[HN Gopher] My oldest kid made this to raise awareness for compo...
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My oldest kid made this to raise awareness for composting
Author : pmc00
Score : 62 points
Date : 2021-05-02 15:58 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.why-compost.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.why-compost.org)
| tantalor wrote:
| Poorly explained. Why does it matter where this stuff decomposes?
| Compost heaps also emit CO2, but faster, so why are they better?
| Spooky23 wrote:
| If you read more carefully this is mostly explained.
|
| Decay in landfills is anaerobic and produces methane, which has
| a higher impact on warming than CO2.
|
| Also, composting has a bunch of other no-brainer benefits.
| Compost reduces demand for fertilizer, can substantially reduce
| the waste steam, and improves soil quality.
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| > _If you read more carefully this is mostly explained._ >
| _Decay in landfills is anaerobic and produces methane, which
| has a higher impact on warming than CO2._
|
| It's not clear to me where you're getting that from. The page
| neither mentions the word anaerobic nor say that composting
| doesn't also release the exact same gasses just somewhere
| else. At best it leans on the reader feeling an emotional
| difference between the words "decompose" and "decay".
| NickM wrote:
| Some landfills now harvest methane and inject it back into
| the natural gas grid. If this were done more widely,
| landfills could actually help solve climate change by
| reducing demand for natural gas.
| nostromo wrote:
| Landfills generally burn off their methane, which turns it
| into carbon dioxide.
|
| So, yes, they're roughly equivalent. And things decay faster
| as compost, so you'd actually be increasing climate change by
| composting all organic waste.
|
| Methane is mostly a problem when it can't be captured and
| burned (ex: cow farts, a serious problem in preventing
| climate change).
|
| Note that I still support composting. I just don't think it
| can be argued from a climate change perspective.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Composte decomposing in a landfill does nobody any good. I
| compost my scraps along with lawn clippings and leaves in my
| yard so that I can use it in my little garden. I splurged and
| got a tumbler for composting rather than just piles in the
| yard. Each spring, I use the compost through out my garden
| beds/pots. I had enough left over to fill a couple of ceramic
| pots. One of those pots had tomato seeds that sprouted for me
| free of charge. Bonus!
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| I agree completely, but are those first two words useful?
| qalmakka wrote:
| In my city (Italy) composting is mandatory (i.e. you might get
| fined if you an inspector discovers you put too much of it in
| generic waste bins). We have separate brown bins for curbside
| picking. It's simple to separate organic matter from non-organic
| matter, and reduces how much waste ends up in landfills. You can
| pick up bags of compost from the municipal utility, and you can
| then use it as mulch.
| barbazoo wrote:
| I highly recommend vermicomposting which involves hundreds of
| even thousands of little worms. I have a HungryBin and don't even
| need a green bin anymore, at least not for kitchen waste. What
| you get is compost which is great for gardening and worm tea
| which is great fertilizer.
| zabzonk wrote:
| I worked for some time in Utrecht in The Netherlands, which has a
| somewhat extreme recycling regime, with punishments, if not done
| correctly. After the first week of me staying in the flat of the
| guy I was working for he said "Don't even attempt to put things
| in the bin (of which they were four) - just let me do it"
|
| In the UK you can more or less sneak anything into any bin - of
| which I currently have three.
| hsnewman wrote:
| Is that composite bin plastic? I'm trying to save the earth, not
| poison it!
| nostromo wrote:
| I'm confused...
|
| If organic compounds break down in a landfill, they release
| greenhouse gasses. But the same happens when they break down as
| compost - something the website forgot to mention.
|
| I support composting because I think it's good for the planet to
| save space in landfills for things that need to be buried. But I
| don't see how either approach actually helps climate change.
|
| And, in fact, without much study, it seems like landfills are
| actually sequestering lots of carbon. So if our only focus is on
| climate change (and it shouldn't be, to be clear) wouldn't that
| be the winning option?
|
| Regarding more potent greenhouse gasses from landfills - I
| believe most landfills in the US burn (or sell) their waste
| methane, which just turns it into plain ol' carbon dioxide.
| danielheath wrote:
| Aerobic breakdown is totally different to anaerobic breakdown.
|
| In composting you have to turn the compost periodically to keep
| it oxygenated, otherwise you get methane and poor compost.
| yakubin wrote:
| Some gasses will be consumed by plants and fungi. Granted,
| methane won't be one of them. But CO2 will. Now, when compost
| is dumped on barren soil, there is nothing to consume the
| gasses.
