If organic compounds break down in a landfill, they release greenhouse gasses. But the same happens when they break down as compost - something the website forgot to mention.
I support composting because I think it’s good for the planet to save space in landfills for things that need to be buried. But I don’t see how either approach actually helps climate change.
And, in fact, without much study, it seems like landfills are actually sequestering lots of carbon. So if our only focus is on climate change (and it shouldn’t be, to be clear) wouldn’t that be the winning option?
Regarding more potent greenhouse gasses from landfills - I believe most landfills in the US burn (or sell) their waste methane, which just turns it into plain ol’ carbon dioxide.
In composting you have to turn the compost periodically to keep it oxygenated, otherwise you get methane and poor compost.
Also "modern" landfills when filled tend to be "capped" (covered in plastic) so rain doesn't leach though into the groud water. If they have a bottom liner, these landfills are like the worlds largest plastic bags.
To prevent methane building inside the capped landfill, pipes are run and the gas is collected and sometimes "flared" [1]
Having dug into some old old landfills, it was like a time machine of 25+ year old stuff. nothing seems to rot well inside them (no water). papers readable. We found a glass bottle of what appeared to be grape soda.
[1]https://www.epa.gov/lmop/basic-information-about-landfill-ga...
On the other hand, agriculture emissions coming from animals and plant decomposition is small amount of agriculture's emissions in general anyway, so sequestering carbon is a bad reason to not compost, because of all the fertilizer benefits it creates, which means less need for artificialy created fertilizer. About %50 of fertilizer is the natural poop & compost kind.
It's even a bit ironic - there was a time when nature hadn't yet learnt how to break down trees, so a lot of trees accumulated (simplified, I think it is more a then new trick of plant cells that had no "natural enemies"). That organic material is what oil, coal and gas are made from. The irony is that from oil we now make plastic, and nature has not yet found a way to break down plastic. Since microbes can now digest trees, no new oil will be created. But maybe if large enough plastic deposits are accumulated, it could happen again?
(Details may be wrong, as I was too lazy to google, but the gist is, fossil fuels are actually made from organic sources).
https://recycle.com/organics-compost-vs-landfill/#:~:text=La....
I want to make a distinction between anaerobic processes, aerobic composting and the global respiration and carbon cycle.
Anaerobic environments create methane. Aerobic environments create predominantly CO2. One is more harmful than the other in the atmosphere.
Quality composting creates a lot of CO2, but it's a natural part of the respiration of the planet for bacteria to respire CO2 from oxygen and carbon. This happens everywhere there is organic residue breaking down in the natural environment... think leaf matter falling to the forrest floor.
The difference is that it's a "renewable" process, which is why I don't use peat-moss in my worm trenches.
The thing about methane is that it's very often harvested in landfill and burnt as an energy source. However, this may not always be the case, which is why I encourage cafes to take coffee grounds out of landfill and compost them.
Just doing my bit.
CO2 however is released in the natural carbon cycle (of which composting is a part) into the atmosphere... and according to ANU researchers it's responsible for 10-11 times the annual emissions of fossil fuels.
Composting isn't related to our great dinosaur BBQ we have indulged ourselves in for as long as we have been burning fossil fuels, it's actually simply leveraging natural processes to manufacture soil amendments, which means it's a renewable part of the process for generating calories for human consumption.
Basically Composting isn't part of the surplus of carbon entering the atmosphere from fossilised dinosaur bacteria.
It's just the natural respiration and carbon cycle of the planet.
> The purpose of this site is to raise awareness for composting, why it's a good idea, and to encourage as many people as possible to get started.
So, we should composte because it's a good idea? Maybe your kid can expand here a little.
Also... What is composting?
Ps: I'm on mobile maybe the website answers these questions and I can't find where.
Composting is a (1) human-managed (2) aerobic decomposition of organic materials, driven by (3) thermophilic microorganisms (primarily thermophilic bacteria). The result is compost. Anything that doesn't feature all three of the above components isn't composting, it's something else.
