| I'm a worm farmer and micro-composter that takes cafe waste and turns it into organic fertiliser in the form of vermicompost. I want to make a distinction between anaerobic processes, aerobic composting and the global respiration and carbon cycle. Anaerobic environments create methane. Aerobic environments create predominantly CO2. One is more harmful than the other in the atmosphere. Quality composting creates a lot of CO2, but it's a natural part of the respiration of the planet for bacteria to respire CO2 from oxygen and carbon. This happens everywhere there is organic residue breaking down in the natural environment... think leaf matter falling to the forrest floor. The difference is that it's a "renewable" process, which is why I don't use peat-moss in my worm trenches. The thing about methane is that it's very often harvested in landfill and burnt as an energy source. However, this may not always be the case, which is why I encourage cafes to take coffee grounds out of landfill and compost them. Just doing my bit. CO2 however is released in the natural carbon cycle (of which composting is a part) into the atmosphere... and according to ANU researchers it's responsible for 10-11 times the annual emissions of fossil fuels. Composting isn't related to our great dinosaur BBQ we have indulged ourselves in for as long as we have been burning fossil fuels, it's actually simply leveraging natural processes to manufacture soil amendments, which means it's a renewable part of the process for generating calories for human consumption. Basically Composting isn't part of the surplus of carbon entering the atmosphere from fossilised dinosaur bacteria. It's just the natural respiration and carbon cycle of the planet. |
This reminds me of the protein farmer at the beginning of Blade Runner 2049.