There are so many easy, low-stress, and time efficient changes you can make in your day-to-day life to reduce your waste. Composting is not one of them.
In fact, I almost gave up zero waste because of composting.
Dramatic? I think not. I nearly gave up because:
1. Composting is gross.
Seeing worms eat your discarded scraps and poop them back out again is not pleasant. It reminds me of my own mortality and I already have enough existential crises on a day-to-day basis.
Plus, if you don’t tend to your compost correctly, it can start to smell weird, get an icky sticky texture, or your worm population can skyrocket and start crawling up and clinging to the compost lid in an apocalyptic manner that makes you Google whether worms were one of the Plagues of Egypt.
2. I live in an apartment.
Unfortunately, an apartment with no green space or even a balcony is not the most convenient place for a compost pile. Enough said.
3. You can’t go fully zero waste without composting.
When you stop buying food with packaging, you cook from scratch. You’re basically trading paper, plastic, and metal, for food packaging like corn husks, banana peels, or onion skins. Unfortunately, throwing biodegradable material into landfills stops the natural decomposing process, making them just as harmful as your average non-biodegradable trash. In fact, when I started zero waste without a composting system in place, I was making more trash than I did before giving up packaging.
What Changed?
If I had not pushed past the grossness factor or figured out how to compost while living in an apartment, then I would never be a real hippie. The idea of quitting zero waste came up a few times, but it’s the kind of action that once you’re aware of how much trash you create, it’s hard do nothing about it.
You can talk all you want about saving the world, but if you’re not willing to do anything, you’re wasting your breath. So I practiced some tough love and told myself to suck it up and commit. Here’s what I learned in the process:
1. Composting is only gross if you don’t know what you’re doing.
So the first few months can be pretty rough. BUT! If you can figure out what and how much to put in your compost pile, when to turn it, and when to hold back, the whole process is way less disgusting. Then, you can start to see and appreciate the beautiful circle of life.
Be the Mufasa You Want to See in the World
2. I’m lucky enough to have apartment composting solutions at my disposal.
Once I exercised some creative thinking and researching muscles, I was able to figure out a convenient composting system that fit my needs. I’m still not financially ready to pay the city to pick up my compost or buy a fancy apartment compost bin, but there are some more affordable options that I use:
My tiny vermicompost bin
My roommate stored her flour and sugar in old gallon ice cream containers, but she offered me one of them if I would store her flour in a mason jar. I punched a few holes in the ice cream lid, filled the bottom with damp soil, cardboard, and red wrigglers, and began feeding the pile with my food, untreated paper, nail clippings, and coffee scraps.
Sadly, It doesn’t hold much. I usually use it for little things, but I would never be able to compost everything I need to. Luckily…
I have friends with compost piles
I may live in an apartment, but my friends don’t. Two of my friends not only own a house, but actively compost in their backyard for their garden. They have kindly agreed to let me drop off a few bags of frozen produce odds and ends on a regular basis, which has allowed me to continue cooking from scratch without producing any waste.
3. If you can compost, you can do anything.
Or at least that’s how it feels. There are a lot of habits zero wasters suggest you form to reduce your trash. Now whenever I whine about how hard a particular task is, in the back of my mind I always think, “At least it’s not as weird as composting.” Nothing like a decaying pile of worm feces to put things in perspective.