June 3, 2010 • 25 mins
If you're concerned about generating waste in your household, why not start composting? Breaking solid waste down with some help from microorganisms is a sure-fire way to decrease your waste, and it's easier than you might assume. Tune in and learn more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff
works dot com. Hey guys, and welcome to the podcast.
This is Alison and you're listening to Stuff from the
Science Lab, and I'm Robert Lamb, science writer at how
(00:21):
stuff works dot com. Today's podcast comes to you courtesy
of listener pastor Robert. Pastor Robert wrote us from Western
New York. Pastor Robert wrote that he and his wife
are starting their first worm composting then a k a
vermicom posting, and he and his wife have found the
process of quote unquote fascinating. Pastor requested a podcast on
(00:42):
the science of com posting, something to listen to on
all of his long drives, which I have to wonder,
is he counseling people? I guess is that what a
pastor goes around doing pastoring on the side, and like
maybe he's a country doctor and baby think and he
drives the big rigs and like he like he chats
with pool like it truck stops. You know, people are
down on their luck and maybe he marries them too. Yes,
(01:05):
the people who are stop weddings right right, So today
we're gonna talk about composting. Are you a composter? Yes, Uh,
my wife and I are composters. We've been posting for
for well, I guess ever since we've got our house. Um,
so far, so good. Yeah, because you're humus. Um, well,
we generally eat all of it instead of put Oh
(01:27):
that's humus. I think it's doing pretty good. Yeah. We uh,
we're we're not like super like strict militant composters, um,
which I think is right off the bat. I need
to stress like composting is not something you should be
afraid if you just jump in and do it. You
can take a lazy, if fair approached to composting, or
you can be super uptight about it. Yeah, it's like
(01:49):
it's it's how how however you want to approach it. Basically,
you can get crazy with it or you can ease
your way into it and you know, see what fits
you know for you. But yeah, we're we're more along
the NS with yet we're following certain guidelines. Um. You know,
but I'm in researching for this podcast. I've learned some
things like whoa, I haven't been composting that I could
be composting you know, cat hair, I didn't know we
(02:11):
could put that in there, So don't blow it off. Spoiler. Yeah,
I'm a huge gardener, but I have to admit we
haven't composted as of yet. But part of that I
think it is because we're in a rental. But as
you will find out, that is no excuse because you
can compost indoors. Busted. Yeah, totally. So let's get into
some reasons why you should compost. Okay, well, obvious of course. Yeah.
(02:33):
The obvious is whatever you're composting is not going into
the garbage can. And that's nice. I mean that breaks
down to so many levels. You're not dragging it out,
you're not wasting you know, extra garbage bags. It's not
being picked up by the garbage man. It's not contributing
to to the emissions by that garbage truck. It's not
taking up room in a in a landfill somewhere. I
mean it just the landfill is not generating x amount
(02:55):
of methane and leach it from that refuse im and
lots of landfills don't have a ton of life left
in them. Yeah, there's not. So let's drag these puppies
out as long as we Let's let's be reasonable about it. Yeah,
why why throw away an entire orange peel when you
can just throw away the little sticker, when you can
probably even recycle a little sticker. I don't know. My
three year old likes to peel them off and stick
them in random places around the house lately in the bathroom.
(03:17):
How do you know where your oranges came from? Well,
she does it after we There's also the fact that
some towns have paper throw we do in um in Georgia.
There are towns that that have paper throw so you
have to pay um per garbage bag. Also, if you actually,
you know, use your compost for anything such as putting
(03:38):
it into your garden, I mean your your soil is
going to benefit tremendously. I mean yeah, I mean it's
important to remember the soil is not just dirt. Soil
is a living thing, you know, It's just filled with
all this life and and you're just contributing to that
when you when you feed it all this lovely compost. Yeah,
especially downe here with clay soil, have you Georgia clay soil,
It breaks it up, gives it better areas, and it
(04:00):
adds great nutrients, which you were pretty much just saying.
And the soil also helps to retain water once you
add Yeah, and it can really make a difference. Like
not too long ago, we like a few months ago,
we took our composts that we've been building up and
we put it all in the garden, and like everything
just like brightened up. Really, Yeah, I heard it compared
to plant steroids. Essentially if you add some of that
(04:20):
and then you never know what's going to grow. You're like, whoa,
avocados are growing in our yard, Like just because we
composted a bunch and we've got like I think some
cucumbers sprouted out. Some people call use volunteers, so you know,
their their weeds, but their weeds you could potentially eat.
I've read about a cantal lip sprouting in a compost
bin from Yeah, so that's that's kind of major. And
here's something that I really hadn't thought about it. It
(04:42):
can also decontaminate soil. Again, according to the US e P,
I have the composting process can absorb odors and treat
semi volatile and volatile organic compounds, including stuff like heating fuels,
poly aromatic hydrocarbons, and even explosives. Yeah, that's very that's
very important thing to keep in mind when you're trying
to decide to start composting, because a lot of people
(05:04):
are like, oh, I don't want to the smell. I'm
just gonna have a heap of garbage in my yard.
But it doesn't smell if you do it right. It
doesn't smell if you do it right, and it's actually
gonna cut down on the odors. Yeah. So let's talk
about some of the basic ingredients slush steps behind composting. Okay,
you gotta have some waste, preferably organic. Yes, if you're not,
if you don't eat food at all or shed hair, etcetera. There,
(05:24):
read newspaper, then clothing, yeah, clothing, so yeah. So first
step is to gather your organic waste, whatever it may be,
whether it's like the newspaper leaves, grass, fruit, vegetables, kitchen waste, anything,
grass clippings. Yeah, And then you have your two basic
categories of compost material. You have the green um and
(05:45):
that's high in nitrogen, the stuff that's going to be
fast to decompose um like kitchen waste. Yeah, Like like
lettuce that fell on the floor got a little too
icky to use in the salad. I've heard the green
material also referred to as quote unquote juicy juicy. Okay, yeah,
and then you have your brown compost material, and this
(06:06):
is the stuff that's gonna be slower to decompose, like
would It's gonna be high in carbon and it's gonna
be dry. Yeah. Like a good example of this um
would be um wine quirks. If there wouldn't wine quirks,
you can compost those. Well, what's some other stuff that
you can compost that perhaps you didn't know about? Was it?
