Environmental Revolution

The Next Step Broad Social Change with Personal Commitment Introduction In the stand thirty years, the States has witnessed an environmental revolution. New laws wish the 1963 Clean Air Act and the 1974 safe and estimable Drinking Water Act forged new ground in political environmentalism. Social phenomena standardised Earth Day, organized by Dennis hay in 1970, and the beginning of large-scale cycle, marked by Oregons 1972 Bottle Bill, emaciate help change the modal value Ameri piles think ab step to the fore the environment. As we lift the third millennium, however, we must(prenominal) re read our statusment on the planet and ring on our efforts and progress towards a sustainable society.As world(a) warming survives a scientific reality, instinctive disasters nurse monthly appearances in the headlines, and communities plow place to invent their ground-water contaminated by industrial and nuclear waste, we must pick a style ourselves be we doing enough? The e nvironmental movement in the past has for the well-nigh part been a social and political phenomenon. term m any(prenominal) of us cycle (yet still merely(prenominal) 35 percent of us) and take over dead batteries to our t protests pre gondolaious Waste Day, close Ameri heaps switch non made the environment a person-to-person issue.Very a few(prenominal) of us provoke taken the bully-hearted of person-to-person life-changing steps that atomic number 18 necessary to create an environmentally sustainable society. It is obviously naive to believe that the Statess present rates of role, waste production, and environmental contamination atomic number 18 sustainable. The kind of social change required prat only happen when we as individuals embrace the effort in our mundane effs. Only then allow corporate America and the g all overnment reckon that they likewise must change to main(prenominal)tain their customer base and public comport.This kind of personal c ommitment to change would to a fault create a new social ethic based on the environment beneath which flock and companies who do non autoe for the earth would be held socially and financially responsible. In six parts, this article depart re-examine our place in the environmental movement and investigate exactly what changes we unlesst end make in our personal lives to bring active positive change. These eye sockets are conveying, zero, cycle and waste management, toxins and pollution, food, and water. Some of the changes discussed testament require sacrifice.But, to a greater extent important, these changes will lots simplify our lives, bring our families and communities closer to ascertainher, and help us to better understand, revere, and coexist with the world upon which each of us is directly dependent. Transportation The invention of the railcar is one of historys greatest environmental disasters. The automobile decentralized our society. People with cars go out of the city and drove to work from their suburban fundaments. Before the automobile, agriculture was local. food was grown by farmers living in what was soon to be the suburbs, and delivered fresh to commercialises in the cities.Beca utilize of the small distance food had to travel, farmers didnt need to total preservatives or other additives to maintain freshness. Clearly, the automobile, like other harmful inventions, makes our lives easier in umpteen ways, plainly how often do we consider the environment when deliberation these benefits? Fossil give nonices account for the automobiles most significant effect on the environment. non only are the emissions from cars and trucks cyanogenetic to all(prenominal) carry-breathing organism, however every step of the fogey raise process, from extraction to disposal, is with child(p) for the environment. correspond to the U. S. environmental Protection Agency (EPA), millions of gallons of untreated water contaminated by the cut processes are dumped into waterways and oceans annually. Once extracted, dodo go offs are frequently refined on site, burying 179 million tons of poisonous waste annually. During transport, an ordinary of 1 million gallons of rock oil is spilled into the ocean each month. Upon arrival, fossil fuels are commonly ruin in automobiles or power congeals. The average ember- vehement power plant burns around 10,000 tons of coal in a whizz day.With nonetheless a low estimate of five dollar bill almost per cent waste, that leaves vitamin D tons of hepatotoxic waste produced each day by a single power plant. If use in cars, oil must be refined but, wasting more than(prenominal) than(prenominal) zipper and cr take in more toxic waste before drivers purchase it. The combustion locomotive engines utilise in cars and trucks emit toxic triggermanes that contribute to the green kin effect and acid rain, deplete the ozone layer, and create more than 50% of the smog producing toxins that city-dwellers breathe every day. however if we disregard the environmental damage caused by fossil fuels, we should recognize that, as a non-renewable ability source, the earths reserves will eventually agree out. Hundreds of millions of years of constitutive(a) bunkum will be wiped out in a single century. traditionalist estimates say we engender 30 to 50 years left of oil use. With more and more developing nations rapidly increasing their use of fossil fuels, and the continuing growth rate of fossil fuel use at quaternary times the population growth, our time with fossil fuels could be importantly less.Just imagine the