Chickens or Compost? What to Do with Kitchen Scraps

Reducing food waste is a calling of mine. My subreddit r/noscrapleftbehind has 10,000 passionate followers, I’m writing a book about running a waste-free kitchen, and my family’s food waste is virtually zero.

Why? Because food waste contributes to global warming and deforestation, among many other environmental problems. It’s an enormous waste of resources like water and fossil fuel. Plus it’s unethical, considering how many food insecure people are right here in our own country.

A household with zero waste comes with challenges. One such challenge is food that is edible, but not really edible. Take kitchen scraps, for instance: apple cores, carrot peels, onion skins. That bio matter shouldn’t go in landfills, but it can’t be eaten, either.

There are two options, and each comes with it’s pros and cons. We can compost our kitchen scraps, or feed them to chickens.

Compost Pros: It’s Better than Landfills

When bio matter decomposes in the open, oxygen helps it decompose and the material releases carbon dioxide.

Most of our food doesn’t decompose in the open where it can release carbon dioxide. It goes in landfills. Food in a landfill is buried under layers of garbage, which prevents it from getting the air it needs to rot safely. That means methane, and lots of it. Landfills are the third largest source of methane in the US, right behind gas emissions and cow farts (seriously, cow farts: look it up).

Methane is ten times worse for climate change than carbon dioxide.

Throwing food in a landfill is the equivalent of pressing CTRL+A DELETE. Those nutrients are gone forever. Composting saves those nutrients and reduces our carbon footprint by creating carbon dioxide instead of methane.

Compost is a popular hobby for non-environmental reasons, too. It’s fun. Creating dirt is satisfying — it feels almost god-like.

Composting gives you an emotional high because healthy dirt releases chemicals that make you happy. That might be one of the reasons gardening is so therapeutic.

Compost Cons: Composting Edible Food is Bad for the Environment

Composting is great for bio matter that can’t be eaten. It’s also great for tiny bits of food that fell through the cracks, like stale French fries and broken crackers the baby threw on the floor.

Most people don’t compost only inedible food. They throw in food they could have eaten, like rotting pears and old casseroles.

The production of food is bad for the environment because of the resources it takes to grow, harvest, transport, and package it.

When edible food is composted, it hurts the environment because it perpetuates a system of waste, and composting only recycles 1% of the energy it took to produce that food. Composting puts a negligible amount of nutrients back in the earth that shouldn’t have been taken out of the earth in the first place.

Not to mention that composting does nothing to help world hunger.

When it comes to seeds, peels, and cores that you don’t plan on eating, there’s no reason not to compost it. Unless, of course, you have chickens.

Chicken Pros: I Get Free Eggs and Compost

I eat eggs. The chickens who make the eggs need to eat. If they have to eat anyway, it makes sense to give them my extra food instead of letting it rot in a bin.

If a human can eat it, a chicken can eat it. There are few exceptions, like avocados, chocolate, and uncooked rice. Feeding them chicken is morally shady, if you ask me. For the most part, there’s little in your kitchen that can’t be fed to a chicken.

Chickens convert the waste into eggs, which makes me feel like I’m still eating the waste, just in another form.

Chickens also convert food into compost, and harvesting chicken poop is faster than waiting for food to decompose.

I also love that the chickens producing my eggs live in humane conditions. The cages that farm chickens live in make me sick.

Backyard chickens seem like a win-win all around. It almost is a win-win…almost.

Chicken Cons: Backyard Chickens Have a Dirty Secret

I wish I didn’t know this. Once I tell you, you’ll wish you didn’t know it, too. But we should have figured it out on our own.

For every female animal you eat or buy for food, a baby male was killed.

My local zoo feeds its predators male calves exclusively. Farmers have no other use for them. Male chicks are thrown in a macerator.

Why does it have be a macerator? It’s hard enough to justify eating chicken when the male babies are killed, but to macerate them. Yikes.

Chickens come with other challenges. The upfront costs, for instance. A compost bin might cost $50-$100, or you could make your own with a plastic storage bin or with pallets.

Chickens, on the other hand, need a house and fencing. You have to buy feed for them, and bedding, and then you have to deal with them possibly getting sick.

Since they’re living animals, they’re a responsibility. You can throw scraps in a compost bin and forget about them, but you can’t forget to feed and water chickens. If you go out of town, you have to find someone to take care of them.

You even have to worry about social feuds. Not every chicken is nice to the others. My sister has a time-out cage for when one of her girls bullies the others, which works pretty well.

Options within City Limits

If you live in an urban area with a tiny backyard, or if you live in an apartment, you might think neither chickens or composting is even an option.

The truth might surprise you. Some cities allow backyard chickens under certain conditions. There are rules about how many chickens you can have, how big the coop can be, how you must store the feed, and what you must do with the waste.

As long as you’re aware of the rules, keeping chickens in even the smallest of backyards could be a possibility.

A compost bin doesn’t take up much space. I can’t blame anyone for not wanting to give up precious apartment space for a compost bin, even if it’s a small one, but if you’re determined, an apartment can find room somewhere.

That isn’t the main issue. The main issue is what to do with the compost once it has decomposed. Apartments don’t have gardens, and potted plants on the back porch only hold so much dirt.

Other places will take your kitchen scraps. Community gardens, for example, usually have a compost bin, and I’m sure they wouldn’t mind your contribution. Some cities have compost facilities.

You might even have neighbors, friends, and family who will take your scraps. ShareWaste is an app that matches people who have compost with people who want compost.

It’s not as much fun to fill a bin in your freezer with scraps you will never use. It is fun to feel good about helping the environment.

I Choose Chickens. Which do You Prefer?

For me, chickens were the obvious choice. I didn’t actually have a choice; my mom gave me her chickens before she died, plus the coop and the fence. There were no upfront costs.

I still compost when I have biodegradable matter the chickens can’t eat. That isn’t often. Halloween pumpkins, for instance, since we leave them on the porch until they get moldy. I also compost avocado peels and corn cobs. Not watermelon rinds, though. The chickens love those.

Despite the macerator issue, backyard chickens are still more humane than eating eggs from the store. Farms are inhumane for the females and the males, whereas backyard chickens are only inhumane for the males.

It might be better to not eat eggs in the first place, but that’s an argument for another time.

In the end, I feel it all boils down to one question. Keeping chickens is a fun hobby. Compost is a fun hobby.

What do you think would be the most fun?

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Image by Xuân Tuấn Anh Đặng from Pixabay