Was there anything on this list that we're just about
to read you? Yes, you want to mention the ones
(06:28):
that I was not aware of? Okay? Well, the human
hair and by extension, cat here I was not aware
of because I like, if I end up like taking
the brush to the cat, we end up with these
big hunks of orange. Yeah, it's like each one the
size of a young kitten, and I've just been throwing
them in the garbage. I didn't even think about. That's terrible. No,
(06:51):
are you gonna go home and pull the hair from
your hair brush and go smart? Straight up? I'm just
gonna go home and just share the entire cat and compost.
What about cotton rags? I had no idea cotton rags.
I'm not sure I'd use cotton rags for anything. But
what do you use a cotton rag for? Like, is
it like for cleaning around the house? I guess, well
(07:11):
yeah that or maybe um, you know, when you're buffing
the car or something, because you know I like to
do a lot of car buffing on Saturdays, or like ma,
if you're doing a Mummy costume for Halloween, right and
you get a lot of cotton material, yeah, yeah, um,
dryer lint. You know that you can compost another one
that I have not been doing. And vacuum vacuum refuse
(07:34):
from your room. Most of that is pet hair, So
those two, uh us two go go together. And then
you also have probably stuff that you guys know about,
like tea bags and coffee grounds and filters, even paperboard. Um.
The que with paperboard though, is that you want to
tear it up much smaller. Don't just hawk your cereal
boxes in the compost been Yeah, we haven't been doing
the paper I g I mean we use paper recycling,
(07:56):
so I never even think about composting it. But uh
but definitely on the coffee grounds with the well, with
the filters, we just started the filters in the coffee
grounds and then that seems to work great. Now, how
do you feel about egshells? Do you put egg shells
in your composting pile? Um? Yeah, we do now because
like the people that we had heard say, oh, you
shouldn't do it. We're talking about like if you're growing
(08:17):
a food garden and we don't grow a food garden.
So and is that because they think there's a fear
of salmonilla? Yeah, yeah, that's that's what that's that's attached to.
I've heard that some people actually wash their eggshells before
adding them to the compost polly. Either that or they
bake them. There are various methods. It's like with that
you get into the issues of like, well, am I
(08:37):
wasting water to wash the egg shells and I'm putting
in the compostor or the electricity or gas to fire
up the oven. I don't know. I leave those questions
to you guys. I also saw that you could compost blood,
which she's kind posting blood. No, that's you know what
that is. That's how you make um. I would not
do that because that's how you make homunculous. If you
(08:59):
look back. You know, homunculus is like a little like
a medieval magic in the occult. This is the idea
that you would make this little like grotesque, little humanoid,
and you'd have to use ingredients that are a lot
like compost like, like there'd be like some manure in there,
and you know, some other stuff and and then like
you would throw in some blood or some other bodily
fluid so to save that for your unculus. Yeah, yeah,
(09:22):
composting blood. You're just gonna get homunculi all over the place,
you asked me. I mean, I'm just saying beware, Hey,
what's the name of that Jewish um sort of figures. Yeah,
that's what I was saying the whole time. Most composting
efforts are going to be going free. That's that's more
of a high magic, I think. So so with some
(09:44):
of the stuff that you shouldn't com post, I think
you guys probably know this. But your dog's business, for example, Yeah,
which is kind of a bummer, especially if you have
a dog, because what else to do with all of
that business except but why wouldn't somebody throw the dog's
business in there? Because Pathogen's right, Yeah, but yeah, it
would be so easy if you could, right, would be great. Also,
(10:04):
one's own business should not go in there. And you know, granted,
every now and then you're like, oh man, the bathrooms occupied.
Can I just go out and take a dump in
the compost heat? No, you can't. That won't work at all.
Not I haven't done that. But you know, right then
you have stuff like mayo and peanut butter use cat litter.
Don't be doing that, Robert dairy products, and well the
(10:27):
ironic things. The cat just goes out and uses the
restroom all over the yard anyway, so it's in effect
she's composting. Great meat. You shouldn't come post meat, which
this one, this one comes into play like if if
you're like us and you have like several different bins
where different things need to be composted or recycled or
(10:49):
or garbage and uh, and you try and label them,
and then you have people over and like then they
have no idea where anything goes. And then like after
everyone goes home, you're like picking like raw meat out
of your compost. Yeah, so yeah, don't compost your meat.
Don't don't compost dairy products like yogurt, can't compost that
(11:10):
not so much. Do you know that? I had a
friend who dated the sky once who didn't believe in
throwing things away in the garbage can, and he just
he would just throw stuff away on the would just
throw stuff on the ground. What And then eventually maybe
like once a month or something, you know, they would
they would do a sweep. But he didn't really in
the house. Yeah, in the house, I'm not kidding. Oh
(11:30):
did he go into like open one of those chains
of restaurants where you throw the peanut shells on the floor.
