Sustainable Composting: On Your Personal Pathway to Zero Waste

by Fred Horch, Principal Advisor at Sustainable Practice

North Americans could eliminate about half of what we send to landfills, by getting better at just one thing.

Is it recycling?

Nope, it’s composting.

It wouldn’t hurt to get much better at recycling, but that wouldn’t have nearly the same positive impact as composting. More than half of our garbage is food waste, yard waste, paper, wood chips, shavings and sawdust, and natural textiles, collectively called “organic waste” because it was once alive.

If we could get really good at composting, we would

• save money by doubling the available capacity of our existing garbage trucks and landfills,
• return valuable nutrients in our organic waste back to our soil,
• eliminate the methane problem in our landfills, which we cause by burying organic waste in them, and
• avoid the air pollution and ash disposal challenges of waste-to-energy facilities that burn organic waste instead of composting it.

Sustainability Step: Got Compost?

Here’s a practical sustainability step you can take on your pathway to zero waste: help your own family, organization, or neighborhood collect all your organic waste separately from non-compostable waste. Keep food scraps, natural fiber (including paper, cotton and…