Compost on Your Mind?

**Guest post by CompostNow**

Right now, 14 businesses are composting in Buckhead.

Together, they’ve diverted 52,283 pounds of compostables from the landfill and have created 13,071 pounds of compost for community gardens and urban farms! These businesses believe in building healthy soil and reducing food waste, and they’re changing our waste management system because of it.

Take a moment and think about composting as you know it. What comes to mind? A smelly pile of food scraps in your grandpa’s backyard? A bin full of wiggling worms? At CompostNow, we see a beautiful and powerful process that transforms food scraps into a valuable, nutrient-rich soil amendment that builds healthy soil in our community and strengthens our local food system.

In short, composting is powerful. It’s impactful. It’s important. And, we’re seeing community members and local businesses grow the compost movement in the area by choosing to divert their food waste from the landfill. Turning apple cores, banana peels, paper towels and other organic material into a rich, earthy soil amendment can seem like magic. But composting is easier than you think and is one of the biggest things you can do to help our planet! Let me break it down further (ha!). Composting:

Builds Healthy Soil

The nutrients found in food scraps and other compostable material is precious. Composting recycles those nutrients back into our depleted soils to make them healthier and more productive, creating a stronger and more resilient local food system!

Starves Landfills

40% of the food in the US is wasted, and the majority of that is sent to landfills where those nutrients are wasted away in a trash pile. Landfills not only take up a lot of space but have chronic health issues for community members living near them.

Fights Climate Change

When food is sent to the landfill, it rots and emits methane, a greenhouse gas 25x more potent than carbon dioxide. Composting eliminates those harmful emissions! Furthermore, when applied to soils, compost increases soil’s ability to store carbon currently in our atmosphere.

Think composting might be right for your Buckhead business or home… Join the movement, and learn more at www.compostnow.org !