It seems like the same basic principle. Yeah, I was
just thinking of that, Like banana peels just on the ground,
that's an instant calamity. Yeah, So what else do you
need besides your organic material? We went way off tang
just but we will get you back to the composting process. People. Um, Well,
(11:53):
on a very simple level, you just need some sort
of generally, you need some sort of receptacle for in
house camp posting, unless you you know, because if you
peel banana, you don't want to be like, oh I
gotta go walk out to the heap. Well, you can
get a composting croc yeah, Like it's like a little
cookie jar, right, yeah, yeah, that's what we have. Just
it's like it's nothing fancy. It just looks like a
little cookie jar. But woe to the child who reaches
(12:15):
in there expecting an oat mill uh, the old mill
raisin cookie. I've had my eye on a composting croc
from crate and barrel. It looks very nice and it
comes with a filter, so no odors. It's a little
bit more complex than your average cookie jar. It's kind
of a sweet system. And again you can I think
you can put maybe up to a week's worth of
(12:37):
food waste in there and then save yourself all those
trips out to whatever dark corner of the yard you
have your you've been in. I have a I have
a friend, um Becky Streepy is her name, and she's
always trying out like new uh composting options, and for
a while there she was going through uh like different
You have different little composting bins for the kitchen, and
(12:57):
I think some of them work really well, like one
or two really did not work and had some odor problems.
So you know, find what works. Shop around. Yeah, there
are a lot of options. We'll cover some of those,
Like one had a little spigot on the bottom where
you could like drain compost water out or something. I
don't know, I think they call it t. Yeah, some
of them have the T you want to drink. So
(13:18):
you're gonna need some soil too, right, Yeah, that's and
you're gonna so if you have like even like a
little bit of a yard or something, that's probably gonna
help out a lot. And the soil is beneficial because
it has all those lovely microorganisms that make their home there,
and they'll help to break down those particles. You can
even add finish that humus I read and that comes
jam packed with micro orgs already available. Oh yeah, it's
(13:41):
like um um yeah. Yeah. We actually use some of
that on on our compost at one point. It just
like speeds up the process. You're also gonna want water,
of course, um aim for you know moist composts. You know,
don't soak it, don't just turn the hose on it.
UM two. Wet is bad because it can stifle the
airflow and that cuts down on the process. Um and
(14:01):
they end up with it smelling. Yeah. Speaking of the air, um,
you're gonna want to stir your compost pile and depending
on how upset you are about your composting or how
how much you really wanted to come post fast, you're
gonna get out there and stir it up, or maybe
you have an automated compost pile where you know, kind
of rotates it for you. Those spinning ones, Yeah, those
spinning ones are awesome looking. Ours is more like there's
(14:22):
a lump of stuff in the backyard and you need
to get in there with a rate and start hitting it.
But yeah, you're gonna want to have an optimal carbon
to nitrogen ratio, and everything I found said it would
be about thirty to one. I've seen it lower to
maybe twenty one. But um, yeah, we're this is an
area of composting where I'm I'm not quite advanced enough
(14:43):
to where we're doing any math on it. And you're
gonna want to heat too. You have to keep it
hot enough, as some one source that recommended a hundred
thirty one degrees fahrenheit for three days to destroy weed
seeds and plant pathogens. It's good if it's hot, right,
because that means that things are happening. The microbes are
reap do sing, they're getting excited. Stuff's decomposing. And you
(15:04):
can buy a compost thermometer if you're so inclined to
check the temperature of your compost to make sure it's
you know, generating the heat if you can't tell right that.
This is also why Minders stands. There's some industrial composting
hum machines and they actually like heat everything up, which
speeds things along. Yeah. Into our composters come with an
electrical heating unit. Oh cool, Yeah, pretty cool. So yeah,
(15:27):
there's this little thing called hot composting, which isn't as
sexy as it sounds, which is so pretty cool. Um.
According to a tree hugger, hot composting occurs when compost
stays above ninety degrees fahrenheit. Um. And so when this happens,
you get a more active process um getting out. You're
stirring the organic ways. Yeah. Um. So you need to
(15:49):
make sure that you have your composting been in a
sunny spot for this, um. And that's why you will
generally find the composting bins are black or green because
you want them to absorb that solar energy not deflected. Right. So,
cool composting happens that anything attempts below eighty sixgrees fahrenheit
according to tree Hugger, And it's more the lazy man's
(16:09):
composting technique. If you can't get out there every day,
no big deal, that's fine, but just don't expect your
finished product to come out there. Yeah, and again the
stress stress it again, like don't just compost, you know,
just just just do it and let your involvement level,
you know, be whatever becomes comfortable, I should go. But
it was curious as to if it had any effects
on people's health. And the one thing I did find
(16:32):
was that, of course a compost pile is going to
have a pretty high population of various molds and fungi,
and so that can cause allergies and some people that
are prone to them. So if there is somebody in
your household that has such allergies, have them or a
mask or better yet, do it yourself and don't make
them do it. But then again, you do have sealed system,
(16:52):
so perhaps that would be more of the answer. We
have had occasional scavengers show up. The only like twice
I can remember. One was when we threw some pizza
crust in there, and it was like huge pizza crust
and like we saw squirrel. It was Squirrelsstanza. No, the
squirrels were like raiding the compost for the big, gigantic
(17:14):
pizza crust deal, Like it's the pizza crust was as
big as the squirrel. It was just running along with it.
Um And then this was weird though. At one point
we had like done like a we've just gotten this
new grill, right, and we were doing like a veggie
grill thing. There's no meat involved at this point, like
new grill, just veggies right, grilled up these veggies. And
(17:35):
you know, we were we were already composting, and so
the refuse went to the compost. We had a possum
show up in the middle of the night. You knock
on the door. No, no, But the thing is he
didn't even mess with the composting. He was there was
like a tiny little grape tomato in the bottom of
the of the grill, and the possum was like was
furiously trying to get into the grill to get that
little tomato instead of going into the composting. So I
(17:58):
don't know what that's about. My dog was us to
get into our girl team? How about the composting? Does
the does the animal mess with the because dogs are
a little more like, yeah, I'll eat a rotten tomato,
where cats don't care about that kind of thing. Yeah,
dogs would. My dog would definitely be interested in the
compost pile. So let's take a look at a compost
food web. Let's get into a little the sance behind it.
