wide range of its benefits drives you to always like and do. This is a process that the world desperately needs.