| noxer wrote:
| A modern landfill where the gas is burned and used as energy
| source is way way better at reducing green house gases than
| fungi and microorganisms. The C02 wont go away but most of
| the rest way worse greenhouse gases.
| novok wrote:
| The CO2 that oil / coal / gas emit is "new" CO2 that the
| atmosphere never had, while most 'natural' CO2 & methane
| emissions gets recycled in a 10 year cycle, so it doesn't add
| to the net CO2 to the atmospheric systems.
|
| On the other hand, agriculture emissions coming from animals
| and plant decomposition is small amount of agriculture's
| emissions in general anyway, so sequestering carbon is a bad
| reason to not compost, because of all the fertilizer benefits
| it creates, which means less need for artificialy created
| fertilizer. About %50 of fertilizer is the natural poop &
| compost kind.
| chaostheory wrote:
| It'll also help mitigate the loss of top soil for agriculture.
| It's estimated that we've lost about 33% over the years in the
| US
| firefoxd wrote:
| One suggestion. As someone who knows nothing about composting,
| the first title asks "why composting?" Then it answers:
|
| > The purpose of this site is to raise awareness for composting,
| why it's a good idea, and to encourage as many people as possible
| to get started.
|
| So, we should composte because it's a good idea? Maybe your kid
| can expand here a little.
|
| Also... What is composting?
|
| Ps: I'm on mobile maybe the website answers these questions and I
| can't find where.
| pmc00 wrote:
| Thanks for the specific and constructive feedback, I'll pass
| this along!
| Panino wrote:
| > Also... What is composting?
|
| Composting is a (1) human-managed (2) aerobic decomposition of
| organic materials, driven by (3) thermophilic microorganisms
| (primarily thermophilic bacteria). The result is compost.
| Anything that doesn't feature all three of the above components
| isn't composting, it's something else.
|
| Compost is easy to make in your backyard: get enough fencing to
| create a minimum 1 cubic meter area on the ground (not a paved
| driveway or something) that you fill with organic material such
| as leaves and other yard scraps, kitchen scraps, manure,
| cardboard, dead animals, biochar, etc. It's best to keep wood
| and large bones out since they won't break down well - you can
| pyrolysize them instead and then co-compost the resulting
| biochar. You want air to freely move in and out of the pile,
| and to keep a thick layer of cover material on top such as dry
| leaves or hay (best, IMO) to prevent smells. A carbon to
| nitrogen ratio of around 25:1 works well. Inputs with high CN
| ratio: dry leaves, cardboard (~450:1), sawdust (500:1), etc.
| Things with low CN ratio: urine (0.8:1), fresh kitchen scraps
| (15:1), manure / toilet material, still-green yard scraps, etc.
| Mixing high and low CN ratio inputs results in a good overall
| mixture. The compost bin contents must be moist but not wet. I
| keep a compost thermometer in my pile at all times and
| currently, my 7-month old pile is around 120F / 48C. This well-
| above-ambient temperature is the result of thermophilic
| bacteria creating internal biological heat, a key component
| that distinguishes compost from other things such as
| vermiculture. Compost isn't done until it cools to ambient
| temperature, and then I let it sit for a year.
|
| There are many kinds of decomposition and composting is just
| one of them. Here are some other kinds:
|
| Combustion: aerobic thermal decomposition, resulting in ash
|
| Pyrolysis: anaerobic thermal decomposition, resulting in
| biochar
|
| Vermiculture: decomposition via worm digestion, resulting in
| worm castings, aka worm shit
| dessant wrote:
| Thanks for your helpful answer! I have some experience with
| using vermicompost, though I do daydream about making my own
| stuff one day.
|
| I've read that vermicultures have a bit of an issue with not
| neutralizing plant pathogens that you introduce with the worm
| feed, have you had similar problems with composting, or does
| the heat usually take care of this issue?
| Panino wrote:
| Hey, glad to help. Yes it's true, vermiculture doesn't
| destroy pathogens to anywhere near the same degree as
| composting, and the heat is an important factor. Pathogens
| aren't a concern in composting, they're simply destroyed by
| the process. Further, composting is superior at degrading
| or destroying other inputs like pharmaceuticals - with a
| few exceptions like certain chemotherapy drugs; gasoline;
| TNT; insecticides and herbicides and other such poisons,
| etc. In contrast, red worms have a much smaller range of
| diet, and again don't produce biological heat. Composting
| is a powerful process and thermophilic microorganisms are
| extraordinary little creatures.