I was really astounded when I looked at this chart
(18:19):
of all the things that live in there, because I just,
I guess I never looked at it too closely. I
see flies on it, you know, but I don't go
rooting around in there for you know, nematodes On the
bottom level of your food web, you're gonna have your
organic residues. That's just your waist, you're gonna hawk in there. Yeah.
(18:40):
And then you're gonna have your first level consumers. You know,
these are the guys that get in there early and
eat the organic waste. So this includes fungi, bacteria, uh, snails,
nematod's stuff like my seats too. Yeah. And what are
the sawbugs, salbugs, salabugs, yeah, flies, beetle myths, white worms,
(19:04):
all sorts of good stuff. So those are those from
the first level. And then you have a second level
consumers right, nifeat on those guys. And this includes protozoa, nematodes,
mold mites, spring tails. Is that your favorite one? Where's
your favorite one that you had pointed out? Didn't she
like the pseudo scorpion? I did like the studio scorpion.
Is the studio scorpion filled fit into this whole scenario? Um? Well,
(19:28):
it kind of looks like a cross between a scorpion
and a flea. And he's like one to two millimeters
long apparently, So what does that make he is a Oh,
he's a second and third level consumer, So what does
that mean? That means he eats the such things as
the protozoa and the nematodes. So you have a whole
ecosystem right there in your compost heat. Yeah, Like people
(19:50):
talk about, oh, you know, I don't know about getting
a pet, um, I don't know about getting composting. If
you get composting, you get pets, millions of them. There's
even each other. There's even a carl rove beetle. Oh no, no, no,
it's just a yeah. But other third level consumers include
live centipedes, ground beetles, ants and you know ants feast
(20:11):
on all sorts of this stuff, but you know, any
of these lower invertebrates. So we've already kind of hammered
at you that you should just compost. And by hammering,
I'm I'm hammering at myself too, because I already have
admitted that I do not compost, but I will be
composting pretty much the second egg at home, I think.
(20:31):
So there are all sorts of bin types, whether you
live in New York City or whether you live out
in the hills of western New York. So there's a
small scale. There's those composting crops that we talked about,
but those really aren't completing the whole composting process. And
we're kind of like a base camp for a compost mountain, right.
And then you have your indoor kitchen composter, and like
(20:52):
I said, these have got their act pretty together. They
have filters, you can get composting bags, they come with
electric keating perhaps um, and you can even add handy
microorganisms to help stuff along. Wow, those are remarkable. I
really wasn't familiar with much. Are how expensive. They're probably
more than a cookie jar, probably more. Um. Yeah, then
(21:13):
you just have you have outdoor you know, simple low
tech pile wood bends, you know, you know basically just
like the ones we have are basically consist of like
it's like six steaks in the ground and then there's
like a kind of a fabric, like it's almost like
a tent without a top, cylindrical and you just dump
(21:33):
the stuff in there, and then when you're when you're done,
you can just remove the cylinder and you have the
big pile of composts package. I really want that the
pig composting bin that I afforded to. Did you say that?
Oh yeah, yeah, that the really pig composter. Yeah, it's
pretty awesome. We sat on People Powered Machines dot com.
It was sweet, but it's kind of pricey. Yeah. It's
(21:56):
basically like a big barrel, right, Yeah, but it was
divided into sections for each of the cycles of composting,
and you feed your organic waste into the snout and
it comes out at the pigs bottom. Oh wow, so
you learn kids can learn a little bit about how
composting works and how pigs work. Yeah, And there's some
really cool ones that look like you know, amusement park
(22:16):
rides or like alien spaceships. Um, there's like the ones
that have like a frame where you just like spin
the barrel on it. Like those are great, Like I
end those, um. But then there's somewhere it's like it's
like a ball made out of different pieces. And oh
it's you can you can buy like the Cadillact of
composting bins, or you can just go with something really
(22:39):
simple and low cost. It's the really wherever you feel comfortable.
And there's also worm com posting. We haven't mentioned that yet.
Oh that's pretty cool. This is a great alternative for
people who don't actually have that yard. If you're like
in an apartment and maybe all you have is a
like a little uh little balcony area or um. Right,
so don't put a nice, nice chair out there, nice
(23:00):
flower pop. You're not going to sit out there anyway.
I mean, how you know right there, tiny, just put
your compost or out there. Put it in your laundry um.
Although I'm guessing if you live in a tiny apartment
you may not have a laundry room. Yeah, put in
your bathroom. Yeah it's the bathroom. The worms live in
the bathroom exactly. Yeah, so candle worms. This was one
of the models I saw. It was maybe it was
over a hundred dollars, and then the worms extra worms
(23:22):
for fifty five dollars for a thousand. Wow, you can't
just go down to the bait store, and you probably could. Yeah,
but the benefits of worm composting. You get those awesome
worm castings, which your plants and the soil love. You
get liquid worm fertilizer, and I read one reviewer actually
called the liquid fertilizer organic plant steroids. It's one of
(23:44):
the best things you can do for your garden. So
when it comes to composting, the residents of San Francisco
are ahead of the pack um as a jarone Jessica
Toothman goes into in a two thous article. According to
San Francisco environment dot Org, hundreds of thousands of residents
and over three thousand restaurants and other businesses send over
(24:05):
four hundred tons of food, scraps and other compostable materials
each day to recolloges Jepson Prairie Composting Facility by San Francisco. Um,
what's the end result? The end result is yet used
to produce the organic food and wine that San Francisco
is famous for serving. So if you have any composting
(24:27):
stories you'd like to share, send us some email at
science Stuff that has to first dot com. Yeah, and
if you're in if this podcast inspires you to start,
let us know how it goes. Um and while you're
at it, you can always drop by the website and
uh search up any number of of composting recycling topics. Yeah,
lots of green topics covered on the site. And uh
(24:49):
oh yeah, and we have a Twitter and a Facebook account.
Now we shared you Yeah, stuff from the science lab
yeah or just lab stuff. Do a search on either
of those terms and that will lead you right to us.