Compost is easy to make in your backyard: get enough fencing to create a minimum 1 cubic meter area on the ground (not a paved driveway or something) that you fill with organic material such as leaves and other yard scraps, kitchen scraps, manure, cardboard, dead animals, biochar, etc. It's best to keep wood and large bones out since they won't break down well - you can pyrolysize them instead and then co-compost the resulting biochar. You want air to freely move in and out of the pile, and to keep a thick layer of cover material on top such as dry leaves or hay (best, IMO) to prevent smells. A carbon to nitrogen ratio of around 25:1 works well. Inputs with high CN ratio: dry leaves, cardboard (~450:1), sawdust (500:1), etc. Things with low CN ratio: urine (0.8:1), fresh kitchen scraps (15:1), manure / toilet material, still-green yard scraps, etc. Mixing high and low CN ratio inputs results in a good overall mixture. The compost bin contents must be moist but not wet. I keep a compost thermometer in my pile at all times and currently, my 7-month old pile is around 120F / 48C. This well-above-ambient temperature is the result of thermophilic bacteria creating internal biological heat, a key component that distinguishes compost from other things such as vermiculture. Compost isn't done until it cools to ambient temperature, and then I let it sit for a year.
There are many kinds of decomposition and composting is just one of them. Here are some other kinds:
Combustion: aerobic thermal decomposition, resulting in ash
Pyrolysis: anaerobic thermal decomposition, resulting in biochar
Vermiculture: decomposition via worm digestion, resulting in worm castings, aka worm shit
I've read that vermicultures have a bit of an issue with not neutralizing plant pathogens that you introduce with the worm feed, have you had similar problems with composting, or does the heat usually take care of this issue?
Being made entirely out of expanded polypropylene (not polystyrene/EPS/styrofoam), it is well insulated, can come up to 140°F in 3-7 days[3], and hold steady in the thermophilic range of 100°-140°F continuously so long as it is fed regularly. At those temperatures, those things you normally could not compost without horrid smells or pathogen concerns, like meats, fats, or pet wastes, will break down quickly and safely. Per the manufacturer, due to its insulated nature, it can hold those temperatures even in the dead of winter, making it useful year round instead of just a summer thing.
Yes, it's more expensive than other bins at the same capacity. But if you want to divert your kitchen waste stream from the landfill into producing a useful soil amendment for your own or others' gardens, it's worth it, IMO.
1. https://hotbincomposting-us.com/ (US)
2. https://www.hotbincomposting.com/ (England)
3. No, I am not exaggerating. Ambient to 140°F inside a week is completely doable.
Also we have separate collections for glass, paper, plastic etc. So if you put in some effort, you can go a full year without having to empty your black (landfill) bin.
Separate collection for organic matter, paper, and plastic also differs from municipality to municipality. In mine organic matter and paper has its own bin, but we have no separate plastic bin, and glass goes in public glass recycling containers.
I have three piles going now: one from last year, ready to add to the garden; one started after we stopped adding to the first; and an experimental pile with ashes, human urine, and uprooted plants we don’t want propagating as much.
We put food scraps (no meat or bones, but we eat only a little meat anyway, and most animal scraps go to the dog) and paper (without a lot of ink or gloss) in a stainless steel pot and I bring that out to the in-process pile periodically, dumping it and then adding cardboard (tape and labels removed) and soil.
As I learn more I’ll adjust.
In the UK you can more or less sneak anything into any bin - of which I currently have three.
Every since doing that, our weekly trash has been reduced pretty significantly. Instead of filling up our trash bin, we only fill up half.
Its been about 1 year, I've dug more than 300 holes in the backyard and I'm having so much fun.
I do have to ask though. You mention it's good for gardening so I gather you have one. You mention vermicomposting which sounds like you specifically bought worms and use them in the HungryBin?
Can you elaborate on why?
Personally I just have a bunch of 2x10s in a corner of the garden and we throw all of or organic waste in a there. In fall I add all of the leaves from the trees. In spring I have compost I spread in the garden. I did literally nothing else except for turning it from time to time. Sometimes it gets hot and smokes. All by itself. I don't do anything special. Lots of worms in there too. All by themselves.
Most of our neighbors put their green bins out every week and in fall they put lots and lots of paper bags with leaves out. Why?
> Most of our neighbors put their green bins out every week and in fall they put lots and lots of paper bags with leaves out. Why?