|
| That said, vermiculture is also great, and one of the nice
| things about it is that you can make it inside an apartment
| like in a container in your closet, while compost is made
| outside and needs at least 1 cubic meter of material. If I
| couldn't make compost I'd make worm castings via
| vermiculture, and I wouldn't worry too much about
| pathogens.
| taftster wrote:
| Right. But I think OP was suggesting that the website needed
| to include this information.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Yes, but he answered it just here in great detail and
| clarity for our benefit ..
| leblancfg wrote:
| Leave it to Hacker News comments to rip a kid's project a new
| one. Please folks, at least be constructive.
| sthnblllII wrote:
| Why are Americans obsessed with hearing opinions they already
| believe expressed poorly by children? Its all very cultish and
| creepy. This is something The Simpsons used to make fun of back
| when it was relevant.
| beervirus wrote:
| Yes, Americans.[1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greta_Thunberg
| sthnblllII wrote:
| Swedes copy everything America does and insist that they do
| it even more slavishly and fully. They are notorious for
| being pretentious, but most Americans aren't familiar with
| the characters of the European nations.
| piercebot wrote:
| I believe this is less about hearing opinions and more about
| celebrating the next generation of hackers.
|
| This is a fine example of a kid who has a strong opinion and,
| rather than shout it into their echo chamber on social media,
| they've taken the liberty of securing a domain name and
| creating a website capable of reaching a larger audience.
|
| We here on Hacker News enjoy celebrating the initiative, the
| creative process, and the execution. Of course you'll find a
| wide range of opinions, but I think you'll find (and you
| imply as much by your question!) that most people on HN are
| happy to celebrate a the accomplishments of the next
| generation.
| sthnblllII wrote:
| Here's another kid that isnt afraid to stand up to
| authority to repeat what that authority is constantly
| promoting back to it.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gF6d0ROiFVg
|
| Not to mention Greta and her fawning coverage in the
| American press.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| It's a nicely put together site and I congratulate your kid on a
| job well done.
|
| That said, I don't see the space taken up by landfills as a big
| problem. Not in the US anyway. If they are done properly (and
| yes, that is a big if), they shouldn't release toxins or
| otherwise have downsides comparable to all the other sorts of
| damage we do to our environment.
| shoto_io wrote:
| Don't you think it's unrealistic that all effort is put on #1
| topics? What if people genuinely care about problem #3 and #12?
| I don't think it's a wasted effort. Or maybe I'm misreading
| your comment?
| robbrown451 wrote:
| I don't think it is a wasted effort.
|
| But I hear this argument about landfills a lot (mostly by
| adults, which I feel a bit freer to criticize, and mostly
| with regard to regular recycling rather than composting which
| is essentially a subset of recycling), and I just don't think
| it as a big problem as people make it out to be.
|
| Things that emit into the atmosphere (greenhouse gasses and
| other pollutants), and trash that doesn't make it into
| landfills are big problems. Another big problem is all the
| space taken up by other human activities. We're cutting down
| forests to build homes and grow food, and we see that
| everywhere and it has a huge impact on our planet. Landfills
| are a relatively tiny use of space.
|
| But yeah, composting is good. As long as the effort you put
| into it doesn't make you feel that you've "done your part"
| and discourage you from making more impactful changes in your
| lifestyle. I don't have an electric car or solar roof yet,
| for instance, but I happily vote for representatives who will
| put significant amounts of my tax money into subsidizing the
| move away from fossil fuels.
| wheybags wrote:
| Here (Ireland) we have separate (brown) bins for food waste. They
| are also free, while the black (normal waste) bins are not. We
| also have green bins for recyclables. It's not perfect, but I do
| think the brown bin system is a pretty good idea.
| dvko wrote:
| Same thing in The Netherlands. Organic matter (brown or green
| bin) is free, but the bin that ends up on a landfill costs a
| few EUR to empty. I like it.
|
| Also we have separate collections for glass, paper, plastic
| etc. So if you put in some effort, you can go a full year
| without having to empty your black (landfill) bin.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| This system of paying for the amount of trash you produce is
| not used in all of the Netherlands. Currently roughly 50% of
| all municipalities do this, with a trend towards broader
| adoption. The rest have a flat annual taxation based on the
| number of people in a household (trash is limited to whatever
| you can fit into the bin).