So that's all we got. Thanks for listening, guys. For
(25:09):
more on this and thousands of other topics, is it
how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
com home page
Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff
works dot com. Hey guys, and welcome to the podcast.
This is Alison and you're listening to Stuff from the
Science Lab, and I'm Robert Lamb, science writer at how
(00:21):
stuff works dot com. Today's podcast comes to you courtesy
of listener pastor Robert. Pastor Robert wrote us from Western
New York. Pastor Robert wrote that he and his wife
are starting their first worm composting then a k a
vermicom posting, and he and his wife have found the
process of quote unquote fascinating. Pastor requested a podcast on
(00:42):
the science of com posting, something to listen to on
all of his long drives, which I have to wonder,
is he counseling people? I guess is that what a
pastor goes around doing pastoring on the side, and like
maybe he's a country doctor and baby think and he
drives the big rigs and like he like he chats
with pool like it truck stops. You know, people are
down on their luck and maybe he marries them too. Yes,
(01:05):
the people who are stop weddings right right, So today
we're gonna talk about composting. Are you a composter? Yes, Uh,
my wife and I are composters. We've been posting for
for well, I guess ever since we've got our house. Um,
so far, so good. Yeah, because you're humus. Um, well,
we generally eat all of it instead of put Oh
(01:27):
that's humus. I think it's doing pretty good. Yeah. We uh,
we're we're not like super like strict militant composters, um,
which I think is right off the bat. I need
to stress like composting is not something you should be
afraid if you just jump in and do it. You
can take a lazy, if fair approached to composting, or
you can be super uptight about it. Yeah, it's like
(01:49):
it's it's how how however you want to approach it. Basically,
you can get crazy with it or you can ease
your way into it and you know, see what fits
you know for you. But yeah, we're we're more along
the NS with yet we're following certain guidelines. Um. You know,
but I'm in researching for this podcast. I've learned some
things like whoa, I haven't been composting that I could
be composting you know, cat hair, I didn't know we
(02:11):
could put that in there, So don't blow it off. Spoiler. Yeah,
I'm a huge gardener, but I have to admit we
haven't composted as of yet. But part of that I
think it is because we're in a rental. But as
you will find out, that is no excuse because you
can compost indoors. Busted. Yeah, totally. So let's get into
some reasons why you should compost. Okay, well, obvious of course. Yeah.
(02:33):
The obvious is whatever you're composting is not going into
the garbage can. And that's nice. I mean that breaks
down to so many levels. You're not dragging it out,
you're not wasting you know, extra garbage bags. It's not
being picked up by the garbage man. It's not contributing
to to the emissions by that garbage truck. It's not
taking up room in a in a landfill somewhere. I
mean it just the landfill is not generating x amount
(02:55):
of methane and leach it from that refuse im and
lots of landfills don't have a ton of life left
in them. Yeah, there's not. So let's drag these puppies
out as long as we Let's let's be reasonable about it. Yeah,
why why throw away an entire orange peel when you
can just throw away the little sticker, when you can
probably even recycle a little sticker. I don't know. My
three year old likes to peel them off and stick
them in random places around the house lately in the bathroom.
(03:17):
How do you know where your oranges came from? Well,
she does it after we There's also the fact that
some towns have paper throw we do in um in Georgia.
There are towns that that have paper throw so you
have to pay um per garbage bag. Also, if you actually,
you know, use your compost for anything such as putting
(03:38):
it into your garden, I mean your your soil is
going to benefit tremendously. I mean yeah, I mean it's
important to remember the soil is not just dirt. Soil
is a living thing, you know, It's just filled with
all this life and and you're just contributing to that
when you when you feed it all this lovely compost. Yeah,
especially downe here with clay soil, have you Georgia clay soil,
It breaks it up, gives it better areas, and it
(04:00):
adds great nutrients, which you were pretty much just saying.
And the soil also helps to retain water once you
add Yeah, and it can really make a difference. Like
not too long ago, we like a few months ago,
we took our composts that we've been building up and
we put it all in the garden, and like everything
just like brightened up. Really, Yeah, I heard it compared
to plant steroids. Essentially if you add some of that
(04:20):
and then you never know what's going to grow. You're like, whoa,
avocados are growing in our yard, Like just because we
composted a bunch and we've got like I think some
cucumbers sprouted out. Some people call use volunteers, so you know,
their their weeds, but their weeds you could potentially eat.
I've read about a cantal lip sprouting in a compost
bin from Yeah, so that's that's kind of major. And
here's something that I really hadn't thought about it. It
(04:42):
can also decontaminate soil. Again, according to the US e P,
I have the composting process can absorb odors and treat
semi volatile and volatile organic compounds, including stuff like heating fuels,
poly aromatic hydrocarbons, and even explosives. Yeah, that's very that's
very important thing to keep in mind when you're trying
to decide to start composting, because a lot of people
(05:04):
are like, oh, I don't want to the smell. I'm
just gonna have a heap of garbage in my yard.
But it doesn't smell if you do it right. It
doesn't smell if you do it right, and it's actually
gonna cut down on the odors. Yeah. So let's talk
about some of the basic ingredients slush steps behind composting. Okay,
you gotta have some waste, preferably organic. Yes, if you're not,
if you don't eat food at all or shed hair, etcetera. There,
(05:24):
read newspaper, then clothing, yeah, clothing, so yeah. So first
step is to gather your organic waste, whatever it may be,
whether it's like the newspaper leaves, grass, fruit, vegetables, kitchen waste, anything,
grass clippings. Yeah, And then you have your two basic
categories of compost material. You have the green um and
(05:45):
that's high in nitrogen, the stuff that's going to be
fast to decompose um like kitchen waste. Yeah, Like like
lettuce that fell on the floor got a little too
icky to use in the salad. I've heard the green
material also referred to as quote unquote juicy juicy. Okay, yeah,
and then you have your brown compost material, and this
(06:06):
is the stuff that's gonna be slower to decompose, like
would It's gonna be high in carbon and it's gonna
be dry. Yeah. Like a good example of this um
would be um wine quirks. If there wouldn't wine quirks,
you can compost those. Well, what's some other stuff that
you can compost that perhaps you didn't know about? Was it?
