Composting: YCAN’s Local Action Group support and encourage the composting of biodegradable waste. There is plenty of information on the web about how to compost at home, including on the City of Yarra website (they also have compost bins and worm farms available to buy). Cultivating Community also work with the City of Yarra on composting projects. To promote composting in the community, YCAN is offering free plaques to be displayed outside your home, like the one pictured below. The survey is now closed. If you would like to know more about YCAN’s composting initiatives, please write to the Urban Agriculture team using the contact form.
Why compost? There are many reasons to compost your kitchen scraps, of which here are a few:
– To decrease landfill and associated transport associated fossil fuel use (and cost)
– To reduces methane, which is produced when organic material breaks down without oxygen, a gas is 72 times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas (over a 20year period)(1).
– Methane also causes potential problems around landfill sites (e.g. Cranbourne in 2008(2))
– For gardeners, compost can be used to: hold moisture, so save water; improve drainage; buffer soils that are very acidic or alkaline (that is, reduce either way); keep pH balance; help suppress plant disease, by encouraging healthy and complete ecosystem; provide all the nutrients plants need; avoids the need for artificial fertilisers, with their associated fossil fuel consumption/carbon foot print (in manufacture and transport), and cost.
– Great for wild life: organic decomposing material feeds the bottom of the foodchain, and therefore feeds the higher levels of the food chain.