How can you live a more eco friendly lifestyle if you don’t have a garden?
We can compost more
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, food is the biggest ingredient in American trash while in the UK households throw away between £250 and £400 of potentially edible food every year. It has been estimated that up to 80% of the contents of our dustbins could be easily recycled or composted.
Currently over 35% of the average garbage can is filled with kitchen scraps—scraps that could be diverted from being dumped in a landfill site.
Diverting none animal kitchen scraps is from being tossed into landfills is important because, organic waste generates methane gas (a dangerous green-house gas that increases the rate of global climate change.
We are all asked to work to make our carbon footprint smaller to help to reduce the amount of methane gas. That is why we are also asked to cut down on meat and dairy products for the same reason.
Less Green House Gas Production
Interestingly methane gas isn’t a by product when kitchen scraps are turned into compost that is why In many places local councils operate a composting program and offer a brown bin, garden refuse fortnightly collection.
Or you can go one step further and compost your own kitchen waste for use in your garden. or for your potted plants?
But what if you don’t have a garden. Does living in an apartment give you a get out pass on composting?
It needn’t do. there are good composting options for everyone to help us live more eco friendly lifestyles.
One of the options for composting where you don’t have much space is Compost With Worms?
Charles Darwin talking about worms said, “It may be doubted whether there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world, as have these lowly organized creatures.”
It is a fact that worms play an essential part in our ecosystem. There are over 5000 species of worms, and these trillions of tiny diggers are one of the facts that we can live on this planet; infact humans wouldn’t exist without them.
vermicomposting or vermiculture,
Vermiculture is such an inportant and eco friendly, efficient method of composting that it is a method used by commercial farmers and municipalities as a way of breaking down huge amounts of food waste and manure. Not only that but if it is done properly it can be the panacea of nauseating aroma free compost.
Worm composting, produces odour free compost that takes around 30 minutes each week to maintain, and the biggest time investment is harvesting the worm castings or garden fertilizer, which happens around every quarter or half a year.
You can make your own worm composting system. Basically you’ll need 2 plastic boxes, one shallow and bigger to collect the worm tea for plant feed, the taller narrower box needs to have holes drilled into it and be filled with paper, cardboard, soil kitchen scraps and worms. The 2nd box needs raising off the ground to allow for drainage.
If you want to learn how to make a worm box then check out youtube.
The other option is to buy a ready made system.
So going forward think more about the waste you throw away that can be safely composted and make the effort to compost it. Be part of the solution to reducing green house gases, and saving our planet.