Was there anything on this list that we're just about
to read you? Yes, you want to mention the ones
(06:28):
that I was not aware of? Okay? Well, the human
hair and by extension, cat here I was not aware
of because I like, if I end up like taking
the brush to the cat, we end up with these
big hunks of orange. Yeah, it's like each one the
size of a young kitten, and I've just been throwing
them in the garbage. I didn't even think about. That's terrible. No,
(06:51):
are you gonna go home and pull the hair from
your hair brush and go smart? Straight up? I'm just
gonna go home and just share the entire cat and compost.
What about cotton rags? I had no idea cotton rags.
I'm not sure I'd use cotton rags for anything. But
what do you use a cotton rag for? Like, is
it like for cleaning around the house? I guess, well
(07:11):
yeah that or maybe um, you know, when you're buffing
the car or something, because you know I like to
do a lot of car buffing on Saturdays, or like ma,
if you're doing a Mummy costume for Halloween, right and
you get a lot of cotton material, yeah, yeah, um,
dryer lint. You know that you can compost another one
that I have not been doing. And vacuum vacuum refuse
(07:34):
from your room. Most of that is pet hair, So
those two, uh us two go go together. And then
you also have probably stuff that you guys know about,
like tea bags and coffee grounds and filters, even paperboard. Um.
The que with paperboard though, is that you want to
tear it up much smaller. Don't just hawk your cereal
boxes in the compost been Yeah, we haven't been doing
the paper I g I mean we use paper recycling,
(07:56):
so I never even think about composting it. But uh
but definitely on the coffee grounds with the well, with
the filters, we just started the filters in the coffee
grounds and then that seems to work great. Now, how
do you feel about egshells? Do you put egg shells
in your composting pile? Um? Yeah, we do now because
like the people that we had heard say, oh, you
shouldn't do it. We're talking about like if you're growing
(08:17):
a food garden and we don't grow a food garden.
So and is that because they think there's a fear
of salmonilla? Yeah, yeah, that's that's what that's that's attached to.
I've heard that some people actually wash their eggshells before
adding them to the compost polly. Either that or they
bake them. There are various methods. It's like with that
you get into the issues of like, well, am I
(08:37):
wasting water to wash the egg shells and I'm putting
in the compostor or the electricity or gas to fire
up the oven. I don't know. I leave those questions
to you guys. I also saw that you could compost blood,
which she's kind posting blood. No, that's you know what
that is. That's how you make um. I would not
do that because that's how you make homunculous. If you
(08:59):
look back. You know, homunculus is like a little like
a medieval magic in the occult. This is the idea
that you would make this little like grotesque, little humanoid,
and you'd have to use ingredients that are a lot
like compost like, like there'd be like some manure in there,
and you know, some other stuff and and then like
you would throw in some blood or some other bodily
fluid so to save that for your unculus. Yeah, yeah,
(09:22):
composting blood. You're just gonna get homunculi all over the place,
you asked me. I mean, I'm just saying beware, Hey,
what's the name of that Jewish um sort of figures. Yeah,
that's what I was saying the whole time. Most composting
efforts are going to be going free. That's that's more
of a high magic, I think. So so with some
(09:44):
of the stuff that you shouldn't com post, I think
you guys probably know this. But your dog's business, for example, Yeah,
which is kind of a bummer, especially if you have
a dog, because what else to do with all of
that business except but why wouldn't somebody throw the dog's
business in there? Because Pathogen's right, Yeah, but yeah, it
would be so easy if you could, right, would be great. Also,
(10:04):
one's own business should not go in there. And you know, granted,
every now and then you're like, oh man, the bathrooms occupied.
Can I just go out and take a dump in
the compost heat? No, you can't. That won't work at all.
Not I haven't done that. But you know, right then
you have stuff like mayo and peanut butter use cat litter.
Don't be doing that, Robert dairy products, and well the
(10:27):
ironic things. The cat just goes out and uses the
restroom all over the yard anyway, so it's in effect
she's composting. Great meat. You shouldn't come post meat, which
this one, this one comes into play like if if
you're like us and you have like several different bins
where different things need to be composted or recycled or
(10:49):
or garbage and uh, and you try and label them,
and then you have people over and like then they
have no idea where anything goes. And then like after
everyone goes home, you're like picking like raw meat out
of your compost. Yeah, so yeah, don't compost your meat.
Don't don't compost dairy products like yogurt, can't compost that
(11:10):
not so much. Do you know that? I had a
friend who dated the sky once who didn't believe in
throwing things away in the garbage can, and he just
he would just throw stuff away on the would just
throw stuff on the ground. What And then eventually maybe
like once a month or something, you know, they would
they would do a sweep. But he didn't really in
the house. Yeah, in the house, I'm not kidding. Oh
(11:30):
did he go into like open one of those chains
of restaurants where you throw the peanut shells on the floor.
It seems like the same basic principle. Yeah, I was
just thinking of that, Like banana peels just on the ground,
that's an instant calamity. Yeah, So what else do you
need besides your organic material? We went way off tang
just but we will get you back to the composting process. People. Um, Well,
(11:53):
on a very simple level, you just need some sort
of generally, you need some sort of receptacle for in
house camp posting, unless you you know, because if you
peel banana, you don't want to be like, oh I
gotta go walk out to the heap. Well, you can
get a composting croc yeah, Like it's like a little
cookie jar, right, yeah, yeah, that's what we have. Just
it's like it's nothing fancy. It just looks like a
little cookie jar. But woe to the child who reaches
(12:15):
in there expecting an oat mill uh, the old mill
raisin cookie. I've had my eye on a composting croc
from crate and barrel. It looks very nice and it
comes with a filter, so no odors. It's a little
bit more complex than your average cookie jar. It's kind
of a sweet system. And again you can I think
you can put maybe up to a week's worth of
(12:37):
food waste in there and then save yourself all those
trips out to whatever dark corner of the yard you
have your you've been in. I have a I have
a friend, um Becky Streepy is her name, and she's
always trying out like new uh composting options, and for
a while there she was going through uh like different
You have different little composting bins for the kitchen, and
(12:57):
I think some of them work really well, like one
or two really did not work and had some odor problems.
