A Compost Pile is a Beautiful Thing

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: Image via Wikipedia

If you live in an apartment or condo you might find it more difficult to separate organic waste from recyclables. My wife happens to be slightly bonkers and refuses to separate recyclables from garbage so it all ends up in the same trash bin. Having one closeted, central bin for the entire house also serves to keep the dogs out of the garbage. It’s part of her organizational bent and, from my point of view, a bit of pain.

It means that I have to wade through the garbage to remove all the recyclables. And, as it turns out, most of the garbage is recyclable – boxes, plastics and my daughter’s soda cans – very little of what remains is actual organic refuse which can easily be placed in the communal compost pile.

None of it, for the most part, ends up in the dumpster, and I find myself reusing the same trash bin liner which makes for less plastic going into the land fills. It really is not that time consuming and it makes me feel good about doing some small thing to help the environment.

We Americans generate over200 million tons of trash every year, which ends up in landfills. The organic trash, that is mostly kitchen scraps, can all be decomposed and used as fertilizer, which helps the environment and boosts the garden. Gardening is something else that might not be convenient for those living in complexes. We’ll have further posts on gardens for apartment dwellers and even in door gardening. This all comes under the general heading of individual small efforts to reduce the carbon foot print. By making less garbage and by planting a garden to create another carbon sink, tiny though it may be, these efforts can add up.