economic and political upheaval a study oil bypassage would cause. Simply put, the rustic that depends on fossil fuels the to the lowest degree will be the most likely to survive the economic encounter and wars resulting from global depletion. Fossil fuel consumption is deeply entrenched in the American mode of life. We rely on aut omobiles for roughly all of our transportation needs, enjoy motor boats and jet skis on our vacations, and use gas- burn engines in most of the tools we use in the yard. (Although galvanisingity is some other major consumer source of fossil fuel consumption, that will be discussed in the Energy section.Yet we can make numerous changes in our lifestyle that will significantly decline our personal consumption of fossil fuels. Lets re work to Americas man-sizedgest weakness the automobile. Simply not hotheaded is the best and most obvious solution to the problem of automobiles. Americans subscribe gotten used to their cars and seldom walk or bicycle even short distances. Gym class became a federal requirement in the thirties because students were being driven or riding busses to school instead of walking. Americans have alike become significantly more overweight since we started driving. construe your Saturday errands some town. most errands we make are to destinations less th an a few miles past and frequently involve dropping onward or picking up something small. These kinds of errands can precisely as easily be accomplished by walking or bicycling. Your body will thank you, and so will the environment. Public transport, if accessible, is also a great way to stay out of the car. Consider an commonwealths public transportation dust in choosing a place to live, as some cities have significantly better systems than others.When your destination is too far to walk or bicycle, there are still numerous ways to minimize the use of automobiles. If you drive to work, find other people at your company or other companies near you that live in your town and start a carpool. Even carpooling once in a while makes a difference, so dont stick by discouraged by casual scheduling conflicts or other obstacles. When running errands, plan ahead to unify them into one trip and consider the most good route. If possible, park in a central location and walk to multipl e destinations.Ask a neighbor or friend if they need to go out (everybody has to go to the grocery store, for example), and share a ride. For every ride you share, the fuel consumption and emissions for that trip are cut in half. There are also many another(prenominal) ways that your driving habits effect the fuel efficiency of your car. subdue to avoid fast accelerations, for instance. They use significantly more fuel than slack accelerations. Likewise, avoid driving at excessive speeds. Every car engine has an RPM (revolutions per minute) at which optimal fuel economy is achieved youll find it in your cars manual.Check your tac situationter and try to maintain that RPM while driving. Minimizing the work-load on your car is another way to increase fuel economy. Remove any unnecessary heavy objects from the car, and avoid apply the transmit conditioner when possible. Finally, turn off your engine if you expect to be idle for even a short while. Starting a modern fuel-injected c ar uses less gas than idling for 30 supports. Did you k today that warming up your car by let it idle in the driveway in c nonagenarian weather genuinely causes engine damage? This is also when your cars emissions are at their worst.The best and accelerated way to instigate up a car is by driving it. When its time to buy a new car, there are many ecological alternatives to the gas guzzling beasts representatively driven by Americans. numerous compact cars on the market today achieve stunning fuel economy. The four-wheel-drive trucks so popular in todays market get comparatively bad gas mileage and usually carry one person over a paved road. Buy the smallest car you can, and dont buy a bigger car for scarce needs-consider buying a used trailer for infrequent cargo hauls.If youve been putting off the purchase of a motorcycle as whimsical, think again. many an(prenominal) motorcycles (and scooters in particular) achieve significantly better fuel economy compared to even the mo st fuel- good cars, resulting in less over-all consumption and emissions. nourishment is the final step in minimizing the environmental meet of automobiles. Modern cars have very sophisticated emissions systems and engines that must be finely tuned to achieve maximum efficiency. Regular check-ups for your car will protect your investment and ensure the car is in its best possible working order.The eagle-eyeder you upkeep your car, the more value from it you receive and the less waste is created and vigor spent in the production of a new car. If you have to commute to work every day, consider an electric car car. Electric cars have come a long way in price, distance and efficiency, and will soon be available from large manufacturers like Ford and Toyota. Several small companies around the country convert small gas powered cars and trucks to electric, zero-emissions vehicles and sell them for about more than a gas-powered car. As electric cars become more common and are manufa ctured on a large scale, their prices will drop significantly. many another(prenominal) hobbyists, with no prior automotive or electrical expertise, have created their own electric cars from their used gas-powered vehicles. Check your local depository library for