Compost it!

Hello Followers!

            Have you ever got too much food than your stomach can handle? Or you can’t finish all the food on your plate? I am one of those people that get too much food and can’t eat it all. I don’t try to shove my face with food either. I just get full off of the smallest quantities of food. However, when I look at what I still have on my plate I wonder if I could put what I have to better use in the world. While walking through Moseley Center here at Elon the answer was right in front of me. Elon has in Moseley center two trash receptacles for compost. So, what is compost? Compost as defined by dictionary.com is: “a mixture of various decaying organic substances used for fertilizing soil”. This is great! But what can I compost? Essentially anything that can break down can be used as compost. More specifically the list is huge! If you click on this link the website will take you to a list of various waste and food products that can be composted. The website is http://www.plantea.com/compost-materials.htm. I highly recommend checking it out. There are things on the list that shocked me; maybe they’ll surprise you too. Based on my findings though out of everything I use to eat in a day the things that I could compost are: paper napkins, citrus wastes, stale potato chips, apple cores, bread crusts, cooked rice, banana peels, chocolate cookies, stale breakfast cereal, pickles, burned toast, and macaroni and cheese. What can compost be used for? Compost is used mainly for organic farming. However, it takes a year for a compost heap to actually be used for organic farming purposes. Why do we need to compost? If we compost we reduce the waste that goes around the globe. According to Anna Lappe, “People around the world waste 30 to 50% of food that could actually have been eaten”. This means that composting will help us recycle our food without having actually wasted any of it. The average American citizen “wastes 600 dollars in food a year by throwing it away”(Lappe). Composting is one of the easiest and fastest ways for our world to stop the ozone from depleting. This is our world and we should treat it like our own bodies, like a temple, not an amusement park.

           

            -T

P.S.

            -Our next few blog posts will be about the rainforests on our planet. They are becoming deforested and we are losing many species of animals that are affecting the food chain. Here’s a fact to get you hooked to come check out the posts. According to Anna Lappe “the biggest rain forest destruction is due to the production of palm oil”. Did your jaw drop?

Works Cited

            "Compost." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Web. 21 Apr. 2011. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compost>.

            Web. 21 Apr. 2011. <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/compost>.

Owen, Marion. "163 Things You Can Compost." Organic Fertilizer - Organic Gardening Tips - Newsletter - Recipes. Web. 21 Apr. 2011. <http://www.plantea.com/compost-materials.htm>.

Lappe, Anna. "A Diet for a Hot Planet." A Diet for a Hot PLanet. McKinnon Hall, Elon. 20 Apr. 2011. Lecture.