So you know, find what works. Shop around. Yeah, there
are a lot of options. We'll cover some of those,
Like one had a little spigot on the bottom where
you could like drain compost water out or something. I
don't know, I think they call it t. Yeah, some
of them have the T you want to drink. So
(13:18):
you're gonna need some soil too, right, Yeah, that's and
you're gonna so if you have like even like a
little bit of a yard or something, that's probably gonna
help out a lot. And the soil is beneficial because
it has all those lovely microorganisms that make their home there,
and they'll help to break down those particles. You can
even add finish that humus I read and that comes
jam packed with micro orgs already available. Oh yeah, it's
(13:41):
like um um yeah. Yeah. We actually use some of
that on on our compost at one point. It just
like speeds up the process. You're also gonna want water,
of course, um aim for you know moist composts. You know,
don't soak it, don't just turn the hose on it.
UM two. Wet is bad because it can stifle the
airflow and that cuts down on the process. Um and
(14:01):
they end up with it smelling. Yeah. Speaking of the air, um,
you're gonna want to stir your compost pile and depending
on how upset you are about your composting or how
how much you really wanted to come post fast, you're
gonna get out there and stir it up, or maybe
you have an automated compost pile where you know, kind
of rotates it for you. Those spinning ones, Yeah, those
spinning ones are awesome looking. Ours is more like there's
(14:22):
a lump of stuff in the backyard and you need
to get in there with a rate and start hitting it.
But yeah, you're gonna want to have an optimal carbon
to nitrogen ratio, and everything I found said it would
be about thirty to one. I've seen it lower to
maybe twenty one. But um, yeah, we're this is an
area of composting where I'm I'm not quite advanced enough
(14:43):
to where we're doing any math on it. And you're
gonna want to heat too. You have to keep it
hot enough, as some one source that recommended a hundred
thirty one degrees fahrenheit for three days to destroy weed
seeds and plant pathogens. It's good if it's hot, right,
because that means that things are happening. The microbes are
reap do sing, they're getting excited. Stuff's decomposing. And you
(15:04):
can buy a compost thermometer if you're so inclined to
check the temperature of your compost to make sure it's
you know, generating the heat if you can't tell right that.
This is also why Minders stands. There's some industrial composting
hum machines and they actually like heat everything up, which
speeds things along. Yeah. Into our composters come with an
electrical heating unit. Oh cool, Yeah, pretty cool. So yeah,
(15:27):
there's this little thing called hot composting, which isn't as
sexy as it sounds, which is so pretty cool. Um.
According to a tree hugger, hot composting occurs when compost
stays above ninety degrees fahrenheit. Um. And so when this happens,
you get a more active process um getting out. You're
stirring the organic ways. Yeah. Um. So you need to
(15:49):
make sure that you have your composting been in a
sunny spot for this, um. And that's why you will
generally find the composting bins are black or green because
you want them to absorb that solar energy not deflected. Right. So,
cool composting happens that anything attempts below eighty sixgrees fahrenheit
according to tree Hugger, And it's more the lazy man's
(16:09):
composting technique. If you can't get out there every day,
no big deal, that's fine, but just don't expect your
finished product to come out there. Yeah, and again the
stress stress it again, like don't just compost, you know,
just just just do it and let your involvement level,
you know, be whatever becomes comfortable, I should go. But
it was curious as to if it had any effects
on people's health. And the one thing I did find
(16:32):
was that, of course a compost pile is going to
have a pretty high population of various molds and fungi,
and so that can cause allergies and some people that
are prone to them. So if there is somebody in
your household that has such allergies, have them or a
mask or better yet, do it yourself and don't make
them do it. But then again, you do have sealed system,
(16:52):
so perhaps that would be more of the answer. We
have had occasional scavengers show up. The only like twice
I can remember. One was when we threw some pizza
crust in there, and it was like huge pizza crust
and like we saw squirrel. It was Squirrelsstanza. No, the
squirrels were like raiding the compost for the big, gigantic
(17:14):
pizza crust deal, Like it's the pizza crust was as
big as the squirrel. It was just running along with it.
Um And then this was weird though. At one point
we had like done like a we've just gotten this
new grill, right, and we were doing like a veggie
grill thing. There's no meat involved at this point, like
new grill, just veggies right, grilled up these veggies. And
(17:35):
you know, we were we were already composting, and so
the refuse went to the compost. We had a possum
show up in the middle of the night. You knock
on the door. No, no, But the thing is he
didn't even mess with the composting. He was there was
like a tiny little grape tomato in the bottom of
the of the grill, and the possum was like was
furiously trying to get into the grill to get that
little tomato instead of going into the composting. So I
(17:58):
don't know what that's about. My dog was us to
get into our girl team? How about the composting? Does
the does the animal mess with the because dogs are
a little more like, yeah, I'll eat a rotten tomato,
where cats don't care about that kind of thing. Yeah,
dogs would. My dog would definitely be interested in the
compost pile. So let's take a look at a compost
food web. Let's get into a little the sance behind it.
I was really astounded when I looked at this chart
(18:19):
of all the things that live in there, because I just,
I guess I never looked at it too closely. I
see flies on it, you know, but I don't go
rooting around in there for you know, nematodes On the
bottom level of your food web, you're gonna have your
organic residues. That's just your waist, you're gonna hawk in there. Yeah.
