Everyone Should Compost

Over the past few years, composting in Oregon has become more and more normal and yet, so many people still do not compost, even me sometimes. The benefits of composting provide so much to our world, including more fertilization for our organically grown food and better use of our food waste. By not composting, our environment is affected by not giving our soil, which is used to grow our organic foods, the nutrients it needs to prosper these seeds. For us, individually, composting helps to bring us those organic foods as well as helping us to not waste food, but reuse it in a good way. One of the major problems I’ve heard about when people have said they do not compost is because “it is an inconvenience.” Composting does take a few extra seconds to walk over to the compost bin and dump the uneaten food into it, but it doesn’t take that long. Now a few seconds adding up can be a while but I believe it is worth it for the benefits that composting brings to the environment and to ourselves, and our community is worth the extra few seconds. But for those people who believe they cannot waste those few seconds a few times a day, we’ll take it slow.

My goal for whoever is reading this is to help you, your family, your friends, and you community build up the time it takes to compost. Little by little it will become normal and it will become just another habit, and a daily task to help our world one plate of food at a time. I want everyone who has ever told me they do not compost to slowly start composting, whether that be once a day, a certain type of food that they eat daily, or a time of day when they compost whatever is left of their food. Whatever it may be, I want all of those people to begin to compost. Starting now, compost once a day at least. Once you get to a week of composting once a day, now do it twice. Once you hit two weeks, compost three times, and just keep building and if you get off of course, return to what you were doing before. You don’t need to start all over, but if you stopped after two days of composting four times a day, return to composting four times a day. Build that habit and once you reach the point when you are composting all of the food of your day, stick with it. In the long run, not only are you helping out yourself and community, but also animals, farmers, workers, and the Earth, for just doing this one simple task daily. To know if this intervention is working, keep track on a piece of paper or in your phone and tally yourself for how many times you compost and if you want, reward yourself.

There are many possible alleys when beginning to compost. You may not even know it, but many people around you have probably been composting for a long time. They have tips and they know little tricks about smells and when to clean it out, and they are also in support of what you are doing. Along with your composting neighbors, there are different bloggers, YouTubers, celebrities, and advocates for composting which can help to spark some good ideas with composting. A barrier that could keep you from this composting journey could appear in many forms such as being forgetful. Set a reminder in your phone. People forget things all the time, so at the beginning set a reminder to keep you on track to help yourself and the Earth, scrap by scrap.

Anyone can compost. It’s a choice which can become a lifestyle and anyone can do it.

Sources:

http://makedirtnotwaste.org/sites/default/files/composting_factsheet_0.pd https://homeguides.sfgate.com/composting-helps-environment-23577.html