Is Compost a Weapon of Mass Destruction?

     Recently in April of 2011, I was composting in my dorm room at Sarah Lawrence College. This was a breach to my promise the semester before not to compost in my room, but in a way I'm really glad to have broken the rule even with the penalties I faced because of the interesting topic we will discuss today. Is compost a weapon of mass-destruction? Of course, the short answer is no, but for a detailed and grounded answer you will just have to read below.

     One bright sunny day in April at Sarah Lawrence College, the fire alarm went off for no apparent reason in my dorm room. It has done this before and the firemen have come up and inspected the whole house I was in and never cared about the compost in my room in the past. However, the second time, I was fighting a serious odor problem in my compost bins so upon the firemens’ finding that smell, they immediately told the college that this compost had to leave my room because it was an “explosive device.” I quickly arrived to the scene, and the firemen and security guards both gave long-winded explanations about how compost actually can set fire to homes, and could cause major explosions. I then tried telling some students about this at my college in a tone of ridicule because after all, how could something as innocent as a pile of food waste and paper turn into an explosive device? I would have thought my fellow peers would have considered this a laughing matter. Instead, they believed that compost is an “explosive device.” Before deciding to ridicule them, it might be worth looking at the merits to their line of reasoning.

     For instance, chemical fertilizers originated from poison gas and chemical explosives used in World Wars I and II. Chemical fertilizers are also explosive and poisonous chemicals. Therefore, it might follow that since compost, the finished produce, works as a fertilizer. That’s reason one. Second, if food waste does not get mixed with a fair proportion of goods containing a lot of fiber, it does release ammonia, another detailed explanation that would need another post another day but is at least a noxious gas. Third, even if food waste is mixed with the right proportion of goods to produce fiber, if it doesn’t get enough oxygen, organisms that don’t need oxygen to break down food waste will prevail and those organisms will produce methane instead of the carbon dioxide that organisms requiring oxygen will produce. As some environmental enthusiasts may know, both of methane and carbon dioxide are greenhouse gases. This question will also be debated in a future blog. For now, it’s just important to know that methane is a highly flammable gas that could, in theory explode or set a house on fire if in high enough concentrations.

     Now we will dissect each of these putative views. For methane, allow me to point out that while a small, household compost bin poorly managed may release a trace amount of methane or ammonia over a long period of time, but never enough at any one time to cause any serious problems. The Lower East Side Ecology center in New York City among numerous other organizations spanning the world encourage people to compost indoors or in their own apartments. If fumes are to be considered a serious problem it might also be worth deciding whether anyone should use gas stations, drive cars or keep gas stoves. There are plenty of cases concerned with leaving on a gas stove, which then results in the striking of a match and a subsequent house explosion. There are plenty of cases of car/plane explosions from a full tank of gas. For example the Septmber, 11 tragedy was largely successful due to the planes’ having a full tank of gas, which then set the World Trade Center aflame. Similar attacks using suicide bombers in cars are commonplace. Anyone ever heard of a small 18 gallon compost bin burning down a skyscraper? Neither have I.

     The fact that compost contains chemicals for fertilizing plants just like chemical fertilizers would therefore make them explosive, right? Well… if compost were a pile of chemicals like chemical fertilizers sure, but compost is not. Compost is complex system of organisms much like a forest. In fact 2/3 of all biodiversity on Earth live in soil and compost. Sure there is plenty of nitrogen phosphorus and potassium in compost, BUT the, nitrogen is found in the form of proteins and enzymes in bacteria and other living organisms, phosphorus is found in the cell membranes, and potassium is contained otherwise in organisms. Therefore, the vast majority of soil nutrients at any one time in compost are not available in a water-soluble form. Instead, plants secrete sugars which attract all of the bacteria which contain the nitrogen phosphorus and potassium. The bacteria get attracted and then their predators, protozoa kill off the bacteria and eat them. In the process, they leave a large soup of water-soluble nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and other vital nutrients. However, plants would never attract more bacteria than they actually need because that would be a waste of the sugar that took so much work for them to produce through photosynthesis. Therefore, there’s no way for finished compost to contain poisonous chemicals the way chemical fertilizers have. This allows plants to get the exact amount of nutrients they need whenever they need them, in any form they want. That’s the benefit compost has, over chemical fertilizers. That’s one of many benefits, which won’t all be explained here.

     Many might believe composting bacteria can make you sick. That may be true if your compost pile does not heat up enough and if you compost food waste containing pathogenic organisms such as meat or food from peoples’ mouths, etc. However, the composting process itself does not add pathogenic organisms because compost organisms are not pathogenic. Even the pathogenic organisms in compost would never get consumed and would ultimately get outcompeted for food by the large city of compost organisms. Compost goes on plant soil, and plants then get eaten. By then, the pathogens would be gone unless you were trying to compost human sewage or cat/dog feces. Composting organisms are not in and of themselves pathogens. They are stuck with very specific jobs of converting proteins, sugars, and complex lignin into humus and a vast array of organisms. Regardless bacteria cannot “explode” or catch on fire the way ammonia or other chemical counterparts can.