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Super Challenge: Boast About Compost Featured on Jun 13, 2008
Challenge
Hit pay-dirt! For the next three months, compost your kitchen waste and yard clippings.
Individual Result
Composting part of your daily garbage will reduce methane emissions equal to 30 lbs of CO2 each month.
Rally Impact
1849 people have reduced CO2 emissions by 79.04 tons by completing this challenge so far. That's equal to turning off the electricity of 102 homes for about 1 month!
Alternative content
Challenge Details
Garbage. You make it. You keep it in a barrel outside for a while. And then you haul it to the curb so someone in a big truck can come take it away. That’s the way you used to think. But as a Rallyer, we bet you either know or suspect that garbage doesn’t just go away. In fact, garbage has a big, ugly (and naturally stinky) carbon footprint. You can shrink that footprint by shrinking what ends up in your trash barrel each week. Ask yourself, “How do I feel about making dirt?” If that sounds green to you, then we bet there’s a compost bin with your name on it.
Again, we would like to thank all of you Rallyers for participating in our Challenge Workshop. This Featured Challenge was suggested by both Helen and rmittelstedt. Keep those ideas coming!
The Carbon Connection
According to the EPA, the average American is responsible for creating and disposing of 4.6 pounds of solid waste each day. That’s about three-quarters of a ton of garbage per person each year or 251 million plus tons of garbage for the whole country. Most of that garbage — 138 million tons — ends up buried in landfills. The solid waste in landfills can be anything from broken up concrete to your neighbor’s old sofa and your bag of kitchen trash from three weeks ago.
You only have to think about a piece of rotting fruit to realize something important about organic matter — something than came from plants or animals. Organic matter biodegrades. Actually, it rots or decomposes. About half of the solid waste buried in landfills is some sort of organic matter, such as paper or wood or grass clippings. And even buried underground in a landfill, that material decomposes.
Technically speaking, the problem with rotting organic waste in landfills is all about methane, not carbon dioxide. When your pizza crusts and coffee grounds get buried in a landfill, they start to decompose. However, since they’re buried, the microorganisms that do all that work of decomposing the garbage do so without oxygen. A byproduct of that anaerobic activity is methane gas, the same as the natural gas used to heat your house or oven.
Unfortunately, that methane gas tends to leak out of the landfill and into Earth’s atmosphere. And, like carbon dioxide, methane is a greenhouse gas that can trap heat and drive up global temperatures. Worse yet, a methane molecule is much larger than a carbon dioxide molecule. According to the EPA, methane is 21 times more harmful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. That makes keeping methane out of the atmosphere very important.
One way to keep excess methane out of the atmosphere is to compost some of your solid waste. When you compost your kitchen waste and grass clippings, you are decreasing the amount of methane released into the atmosphere. As long as your compost is properly managed (for instance, mixed so that oxygen gets to all of the compost), you won’t be making any methane. Overall, the net gains for the atmosphere are pretty substantial. And, in case you need more reasons, there are CO2 savings associated with your town hauling less garbage around in trucks. Finally, compost eventually turns to fertilizer you can use to grow new green things that will take carbon dioxide out of the air. Pretty cool for rotting stuff.
Getting It Done
We’ll be the first to admit this, but this Challenge is a challenge. Starting to compost and sticking with it until you start to see results is a long-term commitment. It can be a monetary investment to set up a place to compost and it can be an investment of your time on a daily basis. However, as you can see from the numbers, this is a worthwhile change to make. Can you do it? Will you do it?
Need help meeting this Super Challenge? Here are a few simple suggestions:
- There are folks out there who know a lot more about composting than we do. So, go check out what they have to say at The Compost Guide and How to Compost. Both sites offer more than enough instruction to get you started composting.
- Check with your town’s public works department or the folks at the town landfill to see if the town is helping subsidize residents’ purchase of compost bins. Many towns sell their residents Earth Machine composters at a reduced price. Some towns will even bring them to your house. (The less garbage you send to the landfill, the longer the town can use the landfill and not need to find space for a new one.) The Earth Machine is made of recycled plastic and is an excellent size for most small families or individuals with yards.
