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How I Enslaved Hundreds to Do My Dirty Work In Saving the Planet

And why I had to stop

By Denise SheltonPublished 3 years ago 4 min read
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How I Enslaved Hundreds to Do My Dirty Work In Saving the Planet
Photo by Morten Jakob Pedersen on Unsplash

Compost is organic material that can be added to soil to help plants grow. Food scraps and yard waste together currently make up more than 30 percent of what we throw away and could be composted instead. Making compost keeps these materials out of landfills where they take up space and release methane, a potent greenhouse gas.--Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) website

I have a long and checkered history with composting. When I was young, my parents' family business was a flower shop and nursery. Any leftover clippings or dead plants, along with food waste from our home, went on the compost heap behind our greenhouses. It was massive, and to the uninitiated in the rites of transforming waste into plant food, it looked like a giant pile of garbage.

The author's sisters in front of the family business (Photo by Walter Luczai)

The garbage-like appearance of our compost heap was noticed by members of the local high school's "Earth Committee" and included in a film they made of environmental atrocities they'd discovered around town. The film was such a hit: the teens brought it around to all the elementary schools to lecture us younglings on the evils of improper waste disposal.

Naturally, I was mortified when they got around to my class, and everyone realized they were showing our compost heap. They started whispering and snickering. It wasn't the worst day of my life, but it was in the top five, considering I was only 12.

By Emiliano Vittoriosi on Unsplash

I have had some payback, though. The ringleader who gave the lecture ended up marrying one of my sisters. I never pass up an opportunity to rub in the fact that he mistook our "green" compost heap for a garbage dump, something only a green environmentalist would do!

Flash forward forty years...

Now grown and growing vegetables at home, I began to get interested in organic gardening. I read about the boost that black gold (a nickname for compost) could give to your plants without resorting to commercially available amendments. The best part was, it was free.

I read many articles and watched YouTube videos online about the various composting methods before I decided to give vermicomposting a try. For the price of a steady supply of food and shelter, earthworms would speed up the composting process considerably, and all I had to do was throw in some veggie scraps and cardboard strips occasionally and wait to reap the benefits.

By Neslihan Gunaydin on Unsplash

Where do you get the worms?

(Source: unclejimswormfarm.com)

Some people dig up worms themselves, but since a decent worm bin operation requires a couple hundred of the little wigglers, I opted to buy them online from Uncle Jim's Worm Farm. Uncle Jim sells everything you need for a vermicomposting set-up, but making your own worm bin is a lot less expensive. I learned how by watching videos like this one.

I maintained my worm bins for about a year or two. I sometimes froze then thawed bags of scraps to help the worms break them down more quickly. I was pretty pleased with my efforts, and I harvested some great black gold for my garden.

It feels virtuous to make your own compost for several reasons: organic gardening produces healthier food for your family, vegetables that go bad don't go to waste, and you're keeping waste out of the landfills.

There was just one problem...

After maintaining my worm bins for a while, something strange happened. I started to feel guilty about taking the worms out of their natural habit and putting them to work for me. Oh, sure, they probably ate better than they ever would have down in the dirt, but I couldn't shake the feeling that I was exploiting them. Believe me, I know how ridiculous that sounds, but we can't help how we feel about things, and I no longer felt good about this.

By Viktor Talashuk on Unsplash

Free Wiggly

I released my worms into the wild (okay, into my garden bed) and sold my homemade worm bins on Craigslist. I still compost, but I do it without the worms. Worms still work in my garden, but in the way nature intended, not falling all over each other in a plastic bin. My current set-up doesn't break down the scraps into compost nearly as fast, but that's a small price to pay for a clear conscience.

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About the Creator

Denise Shelton

Denise Shelton writes on a variety of topics and in several different genres. Frequent subjects include history, politics, and opinion. She gleefully writes poetry The New Yorker wouldn't dare publish.

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