With the rate at which we exploit it, pollute it, and take away from it today - without giving anything back - it's not looking very good for soil health on this planet.
Care and protection of air, water, and the marine environment has taken centre stage in the global climate debate for decades. According to Plastic Change however, the content of micro- and nanoplastics in agricultural soil is now estimated to be up to 4-23 times higher than its concentration in the ocean. This is surprising, given how much media space is offered to plastic in the ocean, and how little to plastic in the soil, and soil health in general. Of course, all plastic pollution is negative, regardless of the hosting element, but this knowledge makes it time to add soil health to the list of priorities.
Soil plays a pivotal role in the circularity of the entire Bioeconomy, and is an essential starting point for our entire existence, not to mention the basis for all food chains and for biodiversity on earth. Its state of health is deteriorating fast, and as such, it should get a spot on that centre stage. With an extra spotlight, or two.
In a few more words, without healthy working soil, we will have no farmland left that is able to grow crops, fruits, and vegetables to feed us all. And with the rate at which we exploit it, pollute it, and take away from it, without giving anything back to it – we can’t afford to wait 1,000 years for a teeny tiny 2-3 centimetres.
There are two main concerns with the deteriorating soil health:
- We won't have any soil left.
- It can take up to 1,000 years to create a 2–3-centimetre layer of soil.
According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)3,4 the entire top layer of soil could be gone in 60 years, if the current rate of degradation continues. And with about a third of the world’s soil already degraded, we sort of have to do something quickly. Each year, approximately a billion tons of soil is lost due to erosion, and soil now suffers from loss of organic material, pollution, loss of biodiversity, salinization, overexploitation, and discharge of pollutants. Healthy soil would however strengthen our resilience and vulnerability to climate change, and so we need to focus on how to GIVE back to the Bioeconomy, and not only TAKE from it, in order to achieve a healthier soil.
A great contributing solution is actually within reach. Literally. It just so happens that every year, you and I (and the rest of humankind) waste around 1.3 billion tonnes of food – leftovers, scraps, fruit peels, vegetable skins, etc. This represents about one-third of the total amount of food produced for human consumption annually. A colossal yet inevitable amount that we label as waste, BUT… to our soil and farmland, it is better than gold!
Recovering this valuable resource embedded in organic ‘waste’ is a massive and continuous potential source, that we can give back to the Bioeconomy. If we sort, collect, and compost this waste, and put it back onto the fields, its valuable nutrients and microorganisms will make the soil much healthier and even more resistant to e.g. drought and heavy rain. Most importantly, it will help maintain the soil fertile for growing food in a healthy and valuable circular economy. Giving all this organic material back to the soil will have a big and positive impact on the general soil quality, and thus collecting and composting the unfathomable amounts is a sustainable, good, and meaningful way to improve our soil.
And do it in a way that will not contaminate the waste with microplastic fractions along the way as it travels from kitchen to farmland. When using a conventional plastic waste bag, it’s inevitable that microplastic fractions will mix with the organic waste, and thus end up in the soil, when spread as compost. And since conventional plastic does not disappear, the plastic contamination of the farmland will accumulate with each new layer of compost that is spread.
Changing the bag to a certified fully compostable version however, will completely eliminate the risk of this contamination. A fully compostable waste bag looks the same, and has the same functionalities as a conventional plastic one. But this particular bag, will become part of the waste it carries, and leave no persistent microplastic fractions in the compost or biopulp. Even if bits of the compostable bag ends up in the soil, it will not be harmful and eventually dissappear.
As if it wasn’t enough, this type of bio bag has proven to have a hidden power on top of the obvious one of not producing microplastic. Studies in several EU countries have shown that if sorted food waste is collected in bio bags rather than in conventional plastic bags, the quantity as well as the quality of the collected food waste is greatly increased. Whaaaat!??? It’s a derived effect, and the true power of this bag, as it actually changes people’s behaviour for the better – leading to a much better quality compost, that will ultimately improve our soil. So please, change the bag, and give back to the Bioeconomy…