- If you’re more of a “do it yourself” type, you might want to build your own compost bin. You can find plans for anything from a simple wood and chicken wire bin to simple ideas for turning a plastic storage tub into a worm composter.
- And don’t think that composting is only for those suburban folks with big yards and hungry raccoons. Even if you’re an apartment dweller, living in a highrise with a tiny patio, you can compost. If there’s enough room for flowers or plants, there’s enough room for you to make a small container composter like this one.
- Tend your compost so that you don’t undo the good you’re doing. If your compost smells like rotten eggs or ammonia, then you need to mix the pile to get it some air or add more woody material. A compost pile that smells may be releasing harmful greenhouse gases — and that’s what you’re wanting to avoid, isn’t it?
- If you have an in-sink disposal (e.g., In-sinkerator), composting will mean you’re sending less stuff down the drain. That will save electricity. It will save your town money to process your chopped up food when it finally reaches the waste water treatment plant. And it means you’re less likely to have your drain clogged by a build up of grease and potato.
Are any of you already composting? If so, share your experience with your fellow Rallyers in the Challenge Discussion section below.
Rules of the Challenge
This Super Challenge asks you to compost your kitchen waste and yard trimmings for the next 3 months. The methane you eliminate will have the same impact has eliminating 30 lbs of CO2 per month. If your garbage is coming from more than one person, you should make sure that other people in your household join Carbonrally and sign up for the Challenge, too. That way, you can see the total CO2 impact your household is having. This Super Challenge is repeatable after 3 months.
Learn More
The Compost Guide
How To Compost
Yahoo Green: Spoil Your Garden Rotten
How Stuff Works: Landfills
See the Math
Let’s look at what we do know. Here are our known or estimated numbers and assumptions:
- According to the EPA, the average American generates 4.6 pounds of solid waste each day.
- On average, Americans are recycling about 32% of their solid waste. So let’s apply that to the 4.6 pounds of daily waste per person and say that you now only send an average of 3.1 pounds of solid waste to the landfill each day.
- The first tricky part of the numbers has to do with the amount of methane produced by garbage buried in a landfill. The differences in the relative amounts of organic matter versus inorganic waste that gets buried in a landfill, how it gets buried, how the landfill is maintained, the size of the landfill, its age, the climate in which it is found, etc., all make arriving at this number difficult. We have seen numbers ranging from 91 to 123 pounds of methane produced per ton of buried solid waste. We’re going to use the low number. Mind you, that’s 91 pounds of methane produced per ton of mixed solid waste, which is what your landfill would be getting if you didn’t compost. If you compost, you remove the methane-creating parts of your garbage before it gets to the landfill.
- The global warming effect of methane is 21 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. We find the pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent of methane by multiplying pounds of methane by 21.
- The second tricky part of the numbers is due to the fact that some municipal landfills are now required by federal regulations to collect and burn methane formed underground. Whether the gas is trapped and burned as fuel or simply flared off, burning methane releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. But that isn’t as bad as allowing methane to leak into the atmosphere. Since we don’t know where your garbage is going and whether your landfill combusts its methane, we are adding a conservative “discount factor” that reduces the assumed pounds of methane produced by two-thirds. We do that by multiplying by 1/3.
Now put all that together to get the following equation:
- It all comes out to a savings of 1.0 pounds of CO2 equivalent per day or 30 pounds per month.
So, what do you say, Rallyers? Are you ready to take out less trash and dish up some dirt?
Discussion 90 comments so far
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We have three compost bins. Two with worms and one just using the time method to break down yard scraps. I put in all kinds of boxes (cereal, mailing, pkg), envelopes, office paper (which I used the second side for scratch paper before shredding and feeding to worms), kitchen and yard scraps, I even bring home coffee grounds from the coffee house I go to (dont worry Ive been taking my own cup there for over a year and wont buy a coffee unless I take my own cup). Kehau from Kailua, Oahu
This is a great challenge for me because my family has a compost bin in our backyard AND I have a garden that could use the organic soil! Yay! =)
This would be difficult for me because we got big kitchen but I will definitely do this.
