The Benefits of Home Composting

Composting at home is one of the most important aspects of living a sustainable lifestyle as it is one of the most effective ways of recycling and reducing your carbon footprint.

It's important that we don't put biodegradable material in landfill as it rots anaerobically to make methane, a greenhouse gas 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. Landfill space is running out and local authorities are going to be fined for putting biodegradables in landfill, adding to our Council Tax bills. Incinerating this material is a waste of valuable resources, and the energy used to burn a cauliflower stalk or banana skin is far more than it gives back to the incineration process. Home composting, if done correctly, does not result in methane or waste ash, just a bit of CO2, water vapour and a valuable soil improver, called humus or compost.

Home composting is good for the environment in other ways too... nothing has to be driven anywhere in a big lorry, the heap provides a good ecosystem for lots of little beasties, which in turn add to the biota, feeding bigger animals. Making your own compost means you don't have to buy soil improver from elsewhere, often having to drive it home. And the compost mix found in shops often still has peat in it, and peat is best left where it has formed, as it releases lots of carbon dioxide once it has been dug up from the drained peat-bog.

Using home made compost in the garden results in better, healthier plants and crops, better even than the compost made by council green-waste collectors, as it is richer and is often made more slowly and has a greater range of beneficial fungi in it. (Remember, too, that council green waste has to be driven to the composting facility, shredded with big machines with big engines, and driven back to your garden or allotment.) Finally, top-dressing your soil with home made compost is a good way to 'sequester' carbon; soils are a store of carbon and adding compost every year and not digging allows the soil to get deeper and store more carbon.

The basics of home composting

Almost anything which has lived or grown recently or come from an animal or plant will biodegrade and therefore rot given the right conditions. Home compost heaps work best with uncooked fruit and vegetable matter, material from the garden, cardboard, paper, and a few other materials such as hair from hair brushes, some fabrics, burst balloons, some animal droppings, pet bedding and more! The conditions needed are sufficient moisture to allow the microoganisms and other decomposers to work, oxygen and a mix of different materials.

Many people use a plastic compost bin or wooden sided container to keep the pile tidy, but some just have an untidy heap. Both can work well. If you have a warm corner of your plot, that will help the compost break down more quickly, but a north-facing 'always in shade' area will work too, just a bit slower! Some people turn their pile, which adds oxygen and breaks up compacted layers, and rotating containers make this easier, but an unturned pile will still rot down fine... though it might take longer. Turning your pile or adding lots of material all at once will cause it to work more quickly and maybe heat up. But hot compost piles aren't necessary to make good compost. Time is the key. Ignore advice that compost can be made in just a few weeks, as it cannot. Allow months or, better, a year or two for finished compost to be available.

Although cooked food, meat and processed foodstuffs like bread can be added to open heaps, and will rot down quickly, there is a risk that they will attract rodents, much more than raw food will. So if you have a well established and rodent-free 'dalek' bin, you can try adding cooked food waste to the working layers... pull the top layer off with a hand fork and add your fish skins and bread crusts, then scrape the top layers back. But if you subsequently discover a rat hole, stop doing this... they don't need any encouragement!

A safer way to recycle cooked food, meat and fish is to invest in a Bokashi bin. This is like a big kitchen caddy and after material is added, a sprinkle of bran containing a culture of 'effective micro-organisms' (EM) is sprinkled in. The Bokashi-laced mass must be squashed down to keep it anaerobic, and drained to stop it becoming waterlogged, and after a while, this now fermented material can either be added to your compost pile or dug into the soil. Rodents, foxes, etc. will take no interest in it and it will rot down aerobically and quickly.

Another popular variant of composting is to have a wormery. This is a container which is designed to be comfortable for the composting worms which many people find in their compost bins. Some of the best wormeries are designed in layers, with the top tray having food waste added (including cooked material and small amounts of meat/fish/citrus/onion). The worms move into the material and break it down, leaving the lower trays once all the food is used up. When the top tray is full, the lowest tray is removed, emptied of the rich compost, and put on the top, empty and ready for the next few weeks' food waste. Wormeries also produce a nutrient-rich liquid which can be diluted and used as plant feed.

If you are a hardcore permaculturist, or perhaps simply lazy, you could just throw your veg and fruit scraps under your fruit bushes and orchard trees... after all, this is what happens in nature. We might see this as untidy, but actually it is the most natural way to add the materials directly back to the soil.

I prefer my tidy bins though, and enjoy digging them out when they are 'done' and getting several sacks-full of rich compost which I can then add to the soil where I want it, or mix with leafmould and loam to make a potting compost for container plants.

John Cossham

John Cossham is a very keen home composter, and started York Rotters, a successful compost education project modelled on the Garden Organic and Cambridgeshire County Council 'Master Composter' scheme. John is happy to answer your composting questions on Facebook's 'Organic Gardening 101' in a discussion thread called 'Any Composting Questions Answered Here' or through The 3 R's Be'ave Yourself Reduce Reuse Recycle group, or even direct by email: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

John works as a children's entertainer, 'Professor Fiddlesticks', and lives a low carbon lifestyle which includes a lot more than just composting!

Top photo (c) John Cossham 2009

other photos (c) Salena Walker 2009

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