Is Composting Actually Important?

The short answer: yes, composting is extremely important, especially when you live in a rural area with tons of agriculture. Now let me explain why…

When we throw something away, how many of us actually think about where that trash is going? This is a topic I spend far too much of my free time and brain space thinking about. 

I spend so much time thinking about it because I know that taking what we do with our trash seriously is integral to the protection of our planet and our farmable land space.

Here in the Verde Valley, we are somewhat limited with our options for recycling and trash separation, which is typical for rural communities. Most of us have heard the stats about how much of our recyclables actually get recycled (the stats aren't good), whether we separate them out or not.

And what about organic waste such as landscaping waste, kitchen waste like food scraps, manure from livestock, wood chips from the tree in your front yard that you just cut down. What happens to all of this waste if there isn't a place where it can be separated and repurposed? 

That's right, it all ends up in the landfill. 

Which is a major bummer because organic waste is the main ingredient in making compost! Take some food scraps, some fallen leaves, a little bit of manure, some wood chips, add water to that, and let it sit and you’ve essentially created compost. It sounds too easy! Well, it truly is. 

And best of all, if we all come together and start separating out our organic waste instead of throwing it in the trash, we can create a closed loop of resource recirculation right here in our rural community. 

We have a huge opportunity to make big changes in a small place, by taking our trash seriously. By using a service like Verde Valley Compost, you could be a part of the bigger picture of the health of our local community and keeping our dollars in the hands of our neighbors. 

The food scraps from your kitchen, the manure from your neighbor’s horses, the grape waste from your favorite local winery…all of these resources can be kept local, turned into compost by a local company, and sold back to you for your home garden, sold to your favorite tomato grower at the farmers market, and much much more. 

So, why is composting important? Because when we decide to take a deeper look at our waste and where it goes, we see an opportunity to do better. 

Not only for ourselves, but for everyone around us and everyone who comes after us. Having a local supply of compost in the Verde Valley means more local farms can be using organic compost as fertilizer instead of toxic synthetic fertilizers that pollute our waterways and degrade the integrity of our soil. When the integrity of the soil is degraded, then the food grown in that soil is degraded as well. 

Let's break the cycle and do something we can feel good about and proud of as a small rural community. Let’s start composting today, because it truly is important.