composting

Photo: markhillary

Good article on recycling, composting and waste in the NYTimes yesterday. I remember when I was younger, maybe back in the late 80s, the lack of landfill capacity became an issue. The projections that we were going to run out of places to put our garbage brought up recycling on a larger scale.

I had thought that the growing amount of recycling happening in the US had made the lack of landfill capacity not too much of a big deal - we weren't going to fulfill those projections, and we'd have enough space for a while. Well, I guess the coming (again) lack of landfill space has got people talking about how to throw out less stuff. The conversation seems more advanced now - how to get people to recycle more, to compost, and to just have less garbage to begin with.

We had been composting for a while, and while I definitely helped out my wife with it, I saw it as not too necessary - organic waste in the landfill breaks down, and probably creates lots of nutrients in the end product fill, so what's the big deal. I never thought that the organic wastes are a main contributor to the methane that landfills create. Bummer. Learn something new every day.