A while ago, I wrote about our new com­post bin that Jason and his dad had made. I was a lit­tle skep­ti­cal that we would be able to fill it all up. Who throws that much food? Well, it’s pretty much full. We have some of our lawn clip­pings in there and some food with it, too. Jason goes out once in a while, and he moves it around and turns it. I guess he waters it, too.

When we first started the project, I thought it was just some­thing fun to do. I also thought it would be nice to even­tu­ally have the com­post for our gar­den. I didn’t real­ize until today when I was read­ing on 5 Min­utes for Going Green (a fab­u­lous blog, by the way), that com­post­ing has another ben­e­fit. Food that is thrown away is the largest com­po­nent of land­fill waste. When food is thrown away, it does not become com­post. The con­di­tions in the land­fill are anaer­o­bic (oxygen-free), and instead of becom­ing fab­u­lous fer­til­izer, it breaks down to become methane gas. Methane gas is a green­house gas, and it is three times more potent than car­bon diox­ide. In an era where global warm­ing has become an every­day con­ver­sa­tion, it seems like com­post­ing is one small thing that the aver­age per­son can do with lit­tle extra effort and expense.