- I made one with 1-inch chicken wire fencing…just cut 8 feet and make it a cylinder…throw all ward waste in…I layer green and brown every 2 weeks when I mow the lawn.
I’ve been composting harvest vegetation and leaves/yard clippings for years. Have tried to expand to kitchen was with limited success. I am currently working on devising a practical solution that will work for our family. Given, that still, after a year of reminding the family that we recycle paper/cardboard, I have to dig cardboard and paper out of our garbage cans, this is quite a challenge.
check out this worm factory for porch composting. we have one at our office :) http://dripworksusa.com/store/wormfac.php
Two compost bins. Thousands and thousands of well fed worms.
Here is our Compost Bin!! Representing Murrieta, Ca!
I’ve been composting for 9 years. San Francisco makes it easy (curbside composting) but also had backyard composting (a bit ickier). If you live in a city that picks up composting and your building doesn’t participate, talk to your apartment manager about it. If not, it’s easy to create a composting bin in your apartment/house: bin, worms and newspaper!
I have a couple of questions: 1.) I don’t garden in my apartment, but I still want to composte. Is there somewhere I can take my composte? and 2.) Can I throw leftover FOOD, or does it have to be greens? Can I put the pizza rolls I didn’t eat in there? If you know the answer, can you please message me?
I already have my own worm bin in my basement. I add all of my food scraps, and they eat it so quickly! I love this challenge!
My high school composts everything from our three lunch periods, I’d love to do it at home too
French Composter: Dig a hole. Add your kitchen scraps, and cover lightly with dirt daily. When that hole is filled in, start another one.
Nothing to buy (except maybe a shovel). No smelly mess (if you don’t add enough stuff to the expensive composters).
Couldn’t be simpler.
Compost happens. :-)
like OMG!!! I can’t believe you guys have this challenge its like TOTALLY AWESOME. I would love to accept this challenge!!!! Well actually I already do this but I only but the compost on the inside pot plants. With this challenge I will go to my backyard, I’m sure the grass and trees would be happy to hear about this!! haha. And well lets say I’m the “do it yourself” type of person when it comes to saving the earth!! haha. So I know pretty much what I have to do since I’ve done this in Mexico. I’ll make the best out of it, mixing it once in a will which will give the compost oxygen and it will decompose better. This is so cool!!!!!!!
Composting has reduced my trash load! I am excited to have that rich soil for my garden. May need to find another compost sight though, it may be too shady. Hard to know when the leaves are all down. My kids are catching on too!
I already do this and it makes me feel good that I was doing something right all along.
I have a huge garden so I tried the compost thing last year. It didn’t really work!!! My chickens got into it and ate any scraps of food and made nests out of the lawn clippings! LOL! I love my chickens!
We’ve been doing this for over a year now. This year I began putting vegetable waste in the compost even over the winter months in spite of the sub-zero weather. My daughter got a pet rabbit last fall and between the compost and the low-odor, nitrogen-rich bunny poop we will have zero need for chemical fertilizers.
I started a worm composting bin in my basement about 3 weeks ago and it’s fascinating to watch what’s been happening during that time. I am currently looking into an outdoor compost bin. I can’t wait to start my garden and use my compost material.
I have a worm bin in the garage of my condo. Worms take care of my food scraps & confidential documents.
We have always turned our yard waste into compost for our potted plants. Why buy dirt when you can make it? The use of used coffee grounds mixed with man made compost allows the soil to hold water to reduce the need for watering plant often.
At our school, when we decided to do compost, the students in our vocational program made our own compost bin. We give about half of our compost to the bin to supplement our vegtable garden in the spring. The rest of the year, we use our excess food to feed to our pigs and chickens. Their waste then is also turned around for fertilizer for our farm as well.
We bought an Earth Machine from our local municipality for $50. We love it so far – hard to really see it composting because of the winter season, but our weekly landfill garbage is not quite 1 bag now. We also recycle everything we can. We are amazed at the difference. We are looking forward to using our compost in our gardens and yard.
my chore is to take out the compost!
