Turn Your Spoils to Soil -- Grow…Eat…Compost…Repeat -- Life from Leftovers: Compost Magic!
Yes, those food scraps—vegetable peels, coffee grounds, eggshells, and more—are too good to waste.
To celebrate growing season, Food Waste Prevention Week, and Earth Day (April 22), try composting them instead! Nature will turn them into nutrient-rich soil for growing more food.
Reading offers two great options for composting: via curbside pickup or in the backyard.
Sign up with Black Earth Compost (blackearthcompost.com) for weekly or biweekly pickup and get a free starter kit from Reading’s DPW (a bin and a roll of compostable bags, worth about $35). Special Earth Day sale from 4/11 to 4/30: 15% off your new subscription (code EARTHDAY25)!
Or order an Earth Machine backyard bin from the DPW and get an instant $21 rebate—your cost $30.
Allison Sillers, a member of Reading Composts! (a Reading volunteer group that encourages and supports food-waste composting), is an enthusiastic composter. “Composting with Black Earth has been so easy for our family to work into our daily routines,” Allison notes. “We tried composting in our yard when the kids were younger and it just was not for us. I cook a lot, and it feels so much better to put the food scraps into the compost bin rather than the trash. Every Thanksgiving we even put our whole turkey carcass into the bin! Curbside composting is really affordable, the bin is easy to use and keep clean, and my teenage son really appreciates how much lighter and less gross the regular trash bags are when he takes out the trash.”
Mike Moscardini, a Reading resident and Black Earth subscriber, adds, “My trash barrels are much cleaner and don’t really smell anymore. And somehow my compost barrel doesn’t smell as bad as my trash used to.”
Anne Mark, a Reading Composts! member, points out that it’s important to prevent food waste, too; up to 38% of food produced in the U.S. goes uneaten. “Try creating an ‘Eat This Now’ fridge zone,” she suggests. “Or for example visit savethefood.com or use the Fridge Night app.”
Why compost food scraps?
Diverting them lowers what Reading pays by ton to dump trash at the incinerator. Food scraps are heavy!—by weight, 25% to 40% of the waste stream.
Compost improves soil health. Whether in your yard or on a farm, it increases moisture retention, microbial activity, soil fertility, disease suppression, and the soil’s ability to store nutrients.
Compost in soil improves ecological health—it sequesters CO2 from the atmosphere.
It builds a more resilient MA! We have a local source of nutrients for growing healthy food without chemical fertilizers. And MA depends less on disposing of trash in other states and has more green jobs.
Consider joining in! “All life above the soil is dependent on life within the soil” (Black Earth Compost).
Louise Ward with a Black Earth Compost bin. Photo submitted by Anne Mark.