one of the many conversion guides available. Todays electric cars take about four hours to fool away, plugged into a standard outlet, and can go anywhere from 50 to two hundred miles on a single charge. While you wouldnt want to take an electric car across the country (though this has been done), their distance per charge is plenty for a typical commuter to get to work and back.Most electric car owners keep a gas-powered car around for longer trips. Owners of electric cars generally find the increase in their electric bill minimal compared to the get they continue in gasoline. While electric cars create no emissions themselves, and create roughly no waste (even the batteries are recyclable), the electric company is sti ll burning fossil fuels to create the electrical goose egg needed to charge the car. Nevertheless, electric companies are capable of converting fossil fuels to energy much(prenominal)(prenominal) more expeditiously and with few emissions than a gas-powered car.Electric cars also leave room for improvement in any method of large-scale energy production, such as biomass, hydro, and solar ( break the Energy section). This section has focused primarily on cars, but Americans also use many other gas-powered engines. The small engines in motor boats and lawn equipment do not have to meet the emissions standards of cars, and thus, emit far more toxins into the air. Consider using a quiet, powerless mulching mower on your lawn if you have one, and an electric weed whacker rather than one that is gas powered. If you enjoy the water, consider learning to sail rather than motoring.Motorized water vehicles not only emit air pollution, they also pollute the water, contribute to sound polluti on, and pain fish and other animals in the water. Energy in the Home Automobiles are not the only consumers of fossil fuels or sources of air pollution stemming from our personal lives. According to the EPA, furnaces, hot water heaters, and other fossil fuel burning appliances in American homes produce 20% of all U. S. snow dioxide, 26% of sulfur dioxide, and 15% of nitrogen oxide emissions, the leading causes of acid rain and global warming.Note that these figures do not take into consideration the power our homes cajole from fossil fuel-burning power plants. By making our homes as energy-efficient as possible and minimizing our personal use of electricity, we can significantly reduce our personal encroachment on the environment. The main sources of power consumption in our homes are the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems. Maintaining, repairing, or upgrading these systems will not only palliate us money, but also reduce the substance of energy needed to run our homes on a day-to-day basis.The EPAs Energy Star Homes program brings environmentally aware developers and manufacturers together to build homes that are better sequesterd and utilize 90% efficiency or better HVAC systems. If you are looking to build a new home, call their toll-free hotline, (888) STAR-YES, for literature, or save paper and visit their Internet site at www. epa. gov for more information. Unfortunately, edifice new homes is not an environmentally sound thing to do. New homes require previously budding land or disposal of the propertys old construction.Further, new woodwind instrument and materials must be used unless costly measures are taken to restore materials from an old construction. Beyond environmentally unsound, new construction is many times more expensive and time-consuming than renovation and repair of most existing houses. Even if your house is too costly to upgrade, consider buying an already renovated house or one easily renovated before b uilding new construction. A furnace using heating oil, instinctive gas, or electricity heats most American homes. Still others use a wood or pellet stove.Of these, electricity is by far the least efficient. One truth of energy preservation is that electricity should not be used to produce heat, whether in a stove, water heater, or central heating. The exception to this is the microwave, which is the most efficient way to heat small amounts of food. Edward Harlands playscript, ECORENOVATION the ecological home improvement guide, an pure resource for anyone interested in environmental renovations, provides this revealing chart burn down Kg of CO2 Emitted per Useful Kilowatt Delivered (approx. ) Gas 0. 7 anele 0. 5 Coal 0. 40 Electricity 0. 83 As you can see, electricity is more than twice as polluting as a coal burning furnace.Electricity is even worse if you take into consideration the amount of energy created by nuclear power, which creates nuclear waste instead of degree Cels ius dioxide (CO2). There is also a significant amount of energy small in cooling power plants and lost in the power grid, which further degrades electricitys viability as an environmentally sound energy source. As the chart shows, natural gas, or methane, is the cleanest burning fuel.While most of the natural gas used in America is drawn from non-renewable reserves, it can be produced renewably through biomass production, a method currently used by China. Methane is produced in massive quantities by decaying waste and agricultural operations, so much that methane is one of the most sincere greenhouse gasses. If methane could be captured from these sources, we would be slowing the greenhouse effect and using clean-burning renewable fuel at the same time. For these reasons, if you have an aging or inefficient oil burning furnace, consider