Green and Brown materials
- BioGround
- Oct 18, 2019
- 2 min read
The average household produces more than 200 pounds of kitchen waste every year. So composting is a way of reducing the organic trash you send to the landfill.
Green and brown materials
When composting aim for a mix of nitrogen-rich "green" material and carbon-heavy "brown" material. Green materials tend to be wet, and include your fruit and vegetable scraps, coffee grounds, and tea leaves. Brown materials are drier like span sawdust, newspaper clippings, and trimmings from dead plants.
Greens materials are the items that tend to heat a compost pile up because they help the microorganisms in the pile grow and multiply quickly.
Browns are the materials that work as food sources for the organisms that will work with the microbes to break down the contents of your compost pile. Also, brown materials allow air to filter through the pile.
All forms of kitchen waste can be composted but you might want to skip composting meat, dairy, and fats. These items will eventually break down but take much longer. And, these items are guaranteed to smell bad.
The ratio
Having a proper mix of green and brown materials will ensure that your compost pile works properly. An ideal ratio of browns to greens is, generally, a ratio of three- or four-parts browns to one-part greens.
Without a good mix of brown and green materials, your compost pile may not heat up, may take longer to break down into useable compost and may even start to smell bad.
If you find that your compost pile is not heating up, than you may need to add more green material to the compost. If you find that your compost pile is starting to smell, you may need to add more browns.
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