We compost all of our yard waste – lots of leaves and grass clippings – and we keep a container in the freezer for kitchen waste that is taken out to one of the working compost heaps (keeping it in the freezer keeps the fruit flies away). In the Spring we harvest wheelbarrow loads of beautiful compost and add it to our raised bed organic garden. The compost piles are full of earthworms and insects that attract wrens and other insect-eaters to the yard. Everyone wins.
Well this is easy to stick with because i already do this at home. Right out in my back yard. Its awsome! Oh by the way i rule!!!
We have composted for 7-8 years now. Inside we have a small bin for nightly vegetable scraps. And ever so often, I take it outside to the earth machine. All winter it does its thing and in the Spring we add it to the garden and herb/flower beds. I use a reel mower and bag the grass and compost that too. Actually, someone should do a REEL Mower Challenge. That would rock!
My Chores have included doing the compost for the past few years, after it breaks down into dirt my mother uses for garden fertilizer.
I have been doing this for a few weeks now
I already compost!
This is easy for us. Not only is there space in the yard but we inherited a large size manual meat grider from my dad. We mount the grinder over the dirt pile then run the kitchen waste through it, throw on some more dirt then cover it with an old rug (that’s to keep the dog from digging up the goodies). Grass, yard clippings, etc. are placed in the city sponsered green bins. I hope that counts as well.
just fyi to all those people with roommates/kids living with you: this challenge is actually surprisingly fun to start up (who doesn’t like playing in the dirt?) and a great way to share some quality bonding time with those you live with, while also helping to save the environment.
My family and I have been composting for two years now. This challenge is my everyday life style. hahaha :) WOO! WHOO!
We get the fattest earthworms from our compost. The neighbors want to buy them to use for fishing! This is an easy challenge as I have a big back yard. Would be a real challenge if I lived in an apt. in a big city! Karen
Charles County, MD government gives away compost bins once a year. They are FREE to all in county residents. You must be able to prove that you are a resident of the county.
I don’t understand this challenge
NYC, Toronto, and several other cities sell compost bins at a big discount to get people composting. In NYC, the Earth Machine, which costs about $80 plus shipping, is available for $20. Call the Queens Botanical Garden or the Department of Sanitation—but you must be a NYC resident.
See if your city does anything to make it easy to compost.
I’ve been composting for a very long time now its a good and easy chalenge!
My family and I already do that.
I’ve been composting raw vegetable matter and certain other garbage for the past few years, but grass and leaves would be mulched and left where they fell for the lawn, but this year as the garden got bigger I started composting all for the garden.
I live in the city in a one bedroom apartment without a yard or balcony, so I invested in a Nature Mill composter. It looks like a high-tech garbage can, is super easy to use and produces incredible compost. Plus, zero smell, which was a requirement to having it inside. It’s awesome!
i collect my organic waste and keep in freezer, then deposit at collection sites at farmers market in nyc. it’s super easy and reduces my waste by a significant amount!!!
we’ve composted for years. recently we also added a worm bin and feed the worms too! it’s fun to have pet worms.
I’ve composted before when I lived in a house, now that I’m in an apartment I never got around to it, as I used to grow veggies. But I decided why not? I can always plant in planters right? LoL Happy composting all!
I thought composting was out of the question for me – I live in a townhouse with a small patio. After reading the Challenge and the recommendations, I created my own little compost bin. I bought a heavy-duty plastic container, two bricks, and a short-handled shovel to turn my compost – all for $22. I drilled holes in the top and bottom of the container and set it on top of the bricks for drainage. I’ve already added shredded newspapers, veggie scraps, eggshells, coffee grounds and trimmings from my potted plants. Very exciting :)
We have been desperately educating ouselves on Composting for the last couple of months -we want to do it right the FIRST time, you know?- and everytime we disposed of mango peels or tomato tops it would break our collective hearts.
Well, Heartbreak NO MORE! We got our cans yesterday and are installing our underground compost piles today! YIPPEE!