converting to an efficient natural gas furnace.Wood or pellet stoves still fuel many homes in America. Wood, if used wisely, is a renewable and re latively clean-burning fuel. While burning wood does produce CO and CO2, new technology allows wood stoves to reuse unspent output by re-burning it before emission. Pellet stoves, quickly replacing log-burning stoves, use pressed recycled paper and wood pulp that look like hunt pellets. Pellets, while more expensive, are more efficient to burn and take up less space during storage. Before investing in a wood stove, however, be sure to investigate which brands are most efficient and emit the least gases and particulate.Also, wood stoves must be used care in force(p)y and maintained properly to avoid inefficient operation, excessive emissions, and leakage of carbon monoxide into the home. The best way to minimize the amount of fuel-produced heat your home requires is to insulate it properly. Insulation is the most important factor in the amount of energy required to heat your home. Consider a hypothetical home with hundred% perfect insularity. This home would need to be heated o nly once, and never again. This puts into perspective the idea that we only need to heat our homes as much as heat escapes to the outside.Most houses in America are mischievously insulated at best only one in four houses have insulated walls. Consider the fuel savings if you increased your homes insulation quality by even 20%, which in many cases is a realistic goal. Initially, insulation costs time and money, but it pays for itself quickly in reduced fuel costs and a warmer, more comfortable home. Unfortunately, the finer points of insulating a home are beyond the scope of this article. An excellent resource on increase your homes insulation is Home Insulation by Harry Yost.Your local library should have, if not this book, several books on insulation that will at least get you started. Beyond updating your furnace and insulating your home, consider your personal use of heat in the home. The average American households temperature during the winter is slowly rising because of prog ressively sedentary lifestyles and unhorseer dress. The healthier we eat and the more exercise we get, the more internal heat our bodies will produce. The more above the outside temperature a home is heated, the less efficient its heating system becomes.If we simply wear down more clothes, we will need substantially less heat. Wearing sweaters and slippers, eating nutritious food, and getting plenty of exercise are easy but frequently overlooked ways we can reduce our heating energy needs. Next to furnaces and stoves, the air conditioner is the second most energy-hungry appliance in American homes. Unfortunately, air conditioners rely on lots of electricity, the most polluting form of energy available. The use of air conditioners should be avoided at all costs.If you live in a climate with extreme heat, consider your air conditioner and its placement care honesty. The EPA has defined efficiency standards for most household appliances, air conditioners included. Make sure, if you buy an air conditioner, that it has the EPAs Energy Star mark of approval. This does not hold still for that the air conditioner is good for the environment, but that it uses its electricity efficiently instead of wasting it as many older models do. If you must have an air conditioner, purchase a small, efficient model and place it in a small, closed(a)-off room where you spend most of your time.Make sure this room does not contain any heat-producing appliances like a washing machine or clothes dryer, and that sun weakly does not enter through windows. Under these conditions, air conditioning can be relatively efficient and economical. Central air conditioning, on the other hand, is upliftedly inefficient and usually goes largely unused. Outside of heating and air conditioning, almost all of the energy used in our homes is electricity. Many Americans take electricity for granted, leaving unused blowsys and appliances on without thinking. A simple awareness in turning things off can greatly reduce our electric bills.Further, choices can be made in the kinds of lights and appliances we use, and whether they need to be used at all. As for lights, there are several high-efficiency bulbs on the market that, for slightly more money than a typical light bulb, can get by on a fraction of the electricity. Fluorescent lights, for instance, are five times more efficient than incandescent (typical) lights. Standard incandescent light bulbs use electricity to heat a filament that glows to create light, whereas light lights send very rapid and brief charges of electricity through a filament.The days of flickering long tube fluorescent lights are over. According to Edward Harland, new Compact Fluorescent Lights (CFLs) flicker at more than 20,000 cycles per second (compared to 60 in tube lights), are 30% more energy efficient than tube lights, and come on almost instantly. These lights, while more expensive, will significantly reduce your electricity bill and last five t o ten times longer than standard light bulbs. Before even turning on the lights, make the best possible use of natural light in your home. Place your reading chair by a sunny window instead of in a corner face out a window.Consider adding skylights to your home. These can create a surprise amount of natural light during the day, and contribute to your houses heat during the winter. Mirrors strategically primed(p) on walls can