Hello, Potatoes!!! We hope you’ve been enjoying the sun and having a fun start to your summer!! 🔆🩴🌳✨🌻 Also, our Core Potatoes have become SUPER busy lately, so we have decided that it’s necessary to start sending shorter emails with more focused challenges. We’ll still be sending you monthly emails, so there’s no reason to worry! 😉

This month we will be starting a new theme of waste and unwanted items, starting with compost! Our goal this month is for all of our Potatoes to start composting (there are lots of different ways!). 

Food scraps don’t break down in landfills, instead contributing to the release of methane into the atmosphere.

Methane (which is released by landfills, which cause 15% of the US’s greenhouse-gas emissions according to the EPA) as potent as carbon dioxide. If we compost instead, the food scraps will decompose and create fresh soil (yes, you get free soil too!), reducing the amount of greenhouse gases produced by landfills. ♻️ Here’s an article from the EPA about methane. “Because methane is both a powerful greenhouse gas and short-lived compared to carbon dioxide, achieving significant reductions would have a rapid and significant effect on atmospheric warming potential.”

— US Environmental Protection Agency

There are a lot of options for composting even if you don’t have a yard or don’t want to spend time creating a compost pile from scratch. Here are some different ways!

• Curbside compost bin: If it’s available, the curbside compost bin will either come with your residence, or you’ll have to request one, and all you need to do is put it on your curb every week with your trash and recycling. When packaging says it needs to be commercially composted, that means you need to put it in your curbside bin (not your personal compost).

• Indoor composter: There are a bunch of different options for indoor composting listed in this article: A Composting Guide for Apartment Living 

• Online composting: Basically, what you do is get an app or go on Facebook and ask a stranger if they want your food scraps (more details have been excluded). If this sounds like a good option, search for Facebook groups or try the app ShareWaste!

• Compost bin: A turnable bin outside that you put compost in. You can also have a compost pile.

There are a lot more ways of composting than just the ones we mentioned here, so we encourage you to look into other options if the above don’t work in your situation!

Now that you have your compost area set up, you can start composting! Depending on what composting method you picked, you may need to turn the compost every few days. Except for curbside bins, make sure you add 3–4 parts browns for 1 part greens. Browns are things like dry leaves, dead plants, paper, cloth from natural fibers, etc. Greens are vegetable scraps and other live plant material (avoid plants with diseases and seeds), egg shells, etc. Here’s a link to a list of what you can compost.

Once your compost is ready, you can use it as soil for your garden! If you don’t need it, you can find someone else who does.
Here’s this month’s checklist! Good luck composting!!!