I agree, especially when it's so easy to compost at home with a little bit of space.
Doing compost at home for yourself is not working in general because most people live in an apartment: - People won't know what to do with it and will throw it away. - A large amount of moisty stuff in a small room with bad ventilation.
That's my experience of seeing city people doing it.
to dad: sounds like you’re doing a great job parenting too
If your daughter or son doesn't mind a usability suggestion, I would get rid of the font-weight: 300. As an experiment I tried overriding this with the default font-weight: 400 and the page became much more readable.
font-weight: 300 is modern and trendy and found in a lot of themes, but it makes text hard to read.
That said, I don't see the space taken up by landfills as a big problem. Not in the US anyway. If they are done properly (and yes, that is a big if), they shouldn't release toxins or otherwise have downsides comparable to all the other sorts of damage we do to our environment.
But I hear this argument about landfills a lot (mostly by adults, which I feel a bit freer to criticize, and mostly with regard to regular recycling rather than composting which is essentially a subset of recycling), and I just don't think it as a big problem as people make it out to be.
Things that emit into the atmosphere (greenhouse gasses and other pollutants), and trash that doesn't make it into landfills are big problems. Another big problem is all the space taken up by other human activities. We're cutting down forests to build homes and grow food, and we see that everywhere and it has a huge impact on our planet. Landfills are a relatively tiny use of space.
But yeah, composting is good. As long as the effort you put into it doesn't make you feel that you've "done your part" and discourage you from making more impactful changes in your lifestyle. I don't have an electric car or solar roof yet, for instance, but I happily vote for representatives who will put significant amounts of my tax money into subsidizing the move away from fossil fuels.
Ignoring the minor detail that acres are a measurement of area and not width, the contiguous US is 2 _billion_ acres. 2,200 acres is 0.00011% of that. We can easily spare the space.
> The organic materials in these landfills can decay and release greenhouse gasses...when these items go to landfills, they will take much longer to decompose than normal
This appears to contradict your kid's message, because it conveys that landfills reduce the rate of greenhouse gas emissions.
The page also has zero citations.
That said I don't know why anyone would be talking about acres when they could more simply say km wide or of area km squared that most people would not intuitively understand.
Ohooo, ohoo, ohohoho. Where I live (continental Europe) it's impossible for people to use km or meters for agricultural or housing land. It's alway acres this or hectares thats. It drives me nuts but I have learned to nod and I google the conversion later.
This is wrong. Acres are defined as the area encompassed by a particular set of lengths, but acres do not have specified widths and lengths because it is a unit of area, not of width or length. Acres can be any shape. They do not have to be rectangular.
The page appears to talking about the Apex Regional landfill near Las Vegas, Nevada, which has an _area_ of 2200 acres. Though you'd never know it because the page has no citations anywhere.
Decay in landfills is anaerobic and produces methane, which has a higher impact on warming than CO2.
Also, composting has a bunch of other no-brainer benefits. Compost reduces demand for fertilizer, can substantially reduce the waste steam, and improves soil quality.
It's not clear to me where you're getting that from. The page neither mentions the word anaerobic nor say that composting doesn't also release the exact same gasses just somewhere else. At best it leans on the reader feeling an emotional difference between the words "decompose" and "decay".
So, yes, they’re roughly equivalent. And things decay faster as compost, so you’d actually be increasing climate change by composting all organic waste.
Methane is mostly a problem when it can’t be captured and burned (ex: cow farts, a serious problem in preventing climate change).
Note that I still support composting. I just don’t think it can be argued from a climate change perspective.
> My oldest kid made this to raise awareness that composting garbage dumps...
Dumps... what? What does it dump? 'Dump' isn't even mentioned in the article.
The real reason why people should compose or better whole cities should, is because the nutrition in the green waste should go back in circulation which they wont do if they end up in a landfill/waste incineration.
The greenhouse gasses reasoning is bogus it decomposes anyway Modern landfills are also used as energy source where the worst kind of greenhouse gases are burned and turned into less severe CO2.
The space argument is also nonsense. There is plenty place on earth the real problem here is that moving trash is expensive hence poor cities are surrounded by garbage mountains.
