Composting today, some say, is where recycling was a decade or even a century ago. A new trend that people are still learning about and are quite uncomfortable with doing themselves. The majority of people don’t understand even exactly what it does or how it works. If this sounds like you, you can read another one of our blogs about how composting works, linked here. So, where did it all begin?
Composting has been around since pre-historic times. Of course there wasn’t as much of a science to it back then, but farmers used to create their own compost using animal manure. The traditional kind of composting today that people do in their home or business does not involve using your pet animals manure, so don’t worry! I mentioned that it has been around since prehistoric times, but even the Ancient Greeks, Romans and believe it or not George Washington composted. But the Europeans are the ones that brought what we know today as the ‘Modern Composting’ over to America.
However, with the turn in the twentieth century brought chemical fertilizers. With the new chemical fertilizers around, farmers quickly turned to these to grow their plants because they didn’t have to waste any time or energy turning the compost piles or being pulled away from other activities. With the new use of fertilizers, however, farmers quickly realized that the health of their plants was being risked. With the new found risk of these chemical fertilizers, farmers soon turned back to the old way of composting. Which we now know as ‘Modern Composting’.
Composting today has changed greatly from what it was centuries ago. Today we rely on natural materials that can be found in your home or business to create a nutritious soil perfect for growing crops right here in Michigan! To find out what you can compost, feel free to read this article. With composting on the rise, we hope to see composting where recycling is at now in the near future!
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