All living things die and decompose (that is, rot). When they do, the nutrients they contained when they were alive,
still exist—and can be used to feed other living things!
In this episode, our friends at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden
in Brooklyn, NY, explain how we can make compost
from all the fruit and vegetable matter that’s left over in our
kitchens—apple cores and banana peels, wilted lettuce leaves and the skins of
onions. This not only breaks down into a nutritious soil we can sprinkle under our
trees and shrubs and flowers and crops; it makes less garbage that we send to
landfills (where things break down veeeerrrry slowly, if at all).
Try an experiment at your house: Keep all your fruit and vegetable scraps in your freezer for a week. How much organic garbage do you end up with when 7 days are over?
