I cook a lot at home and as much as I plan meals and try to reduce food waste

there's always something that I just can't or won't eat. I just cannot eat a

banana peel. I cannot eat the top of my pineapple. But instead of sending those to

the landfill there's something I can do with my food scraps that will help fight

climate change. I'm Julia Simon. Today the MPR Life Kit for composting. It does

matter if you're in suburban home or in a tiny apartment. There are many

different ways to compost. Anyone can do it. We're gonna teach you how to turn

those banana peels into beautiful, earthy compost in five simple steps. To find out

more I called up Leonard Diggs. He's the director of operations of the

Pyranche Farm in California. Are you and Santa Cruz right now? I am. It's beautiful.

Leonard started composting in the 70s but he says today the need to compost is

more urgent than ever. The real key is that if we don't do it now and if we are

constantly allowing our waste to build up in landfills well we let off some of

the gases that affect the climate. About a quarter of our solid waste is food

scraps and when that ends up in a landfill it's trapped. Your banana peel is

rotting it's not getting any oxygen so in addition to carbon dioxide or CO2 it

starts releasing methane. This really potent heat trapping greenhouse gas. The

difference is that with compost when your banana peel starts to break down it

does make some CO2 but a lot less than when you get in a landfill and it makes

almost no methane so it's way better for the climate. Plus Leonard says all

that organic material in a landfill it's just unproductive. Things get stuck. We

then trap all of this potential in a place where it can't be used. But if we turn

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