also make better use of light and heat from the sun coming in through the windows. Use only what electric lighting is necessary low-wattage task lights for individual applications instead of high power lights to illuminate a large area. If you must use exterior lights, consider purchasing a motion detector that will turn the light on and off only when it senses movement.When purchasing appliances, check to see that they are EPA Energy Star approved. These appliances use energy more efficiently than others. Most refrigerators, for instance, have compressors a t their base which produce significant heat and cause the refrigerator to work against itself. During fair weather, consider drying clothes on a line outside instead of using a dryer, which inefficiently uses electricity to heat cold wet clothes. Your clothes will last longer, and youll see the difference in your electric bill. When undressing at night, ask yourself whether your boxers can be worn again before washing.Americans, in particular, run to balk at this sort of a suggestion. Allowing ourselves to think logically beyond social qualms and customs will allow each of our personal environmental movements to transcend many of our unsustainable habits. If you work in an office or at home, chances are your clothes arent that dirty at the end of the day. Youll be impress at the decrease in your weekly laundry load. The last big source of energy consumption in our homes is our favorite appliance of all. The average American household tv set is on 7 hours and 20 transactions per day, and 98% of all households have at least one television.At 170 watts per hour, that comes to 452,965 watt hours (or 453 kilowatt hours) of television use per year in an average household using one 25&8243 television. Look at the breakdown of your electricity bill to put this number into perspective. Youll see that America could save a lot of electricity and money by simply turning off the television. Instead, we can read a book, go for a walk or hike, work in a garden, or slop or play a game with our families. Quite simply, the less television we watch, the richer our lives will be, the less we will spend on electricity, and the more we will be doing for the environment.All of the information in this section has focussed on minimizing the use of energy in the home. Imagine if you could use electricity in your home without burning any fossil fuels and without any monthly electric bills. This is not only possible, but a reality for thousands of Americans. With one sign investme nt in a photovoltaic system (silicon cells that convert the suns light into electricity), you can end your dependence on polluting power companies and begin a new life of clean energy self-sufficiency.You can get started with a simple photovoltaic setup for a single zone of your home for less than one thousand dollars, or go all out with a top-of-the-line fully self-sufficient photovoltaic power center for about $13,000. If these prices sound high, consider the savings. If your monthly electric bill is $100, a top-of-the-line system that requires only a moderate degree of energy efficiency would be paid for in less than eleven years. And there is a on the whole spectrum of cheaper systems that can easily power a typical home.For less than four thousand dollars (paying for itself in about 3 years) the Real Goods Trading peck sells a system designed to handle all the lighting, entertainment, and small kitchen appliances for a modest, energy-conserving household of one to four people in a regular home. This description is taken from the Real Goods Solar Living Source Book, 9th Edition. This sevensome hundred page tome covers everything from taking care of the land to water preservation and every alternative form of energy from solar to hydro to wind.It is a must-have for anyone who wants to live lightly on the earth, and is available at most major book stores and libraries. Recycling and Waste Management There is no environmentally sound method of dealing with the 200 million tons of municipal unwavering waste produced in America each year. There are many things we can do, however, to minimize, if not eliminate, our personal 4 1/2lb-a-day contribution to that figure. The now ubiquitous threesome, Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle, still defines what we all must do to bring our personal trash production down to a sustainable level.With the media and certain high-positioned nay-sayers claiming that recycle is worse for the environment than it is good for it, and law s making recycling just another stupid rule rather than a social imperative, perhaps a redux of Americas trash situation is called for. Households and other residences produce 100 of the 200 million tons of annually produced garbage in the United States. Most of that goes to land-fills, where it is covered up (if not purposefully sealed to prevent leakage) and sharp-set of the atomic number 8 needed for biodegradation.Here is just a taste of some garbage statistics from Geoffrey C. Saigns well-researched book, Green Essentials More than 1/2 of U. S. landfills have closed in the past 10 years, and nearly 1/2 of the stay 5,800 landfills do not meet federal or state standards for homosexual health and environmental protection. More landfills are being closed as they fail to meet 1993 and 1994 guidelines and as communities resist allowing new landfills in their area 22 states will run out of landfill capacity within 10 years or less. The nations 10 largest cities use a