Go to restaurants that don’t present food on disposable plates, etc. Avoid doing ‘take-away’ as much as you can, so as to minimize garbage.
Clean up spills with rags, not paper towels ===> save money and less trash.
I just started composting, and i love it soo much especailly because i eat so much fruit, that i use the scraps for the compost. But best of all i didn’t want to go out somewhere and buy a compost “machine” so i just recycled an old garbage can.
I compost everything possible; food scraps to pizza boxes! Glad to see I am not the only one!
I compost through my cities program + our compost bin because there are eight of us. Compost is helping my organic carrots a lot!
I’m an organic gardener, so I’m all in.
my roommates and I actually just started a compost pile a few months ago, and let me just say that it is ridiculous to see how much stuff was going to waste beforehand!
I just found this website, and as luck would have it just purchased a compost bin and got it set up about two weeks ago. I got the “soilsaver” style shown in the post by Stan (Carbonrally) and its great! I grew up with composting lawn and garden clippings as well as kitchen scraps, and we always had the best garden on our street because of it. So I’m very happy to finally have mine set up and be able to put something back into the earth we take such so much from!
3 years ago our city offered compost bins at the wholesale price at the same time they introduced curbside recycling and limited the garbage pick up to one bin only. It made our life easier, no longer having to take items to the city compost/recycling center. And this week we received recycling bins that are equal to the size of the garbage bins, yeah!!!
i do this all the time by LAW !!!
We are going to try vermiposting since we live in an apartment and have limited space. We have everything set we just need the worms. If anyone has any tips for us it would be appreciated. We’ve read a lot about it but any new info would be fantastic.
My family and I have been composting for years, and it not only helps reduce CO2 emissions, but it attracts wildlife! We have a family of Opossums living in our garage. They are wonderful to watch!
I put in a greencone- best thing i did. no more messing with the compost bin. Bonus- you can put meat, diary, fish and bones in it.
My wife just got me an automatic composter from naturemill.com for father’s day. Sign me up for this challenge!
I live out in the country and I throw ALL biodegradable “trash” in a pile outside… It does on occasion smell bad and I have seen opossums and feral cats (infrequently as we have 3 big dogs who patrol the backyard a couple of times a day which apparently is enough to disuade most wild critters from getting too near our yard). The pile is in a “receptacle” made of scrap lumber on the outside of our enclosed dog yard (minimizing the dogs’ ability to get in and eat bad things that would make them ill). It is, however, a no-brainer and takes no upkeep or special work. We throw barn waste or garden/yard clippings in. We don’t use it in our garden, but feel that the soil in the back of our propert must be getting a benefit.
I keep an air-tight covered container in the fridge. Acceptable food scraps all go in there, when full, I take it out to the yard waste bin.
I have been composting for the past year in one of those spinner-type bins and it is fast and easy to create good compost from scraps and clippings. I’m never goin back to bein trashy!!
Does anyone know a good place to get red wriggler worms for vermicomposting?
Vermiposting seems the way to go
I have 3 compost bins full,I have filled 3 large flower beds with teh compost that I have made over the past few years. It is the simplest thing to do, just keep the sticks out.
This Spring we started a “for real” composter. In the past, the kitchen scraps were placed at the far end of the yard (the yard backs up to a small copse) for the bunnies and birds.
Its been years and years since any yard waste has made it into the trash stream. It makes no sense to buy mulch when the yard is making it for free.
WW
i’ve been composting for 5 years, ever since we bought our house & got our own backyard, and it’s amazing how little curbside trash we generate now. sometimes we can even skip a week of taking out the trash (a very positive side effect)!
also, my friends, who rent a house lacking a backyard, keep a barrel of worms in the basement and the worms eat the kitchen compost.
i try…now i will try even harder.
I have been composting for a while with a goal to not give any yard waste to the land fill. Problem is I stop composting during winter (Nov – Mar), may try setting up a worm bin to assist in the off months.
