The easiest ways to compost — even if you never thought you would

By M ichael J. C oren The Washington Post

FEW KNOW THIS, BUT I have 3,000 employees working for me at home. They don’t punch a clock, but they toil day and night. We never speak, but we meet for a few moments every few days. I supply them with as much food as they can eat, and in return, they furnish an endless supply of black gold.

I’m a worm farmer.

Composting is something most people assume they can’t or won’t do. And I get it. I was once a non-composter too. I’ve heard about the potential problems: The smells, the flies, the rats, it’s a hassle, no space, an unspoken fear of the unknown. I, too, have battled the fruit fly. But it turns out, these problems are all avoidable. A new crop of ways to compost has emerged over the past few years. American composters are a growing breed. Their numbers have ticked up over the years thanks to more municipal collection programs — mandatory in states like Vermont — as well as growing interest among those aware of the impact, and value, of their kitchen scraps.

It’s also much easier. New technology and services are available to meet that demand, whether you want a sleek appliance or a readymade worm farm. If you aren’t composting yet, get ready. As the country aims for net-zero emissions, composting may start to become as common as recycling. Plus, you’ll get the best tomatoes of your life.

• The food waste problem

Americans have never wasted so much food: 400 pounds per household. That’s about 35 percent of the total U.S. food supply ending up in the trash, according to ReFED, a California-based nonprofit organization dedicated to ending food waste.

Today, Americans compost about 6 percent of kitchen scraps. The rest ends up mainly in landfills where it rots, generating methane, a greenhouse gas 80 times more potent in the short term than carbon dioxide. Virtually none of our food waste ends up as compost fertilizing our yards or fields, depriving the soil of many of the nutrients that must be added with natural-gas-derived nitrogen fertilizer.

Homes generate most of the emissions from wasted food in the United States. It’s not just vegetables, leftovers and overripe avocados being squandered. It’s also the energy that went into plowing fields, fertilizing crops, running tractors and then trucking food to get it onto your plate. Most food-related emissions, it turns out, are generated long before your scraps hit the landfill. Yet, unlike other forms of waste, there is little social stigma or cost attached to it. “If you were to walk down the street and throw half a bag of potato chips on the sidewalk, people would look at you as if it were an awful offense,” says Dana Gunders, executive director of ReFED. “But if you throw it in the garbage can, they don’t think much of it.”

Composting, unlike recycling, has yet to gain mainstream acceptance. This is changing slowly. At last count, nine states have restricted sending food waste to landfills. Vermont is the first state to ban the disposal of food scraps in the trash or landfills for households.

Some cities are trying to scale up composting: Austin gives residents vouchers to buy compost bins. Los Angeles County discounts them for residents. But commercial composting hasn’t been scaled up to match our municipal waste stream. Doing so will require more than $1 billion, according to ReFED estimates. Of the 5,000 composting facilities nationwide, only 500 accept food scraps, ReFED estimates.

So for now, composting friends, most of you are on your own. Luckily, you need not share my admiration for red wigglers to compost.

• What’s the best composting setup for you?

For this I turned to Amy Landers, who runs Gardens That Matter, an online gardening club offering classes and a community to help people garden. Her composting credentials date back to an eighth-grade science project, and she now composts on her farm outside Asheville, N.C. Her largest composting venture? The dead horse of a neighbor, whose owner couldn’t bear to send her beloved pet to the landfill. Everything but the bones was gone in about a year.

Most people, says Landers, overthink composting. “If it was ever alive, it can be composted,” she says. A large, hot, well-run compost pile — no trivial feat — can digest almost any organic matter, eventually. But even something more modest in your backyard can handle quite a bit.

In fact, most of the organic materials coming into your home from groceries to junk mail to paper bags are just soil in waiting. Think of compost as a luxury high-rise for microorganisms. Bacteria, fungi, nematodes, worms, sow bugs and other invertebrates all thrive in compost. When mixed into soil, compost allows it to hold more water and nutrients. Plants respond by growing larger roots, increasing yields and even sending sugars to the roots to feed more bacteria.

Landers advises playing it safe when you’re first starting, if you’re nervous: Go light or omit oils, meats, orange peels, dairy and bones. Pet waste is a no-no. Plastic too. But don’t stress. Many prohibitions are not hard and fast rules. “A lot

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