Every grade school child knows the importance of reuse, reduce, and recycle; what better way to help the planet and learn about biology than with composting right in your own backyard garden? It also saves you money as you won't have to worry about buying commercial fertilizer. It's all in your kitchen scraps!
How does composting work?
Compost is really the end product of the breakdown of organic matter. Microorganisms feed off organic matter and what's left is compost.
When people say they want to compost, there are two options. One can decide for a passive process or an active process.
As the name implies, there is little work to be done in the passive process. One just needs to collect compost material such as grass clippings and kitchen refuse and put them in an closed off pile in the backyard. Make sure that the kitchen scraps are well covered with other organic material to avoid animals looking for a free meal!
While little effort is required in the passive approach to composting, it is indeed slow and you might be waiting well over a year or two for complete decomposition.
Active composting requires more work, but not much with the proper equipment. Active composting is just helping nature along by providing the right conditions for the decomposition process. Decomposition is faster when the organic material is kept in a warm, damp and well oxygenated environment. By having a compost bin, not only does it provide a neater appearance in your backyard but it also offers a controlled environment in which to produce your compost. Add a thermometer to a compost tumbler to turn over the compost and it's got a great mix for composting.
As you can see, the effort involved in composting is not that much but the benefits of using compost are many. The byproducts of microorganisms breaking down organic material provides great nutrients for plants as well as the compost is nitrogen and potassium rich which helps maintain ideal soil condition. Compost also improves water retention in the soil as well as texture and aeration.
Other benefits of composting include the reduction of wastes into our landfill. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, it's important that our children inherit a healthy planet. And what better way to pass on our gift than by involving our children in the process as well. Every school aged child knows about reduce, reuse and recycle. Composting involves all these steps plus the benefit of watching your garden grow! What a practical lesson for any child.
Many cities, towns and townships are now thinking about computer recycling as well as TV recycling methods to protect the environment and avoid possible soil contamination. Because computers contain many parts that could release toxins into the soil, city governments are seeking alternative ways to dispose of your old computers as well as all your old electronic equipment. This eventually will become a normal practice as more city governments become aware of the potential danger of dumping computers and all electronic products into a landfill. Many groups are also spreading the word about computer recycling and want to find better ways to dispose of the equipment.
In many cities, there are local electronic stores or recycling centers that will take your old computers and other electronics, dismantle them, and place the right parts in the right containers for disposal. This method of disposal will soon become a necessity because of the computer industries continued upgrading and making more computers that are newer more affordable for the average person to buy. If the computers make it into landfills as they have in the past, it could eventually cause environmental issues that would then need to be addressed by the federal government.
The issue of recycling computers and other electronics has become a hot computer topic and will continue to be addressed by conservatives and government officials in order to protect the land. Because the monitors as well as televisions have gases and other toxins that if placed in landfill sites could sooner or later release these gases into the atmosphere as well. This is a concern for all who have the ozone and air quality in mind. The gases inside a monitor need to be released safely as you do with a refrigerator or air-conditioner. Without proper release, the air can become filled with these toxic gases.
When recycling computers, monitors and any printers, people need to take the equipment to a place that is accredited for safely disposing of the equipment in a safe and proper way rather than dumping the equipment in a pile somewhere and hope for the best. It is vital that everyone disposes of their computer equipment properly and take it to a participating recycler in the area. You may have to pay a small fee to drop off your old electronic equipment, but you will also be spending the money wisely to protect the environment.
One of the issues surrounding computer disposal is the already thousands if not millions of computers, printers and monitors as well as other electronics that are already in landfills all over the world. Many people express concern about ways to clean up landfill sites that already have the electronics dumped there, but the cost would be in the millions to do such a huge project of this sort. Besides the fact that electronics that have been in landfills for some time now have probably already done what harm they could do already.
Printers just need the ink cartridges and toner cartridges removed before dismantling them. Many stores such as Office Max and other retail electronic stores have barrels for disposing of your old cartridges. Many ink and toner manufactures that sell to stores, supply pre-paid envelopes for sending the old cartridges back for recycling. These practices have been around for quite a while now. This has cut down on ink cartridges and toner cartridges from being pull in landfills. If everyone would learn to recycle computer and electronic equipment, then it will save millions of dollars for future clean up of these landfill sites.
Recycling old computers to save the environment is necessary and everyone has a responsibility to abide by this practice to protect and preserve land and air quality. With the newer computer systems becoming available for an affordable price and the way technology changes daily, people are going to need new computers and other electronic equipment to keep up with the changing world. Recycling is needed to accommodate all the old equipment that will double if not triple over the next few years.
Both Mariam Ma & Terry Detty are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
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