In the debate on waste management, the argument has been repeated to argue that selective collection (door-to-door) should not have to be done very rigorously: that the compost generated by so many thousands of citizens should not have a job. Compost left over.
Some experts have also insisted on this belief. Xabier Garmendia and Javier Ansorena wrote in the General Urban Waste Management Plan of Gipuzkoa 2002-2016, known as PIGRUG: “Regarding the demand for compost existing in Gipuzkoa, it should be noted that there is hardly any demand, especially due to the lack of agriculture capable of using significant quantities of compost…”.

Too compost? Asked by Urko Apaolaza for ARGIA (July 2008), the doctor in Geomorphology José Miguel Edeso explained that the lands of the Basque Country are hungry for organic matter, planted with monolabo (and lately eucalyptus) on the Atlantic side. “To me, forest owners have told me – says Edeso – that they do not know what happens to pines, that they do not grow. (…)We have only been for 35 years with aggressive uses and only a cutoff of pines has been made so far. What about the second cut? Will pines grow again? Or will the land be too poor?”

In addition to the compost mountains that would be devoured by the surrounding orchards and by the peasant fields in general, we cannot forget the areas that suffer a sharp erosion in Álava and Navarra (but also in other territories), which, like the food needs of the population, must be provided with vegetation and trees to meet the needs caused by climate change. For the rest, those who degrade the plain surrounding the Basque Country feed on the crops they have created would also be very pleased with our fertilizer.

Looking around the world, soil erosion has become one of the most serious problems of the future. We have done so with the demolition of the forests and with the uneven levels of industrial agriculture in the last century. Claude and Lydia Bourguignon, two of the leading experts in soil science, which is pedology, say in the classic “Le sol, la terre et les champs”: “The erosion that we have generated human beings is even stronger as the climate becomes hardened. Thus, the erosion rate in Sweden was 4 tons of land per hectare per year; in Spain the loss was 33 tons. These figures were prior to the ‘green revolution’ [industrial agriculture], before 1970, since the abusive use of fertilizers and pesticides has since become the norm. Land loss has also increased significantly in recent years. Sweden today loses 10 tonnes of land per hectare per year, France 40 tonnes, Spain 60, Maghreb 100”.

Industrial agriculture feeds with synthetic fertilizers crop fields that have become sterile lands, increasing each year the addictive chemical crops that need harder tacos. However, there is no shortage of bad news that further obscures the picture. Experts have set the alarm on: Phosphorus will begin to decrease rapidly in the most holy NPK trinity of synthetic fertilizers composed of N, Phosphorus (P) and Potassium (K).

It's not an anecdotal alarm. European Union Commissioner for the Environment, Janez Potocnik, has warned of the need to reuse phosphorus by composting all organic residues of food and animal manure.

Families who compost organic waste in their homes or on the land of towns are also pioneers in society. In addition to separating 40% of their waste from landfills and incinerators and reusing them in a clean and cheap way, future generations are enjoying the land they need to feed themselves. Prevent it from becoming a desert.