(18:40):
And then you're gonna have your first level consumers. You know,
these are the guys that get in there early and
eat the organic waste. So this includes fungi, bacteria, uh, snails,
nematod's stuff like my seats too. Yeah. And what are
the sawbugs, salbugs, salabugs, yeah, flies, beetle myths, white worms,
(19:04):
all sorts of good stuff. So those are those from
the first level. And then you have a second level
consumers right, nifeat on those guys. And this includes protozoa, nematodes,
mold mites, spring tails. Is that your favorite one? Where's
your favorite one that you had pointed out? Didn't she
like the pseudo scorpion? I did like the studio scorpion.
Is the studio scorpion filled fit into this whole scenario? Um? Well,
(19:28):
it kind of looks like a cross between a scorpion
and a flea. And he's like one to two millimeters
long apparently, So what does that make he is a Oh,
he's a second and third level consumer, So what does
that mean? That means he eats the such things as
the protozoa and the nematodes. So you have a whole
ecosystem right there in your compost heat. Yeah, Like people
(19:50):
talk about, oh, you know, I don't know about getting
a pet, um, I don't know about getting composting. If
you get composting, you get pets, millions of them. There's
even each other. There's even a carl rove beetle. Oh no, no, no,
it's just a yeah. But other third level consumers include
live centipedes, ground beetles, ants and you know ants feast
(20:11):
on all sorts of this stuff, but you know, any
of these lower invertebrates. So we've already kind of hammered
at you that you should just compost. And by hammering,
I'm I'm hammering at myself too, because I already have
admitted that I do not compost, but I will be
composting pretty much the second egg at home, I think.
(20:31):
So there are all sorts of bin types, whether you
live in New York City or whether you live out
in the hills of western New York. So there's a
small scale. There's those composting crops that we talked about,
but those really aren't completing the whole composting process. And
we're kind of like a base camp for a compost mountain, right.
And then you have your indoor kitchen composter, and like
(20:52):
I said, these have got their act pretty together. They
have filters, you can get composting bags, they come with
electric keating perhaps um, and you can even add handy
microorganisms to help stuff along. Wow, those are remarkable. I
really wasn't familiar with much. Are how expensive. They're probably
more than a cookie jar, probably more. Um. Yeah, then
(21:13):
you just have you have outdoor you know, simple low
tech pile wood bends, you know, you know basically just
like the ones we have are basically consist of like
it's like six steaks in the ground and then there's
like a kind of a fabric, like it's almost like
a tent without a top, cylindrical and you just dump
(21:33):
the stuff in there, and then when you're when you're done,
you can just remove the cylinder and you have the
big pile of composts package. I really want that the
pig composting bin that I afforded to. Did you say that?
Oh yeah, yeah, that the really pig composter. Yeah, it's
pretty awesome. We sat on People Powered Machines dot com.
It was sweet, but it's kind of pricey. Yeah. It's
(21:56):
basically like a big barrel, right, Yeah, but it was
divided into sections for each of the cycles of composting,
and you feed your organic waste into the snout and
it comes out at the pigs bottom. Oh wow, so
you learn kids can learn a little bit about how
composting works and how pigs work. Yeah, And there's some
really cool ones that look like you know, amusement park
(22:16):
rides or like alien spaceships. Um, there's like the ones
that have like a frame where you just like spin
the barrel on it. Like those are great, Like I
end those, um. But then there's somewhere it's like it's
like a ball made out of different pieces. And oh
it's you can you can buy like the Cadillact of
composting bins, or you can just go with something really
(22:39):
simple and low cost. It's the really wherever you feel comfortable.
And there's also worm com posting. We haven't mentioned that yet.
Oh that's pretty cool. This is a great alternative for
people who don't actually have that yard. If you're like
in an apartment and maybe all you have is a
like a little uh little balcony area or um. Right,
so don't put a nice, nice chair out there, nice
(23:00):
flower pop. You're not going to sit out there anyway.
I mean, how you know right there, tiny, just put
your compost or out there. Put it in your laundry um.
Although I'm guessing if you live in a tiny apartment
you may not have a laundry room. Yeah, put in
your bathroom. Yeah it's the bathroom. The worms live in
the bathroom exactly. Yeah, so candle worms. This was one
of the models I saw. It was maybe it was
over a hundred dollars, and then the worms extra worms
(23:22):
for fifty five dollars for a thousand. Wow, you can't
just go down to the bait store, and you probably could. Yeah,
but the benefits of worm composting. You get those awesome
worm castings, which your plants and the soil love. You
get liquid worm fertilizer, and I read one reviewer actually
called the liquid fertilizer organic plant steroids. It's one of
(23:44):
the best things you can do for your garden. So
when it comes to composting, the residents of San Francisco
are ahead of the pack um as a jarone Jessica
Toothman goes into in a two thous article. According to
San Francisco environment dot Org, hundreds of thousands of residents
and over three thousand restaurants and other businesses send over
(24:05):
four hundred tons of food, scraps and other compostable materials
each day to recolloges Jepson Prairie Composting Facility by San Francisco. Um,
what's the end result? The end result is yet used
to produce the organic food and wine that San Francisco
is famous for serving. So if you have any composting
(24:27):
stories you'd like to share, send us some email at
science Stuff that has to first dot com. Yeah, and
if you're in if this podcast inspires you to start,
let us know how it goes. Um and while you're
at it, you can always drop by the website and
uh search up any number of of composting recycling topics. Yeah,
lots of green topics covered on the site. And uh
(24:49):
oh yeah, and we have a Twitter and a Facebook account.
Now we shared you Yeah, stuff from the science lab
yeah or just lab stuff. Do a search on either
of those terms and that will lead you right to us.
So that's all we got. Thanks for listening, guys. For
(25:09):
more on this and thousands of other topics, is it
how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works,
check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot
com home page
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