My large city already recycles waste and the major well known recyclable materials like newspaper, cardboard, etc.. My oldest sister has a residential composter in the backyard. I’ve always been interested in the idea, but thought it was too much work to invest. Reading the facts here about composting and seeing the list of what can be composted has motivated me to look into it more closely. I plan on taking this challenge to learn more about the composting process and what can be potential ingredients in baking this “cake” to help eliminate my waste footprint. I will definitely be more diligent when it comes to recycling now! I’m using the following member suggested links. thank you: (http://www.plantea.com/compost-materials.htm), (http://www.plantea.com/compost.htm), as well as the links within this challenge post.
My family and I ahve been composting for years. It really halps our tomatoe plants.
can anyone help me with this whole composing thing. I don’t know how to start and I really want to continue the challenge. please please please :)
coool…we already compost at our house, but i still find orange-peels being thrown in the garbage! i’ll be talking to my fam about this… :P
Actually, I cannot take the challenge, since I have been composting kitchen and garden scraps for 40 years.
In addition to vegetable kitchen scraps and lawn clippings, toss your coffee filters in with the grounds and the towel and toilet paper tubes too
Hi, Our town has a green waste recycling program. They pick up our green waste and our paper separately. Now other than the footprint for the truck, why is composting better? Thank you in advance for the education.
We have been composting for years (we have a lot of land) but recently we have been seperating our kitchen waste to feed to our chickens. The extremely high cost of organic feed drove us to it, but we’re noticing some pretty happy birds these days! The really love anything red and all that leftover milk in the bottom of the kids cereal bowls is their fave. Also, they eat meat scraps that you can’t throw in the compost so it’s a great system. For advice on keeping chickens just ask! Great organic eggs every morning is good eating. The “waste” also makes the compost pile turn into that black gold even faster.
Hi, if anyone else wants to know how to post a picture along with your comment, you can find out how to do it here
For example
We started composting after having our first child. He made us more aware of our “waste” stream! We just started the worm composting in February and haven’t hit our stride there yet, stay tuned…Once our worm population is larger, it can compost a lot, year-round in our basement. They say you can do it in apartments too, since it just smells a bit musty. Can’t join the challenge since we already do it, but wanted to offer words of encouragement for others to join in! BTW – kids think its cool too!
Yard wastes and newspaper do not belong in our regular garbage which usually ends up in a landfill. Composting reduces that percentage of your landfill garbage. Adding food wastes to the above mixture produces a wonderful mulch for your garden. Please check out my avatar. It is a compost bin that I saw in Peru!
I have been composting for40 years. We have a limb shredder that chews up many of the bush and tree clippings as well and all vegetable food waste goes in the compost pile ( 3 ft x 3 ft x 3ft). The compost is used in my vegetable gardens.
What is your favorite type of composter?
There are so many different types, round, square, rotating, homemade, etc. Those with experience with composting… what are your favorite type of composter? Thanks!
Here is our composter (below). We started using it back in March (2008), so I guess we do not qualify for this challenge since we are already doing it… darn. Anyway, I am shocked at how much we are composting. Between our recent increases in recycling supported by our town, our home composting, and going vegetarian, we are barely bring anything out to the curb each week. I am actually starting to believe it might be possible to not throw anything away – everything either composted or recycled. What a concept!
Just found a great list of 163 compostable items . I am hoping we can step-up to this challenge at our house.
Coffee grounds (even in the filter) are a great addition to our composter. Avocado skins don’t do so well, though.
If you’re in New York City, you can drop off kitchen scraps at the Lower East Side Ecology Center or at the Union Square Greenmarket (M/W/F/Sat). We keep our scraps in the freezer until we have time to drop it off, that way it doesn’t smell. The LES Ecology Center also has workshops on vermicomposting! It’s fun! (http://www.lesecologycenter.org/composting_dropoff.html)
I compost every scrap of waste – including grass clippings, weeds, leaves, etc. It makes great soil for future plantings. It is a no brainer really – I am always shocked at how few people do it. Croraven
We already compost in our house!
I have been composting for years and use the soil to grow some of the best vegetables imaginable.