You may have heard your science teacher talking about composting. You may have smelled a strange scent, wafting over from your hippie neighbor’s backyard. Or maybe you have no idea what composting is. Composting is a relatively new method of “recycling.” In this process, people take their household waste that consists of fruits, vegetables, unbleached paper, and other plant waste, and put it in a container to decompose and become rich soil. Many people also add worms to speed up the process. What’s the point? Here are five points, 5 great reasons to compost:

1. Composting is easy! Yes, the whole process of composting does sound difficult and time consuming, and it can take an extremely long time for all that waste to decompose. But in reality, after the first setup of a compost, the process is extremely simple. If you click here, you’ll find a tutorial on how to start your compost. You may also want to find a bait shop to add worms to your pile. After that, it’s just about getting into a routine. While cooking, it helps to have a small bucket, bag, or tupperware to store any natural garbage. During the after dinner cleanup, all you have to do is go outside and dump the bucket out!
2. Composting is good for your plants. The soil that compost makes is incredibly rich in nutrients. By using organic material like decomposing fruits and vegetables, sawdust, and even dried up leaves, plants will thrive in this natural fertilizer. After a few months, your compost will already begin to show results (meaning usable soil) and you can use this soil in your plants. Click here for more facts about ways composted soil will help your plants.                                                                                                                           
3.  It diminishes the amount of waste your household uses. This may not be very surprising, but humans, especially Americans, make quite a lot of garbage. Americans represent 5% of the world’s population, but generate 30% of the world’s garbage. The average American generates 1 million pounds of garbage every year. This garbage doesn’t just go away. It begins to fill things called “landfills,” which are just huge places to dump human waste. These landfills pollute the Earth, and are getting much too big for the world to handle. One way to diminish your contribution to the landfills is to compost. According to the EPA, roughly 24% of human waste is organic material, meaning it can be composted. That’s 24% of your waste you can be take out of a landfill, and put into soil.                                                                
4. Composting will encourage you to eat healthier. Over time, you may become very attached to your compost. It will turn into your baby. That being said, you’ll want your baby to do very well, and get as much decomposing organic material as it can. (Like every parent does). Consequently, many households begin eating healthier, as they become more aware of the amount of organic material they produce from their meals.
5. Composting eliminates the need for chemicals. “Need,” is a strong word, but many farmers, or just homeowners with a backyard and plants, feel the need to use chemical fertilizers to help their flowers and produce grow. With a compost, these farmers and homeowners would no longer have a need to use harmful chemicals, because they would just be able to use the compost as a fertilizer. These chemicals, when used, can cause harmful air pollution and are terrible for human health.

Although composting is not possible for everyone, there are many places to dispose of compost, such as community gardens and many local colleges or universities. Consider having three separate trash cans in your kitchen; one for recycling, one for compost, and one for everything else. Composting could be a factor in lengthening the time humans have on Earth, so give it a try.