its a dirty job, but someone has to do it

Having a large family, I try my hardest to teach my children the importance of being kind to the Earth. I know that large families leave a large carbon foot print so I feel extra responsible for raising green-conscientious children. I try to buy more "real" food than processed food (although I am far from perfect), I look for the least packaging that I can get with our produce. We recycle everything and anything that our city will take back (which is actually a fair-ish number of items). We use our yard waste, instead of disposing of it through the yard waste removal program. Most years, we garden (sadly, it looks like its just not going to happen this year due to money issues). And now, we are getting more serious about composting.

Start them young and make it a habit

For some reason, composting is one thing that kind of worried me. I have had no problem making my own laundry soap for the past three years. I love our cloth in the bathroom and for diapering needs. We don't buy paper plates, cups, napkins, etc even when bbq'ing.... we just make sure that we are prepared for the onslaught of dirty dishes. But for some reason, the thought of using every piece of fruit core, every single egg shell, every scrap of peeled veggies just made me.... I don't know? Feel like I was leaving a mess instead of cleaning it up? Turning our backyard into a dumping ground? Giving the dogs something else to dig up and eat?

But in actuality, its easy. Most of the kids don't even mind helping with the turning, digging, raking, watering.... They volunteer to take the scraps out and are actually pretty impressed by the subtle color changes in the dirt that we have already seen this past year. I am pretty impressed that after the first few times, the dogs have learned that the compost area doesn't contain meat, hence there is not a single thing of interest to them. And most importantly, it hasn't seemed to attract the local wildlife that I was worried would be invading our yard for an easy meal.

I won't say that I am an expert on this, because I am far from it. I won't even say that I am really a novice since I am totally learning as I go. But I will say that I am proud to be the parent of child that asks if waste can go in the compost, recycling or if its ready for the garbage. And I am VERY proud that for a family of seven people, four pets and a wild life, that we only throw out maybe three garbage bags a week (and that's mainly because when the rabbits' cage gets changed/cleaned out, the garbage bag goes out too, full or not).