|
| Separate collection for organic matter, paper, and plastic
| also differs from municipality to municipality. In mine
| organic matter and paper has its own bin, but we have no
| separate plastic bin, and glass goes in public glass
| recycling containers.
| yissp wrote:
| Wouldn't this just incentivize people to put things in the
| compost / recycling that don't belong there? I believe this
| is already a problem even in places that don't have such
| systems.
| jakear wrote:
| The Seattle method was to throw all of your random debris
| into the recycling bin at the end of your lease, because
| the trash cans are too small to hold anything. That way the
| next tenants get to deal with a recycling bin full of week-
| old rotting tilapia. Or maybe that was just us...
| hutzlibu wrote:
| It does, but it would be a crime to do so and the garbage
| men actually check sometimes.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Having got offside with my bin man once , it's completely
| not worth it. I put some concrete in my bin. The system he
| used to train me was a few weeks of lifting my bin up 4ish
| metres then dropping it on my front lawn. Removing broken
| window glass (which I was told must go in the bin, not the
| recycling) and household waste off my lawn each week was
| not worth it.
|
| I don't think this is the approved method for getting
| compliance, but it worked.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| We in germany have that brown bin for organic waste, too: but
| at least in our area, we have to pay the same as for ordinary
| garbage.
| noxer wrote:
| Nice ideas, but factually completely wrong.
|
| The real reason why people should compose or better whole cities
| should, is because the nutrition in the green waste should go
| back in circulation which they wont do if they end up in a
| landfill/waste incineration.
|
| The greenhouse gasses reasoning is bogus it decomposes anyway
| Modern landfills are also used as energy source where the worst
| kind of greenhouse gases are burned and turned into less severe
| CO2.
|
| The space argument is also nonsense. There is plenty place on
| earth the real problem here is that moving trash is expensive
| hence poor cities are surrounded by garbage mountains.
| guruz wrote:
| In Berlin, bio gas to power the (normal) garbage trucks is
| created from the separate food trash bin contents.
|
| https://www.bsr.de/biogasanlage-22250.php
| asdf333 wrote:
| respect. great job explaining why composting is different since
| "it all decays anyway no matter where it is"
|
| to dad: sounds like you're doing a great job parenting too
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Seriously. Keep iterating and ignore the pedantry.
| thiht wrote:
| Or don't ignore it. Most of the criticism I read in the
| comments is actually constructive and true. Just because OP's
| kid did it doesn't mean the only valid comments are "wow this
| is great".
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Is the title incomplete?
|
| > My oldest kid made this to raise awareness that composting
| garbage dumps...
|
| Dumps... what? What does it dump? 'Dump' isn't even mentioned in
| the article.
| englishrookie wrote:
| Ah, I thought it was me, for whom English is a foreign
| language. I can't parse this sentence either.
| dang wrote:
| Changed now. Submitted title was "My oldest kid made this to
| raise awareness that composting garbage dumps".
| teraflop wrote:
| My theory: the OP originally posted it as "composting > garbage
| dumps" and HN stripped out the angle bracket.
| pmc00 wrote:
| Your theory is correct :)
| meristohm wrote:
| Cool! And you don't even need a bin, just start layering dirt
| with brown and green matter. There are many books about
| composting if you want more guidance.
|
| I have three piles going now: one from last year, ready to add to
| the garden; one started after we stopped adding to the first; and
| an experimental pile with ashes, human urine, and uprooted plants
| we don't want propagating as much.
|
| We put food scraps (no meat or bones, but we eat only a little
| meat anyway, and most animal scraps go to the dog) and paper
| (without a lot of ink or gloss) in a stainless steel pot and I
| bring that out to the in-process pile periodically, dumping it
| and then adding cardboard (tape and labels removed) and soil.
|
| As I learn more I'll adjust.
| DoctorOW wrote:
| Might be interesting to have an option to donate to the cause.
| Just to keep the compost bins free for others.
| pmc00 wrote:
| Thanks, you're right. He looked into it and he'll probably do
| it at some point, but when we read together on how to do it, we
| found that taking money from others is quite complex (I guess
| for legit reasons, from scammers to people skipping taxes), so
| he wanted to start sooner and figure it out once he managed to
| get traction.
| gehsty wrote:
| I got a hot composting bin (basically in insulated bin with some
| removable panels to allow harvesting of compost, and a
| thermometer) and it is so much fun... the hottest I've had it is
| 65c! All our vegetable waste, coffee grounds, as well as guinea
| pig poops and hay, some cardboard... a few months later you have
| black crumbly compost!
