Lesson #2 – Organic Matter

More than ¼ of all of our waste is from food and garden trimmings. If we composted these at home, it would really ease up the space in our landfills. Here’s a graph that shows the percentage of waste every US household produces:

Here is a pie chart that might be easier to see. This is from 2011 and shows what the landfill looks like in a town in Iowa. You can see from the orange part that most of it is made up of food and yard trimmings.

We can make a lot of room in the landfills by composting at home. Starting a compost is very simple. If you are a gardener, you can then use the compost you’ve made as fertilizer for your garden. If you really want to have some fun we can add worms to the whole thing and let them do their thing.

Ever raise some pet worms? This is called VERMICULTURE.