This being my first blog for Compost RVA, I suppose I should start with why I started composting, or telling you to start composting to join the growing movement. However, that's not how this blog is going to start. Instead, I am going to tell you not to compost, at least not before answering some questions about your own waste mark.

Let's start with your favorite food. And I'm talking your “I can't go a week without it” kind of food. So let's say you are a runner and banana's are your fuel of choice, and let's say you have at least one a week. So that's 52 bananas a year. Now let's look at your banana peels. For the sake of this example I found an online figure estimating one peel equaling 68 grams, which leads us to 7.7 lbs of peels, just peels a year if you have one a week. Now change that to two bananas a week making 15.4 lbs a year, and then to three a week. Do you see how something as simple as a banana peel adds up over time.

Composting helps us process this feeling of guilt toward our waste stream, while also creating future possibilities, future life for more things to grow. And as this compost grows and changes into something nourishing and beautiful for our soil system, hopefully each of us evolves as well into someone nourished and inspired by the fact that waste does not exist in nature. And thus waste as it has been seen in our lifetimes should be redefined into something constructive in our own lives.