| based2 wrote:
| https://www.paris.fr/dossiers/composter-a-paris-20
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| > _Huge landfills are ruining the Earth because they are taking
| up a lot of space...The biggest landfill in the United
| States...is 2,200 acres wide_
|
| Ignoring the minor detail that acres are a measurement of area
| and not width, the contiguous US is 2 _billion_ acres. 2,200
| acres is 0.00011% of that. We can easily spare the space.
|
| > _The organic materials in these landfills can decay and release
| greenhouse gasses...when these items go to landfills, they will
| take much longer to decompose than normal_
|
| This appears to contradict your kid's message, because it conveys
| that landfills reduce the rate of greenhouse gas emissions.
|
| The page also has zero citations.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| An acre isn't purely a measurement of area of undefined shape -
| it also has a defined width and length.
|
| That said I don't know why anyone would be talking about acres
| when they could more simply say km wide or of area km squared
| that most people would not intuitively understand.
| tdeck wrote:
| This website is aimed at people in the United States (note
| the shipping form), for whom an acre is still the most common
| unit of land measurement. Most people in suburban/rural areas
| in the U.S. are likely to have a sense of what an acre is,
| while few would know what a square kilometer looks like.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Don't Americans run 100 m and 5 km and 10 km distances? I
| would have thought that would give most people an intuitive
| understanding of what a km is. Even the US military now
| uses kms.
| pixl97 wrote:
| The number of Americans that race is relatively small.
| Our houses and property are sold on the per acre basis so
| its pretty commonly used.
| [deleted]
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| > _An acre isn 't purely a measurement of area of undefined
| shape - it also has a defined width and length._
|
| This is wrong. Acres are defined as the area encompassed by a
| particular set of lengths, but acres do not have specified
| widths and lengths because it is a unit of area, not of width
| or length. Acres can be any shape. They do not have to be
| rectangular.
|
| The page appears to talking about the Apex Regional landfill
| near Las Vegas, Nevada, which has an _area_ of 2200 acres.
| Though you'd never know it because the page has no citations
| anywhere.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > This is wrong
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acre
|
| > defined as the area of one chain by one furlong
| waterhouse wrote:
| > Originally, an acre was understood as a selion of land
| sized at forty perches (660 ft, or 1 furlong) long and
| four perches (66 ft) wide [...]. As a unit of measure, an
| acre has no prescribed shape; any area of 43,560 square
| feet is an acre.
|
| Looks like both usages have existed.
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| "The area of" is important there. If you're going by what
| wikipedia says, perhaps you could keep reading to the
| part where it also says "As a unit of measure, an acre
| has no prescribed shape; any area of 43,560 square feet
| is an acre."
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Right but when someone specifically says 'width' for acre
| then what do you do? Assume they mean the width of a
| traditional acre, or claim you have no idea what they
| mean?
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| Well in this case they're apparently talking about
| something that has 2200 acres area, not widths-worth.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > That said I don't know why anyone would be talking about
| acres when they could more simply say km wide or of area km
| squared that most people would not intuitively understand.
|
| Ohooo, ohoo, ohohoho. Where I live (continental Europe) it's
| impossible for people to use km or meters for agricultural or
| housing land. It's alway acres this or hectares thats. It
| drives me nuts but I have learned to nod and I google the
| conversion later.
| Kubuxu wrote:
| Weird, here we are using Are (100m2) and Hectare
| (10,000m2). Till now I equated Acre with Are but it turns
| out they are different things.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > Till now I equated Acre with Are but it turns out they
| are different things.
|
| Oh well, so did I. Until your post I thought `acre` was
| the translation of `are`.
| regularemployee wrote:
| I had a compost bin but I eventually just dig a hole in the
| ground and bury my food wastes.
|
| Every since doing that, our weekly trash has been reduced pretty
| significantly. Instead of filling up our trash bin, we only fill
| up half.
|
| Its been about 1 year, I've dug more than 300 holes in the
| backyard and I'm having so much fun.
| majjam wrote:
| But how do you then use the resulting compost?
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Isn't it where you already want it? In the ground being
| redistributed by worms.
| regularemployee wrote:
| when food breaks down in the soil, the compost is integrated
| into the soil so it's already used. Plants then grow better
| apparently, I've never had to buy soil from the shop
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