What You Can & Cannot Compost at Home
Composting is a great way to help offset your carbon footprint and embrace a more sustainable lifestyle in your home. It can also help you grow nutritionally dense produce by enriching the soil in your very own garden, or revitalise your indoor plants. Whether you live in a large house with a backyard, or a city-dwelling apartment, composting at home has never been easier thanks to EarthKynd.
Tonight's leftovers can become tomorrow's delicious vegetables; all you need to do is follow this simple guide. This article will help you understand the importance of composting and cover which items you can compost at home, from vegetable scraps to certified compostable home goods. All the items listed below as compostable at home are compatible with our EarthKynd unit, and the items listed as non-compostable are also not to be disposed in our composting unit.
Why is composting at Home Important?
On average, 60% of every Australian household bin contains organic materials that could become purposeful waste as nature intended. By composting, your household can help maintain balance in nature by reducing waste in landfills and returning rich nutrients back into the soil.
What can you compost at Home?
Leftovers and Food Scraps;
Food scraps aren't just limited to fruits and vegetables; you can also compost your eggshells, tea bags, nutshells, coffee grounds, and seeds. These materials are rich in nitrogen which is essential for optimal composting conditions.
Plants, Yard Waste, and Vegetation;
Plants and vegetation already compost on a large scale in the wild, where they return rich nutrients back into the planet's ecosystems as nature intended. They can do the same for your home garden while also providing vital energy to your composting organisms in the form of carbon.
Cardboard and Paper;
Cardboard and paper help compost retain moisture while preventing it from getting too wet and developing a foul odor.
Certified Compostable Home Products;
The packaging of these products is designed to break down in a simple compost pile environment or home composting solution. They are held to Australia's AS 5810 standard and can be identified through the OK compost HOME label. By choosing products with this label, you're choosing packaging that can become a part of your growing garden instead of taking hundreds of years to decompose in a landfill.
What shouldn’t you compost at home?
Meat and Dairy Products;
This rule applies to families that will be doing their composting outdoors. The reason is that your leftover meat, bones, and dairy products can create odor problems that will quickly attract pests and rodents.
Pet Waste or Litter;
These may contain harmful bacteria, viruses, and parasites that could be harmful to humans if used for gardening purposes.
The diseases may survive during the composting and can be transferred to new plants.
Yard waste and trimmings with pesticides;
The pesticides can kill the composting organisms required to transform your waste.