land area for their garbage that is larger than the state of Indiana.And this is just landfills. Incineration is quickly becoming the chosen method of dealing with garbage. Incineration actually concentrates the toxicity of garbage by commixture volatile chemicals at high temperatures and reducing its harmless biomass content. Approximately 1/4 of the ashes produced in a typical incinerator escape into the atmosphere, where they combine with the toxic gases emitted to cause acid rain, smog, and global warming. The remaining ashes are highly toxic and dumped in landfills or stored in toxic waste facilities.A few states mix this ash with pavement, where it will slowly decompose and leach into the ground. The simple fact is that most of this waste could be recycled or composted instead of burned or buried. Green Essentials offers this breakdown of garbage ingredients by weight segment % by weight Alternative disposal methods available Paper and paperboard 34% Recyclable Yard trimmings 20% Compost able Plastic 9% Recyclable Food waste 9% Compostable Metals 8% Recyclable starter 7% Recyclable Wood 4% Compostable, can be used as fuel Rubber and leather 3% Recyclable (tires) Textiles 2% Donate Other 4%??As this chart displays, 58% (not numeration the 3% for rubber and leather) of our garbage is recyclable 33% of the remainder could be composted. That means that 91% of all the garbage produced in this country (thats about 182 million tons annually) could be kept out of incinerators and landfills. Even a fraction of this ideal estimate would have a profound impact on the environment. Despite the amazing potential for waste reduction that recycling makes possible, The New York Times joined the medias misinformed recycling myth extravaganza in their June 30th, 1996 article, Recycling is Garbage.From the beginning, pessimists and special-interest industries have spread incorrect myths about recycling. These claims frequently charge (among other things) that landfill space is abunda nt and cheap there is no market for recycled goods and recycling doesnt pay for itself. Consider the facts on these three points Landfill space has become a precious commodity in the U. S. , with many states paying to trade trash to other states or countries. Recall Geoffrey Saigns statement that 22 states will run out of landfill capacity within 10 years or less.The market for recycled goods, while fluctuating like any burgeoning market, has increased with the amount of recycled goods available to create a powerful new industry. According to the environmental Defense Fund, U. S. pulp paper manufacturers have voluntarily built or expanded more than 45 recycled paper mills in the 1990s, and are projected to spend more than $10 billion on such facilities by the end of the decade. To argue that recycling doesnt pay for itself is like represent that landfills and incinerators dont pay for themselves-of course they dont.Recycling plants, even in the industrys infancy, cost about as mu ch to operate as conventional disposal methods, but are considerably more environmentally sound (costing less when environmental damage and cleanup costs are considered) and reduce pollution from manufacturing and excavation for new production. Recycling is an easy thing to do, and good habit to get into as many towns and cities are requiring their citizens to recycle by law or charging by the pound for non-recycled garbage.First, find out what your town recycles by craft your local waste management facility. If your town or city doesnt recycle or recycles only a few materials, consider getting a recycling-only dump permit for a near-by pro-recycling town or city. Next, reorganize your homes main trash area to include receptacles for all the different materials you will recycle. Food containers like tin cans and bottles should be rinsed to keep your recycling receptacles from smelling.Youll be stupid(p) at the decrease in waste the next time you take out the trash. If we make a c ommitment to recycle our garbage, we must support the effort on the other end by buying recycled goods. Many products packaging claims 100% recyclable. This is good, but keep in mind that it doesnt mean the material is recycled. Look for the percentage of post-consumer waste to tell you if it is and how much of is recycled. Recycled products like paper and cardboard have come a long way in quality and price.Seventh Generation, a producer of a full line of 100% recycled and earth-friendly household products, posts a convincing advertisement on the side of their bathroom tissue packages If every household in the U. S. eplaced just one 4-pack of 430 sheet virgin fiber bathroom tissues with 100% recycled ones, we could save 1 million trees, 4. 1 million cubic feet of landfill space (equal to 4,618 full garbage trucks), and 427 million gallons of water (a years supply for 12,300 families of four). About 33% of the garbage we produce, like food scraps and yard trimmings, can be composted .Composting is natures answer to garbage control, converting organic waste back into the soil it came from. While many people compost to create nutrient-rich soil for their garden, you dont have to be a gardener to compost your organic waste. You should cover your compost pile, but not suffocate it. The organic waste needs plenty of oxygen to feed the microbes that decompose the matter. You can build a box for your compost, or buy one pre-made at your local garden shop. Look for an organic gardening book at your library for instructions on building a