More hip to the jive, awesomely green news from the White House and the first family: the White House kitchen is installing not one, not two, but THREE compost bins on the south lawn to jumpstart next year’s garden. The word is that the current vegetable garden has flourished so much because it received shipments of compost from celebrity chef Dan Barber.

Mr. and Mrs. President, I applaud you for leading this country in what is a vital and necessary element to our own conservation practices. (OK, I applaud you every day just because I love you, but that’s beside the point.)

Composting can cut U.S. garbage production 24% or more, seeing as that’s how much garbage is accounted for from yard waste and food scraps we throw out each year. Paper can also usually be composted. Together, paper and food equal about half of what Americans throw away annually.

And since food and paper can’t break down in landfills without the oxygen to help move it along, we end up with piles and piles of whatever takeout leftovers we didn’t eat and sheaves and sheaves of discarded newspapers and first drafts. If we took it upon ourselves to let these things—our waste, that we produce—decompose on our own properties, imagine how much cleaner the world would be—and how much more well-fed your lawn would be to boot.

Here are just a few benefits of composting:

• Binding and improved structure of soil
• Greater drought resistance and therefore, less watering (and water waste!)
• Feeding plants a ton of nutrients that they need to grow and thrive
• Saving money otherwise spent on expensive soils
• Stabilizing the pH of the garden itself
• Creating healthier, hardier plants
• Binding of soil contamination, resulting in less leaching of pesticides and toxic runoff
• Control of soil erosion
• Effects of a mild herbicide

And the beauty of composting is that you don’t need much space to do it. There is a common misconception that people should have big, rotating compost drums that spin, with special equipment to turn it with, distribute it with, etc. This is simply not true—or an excuse to not compost! We use a very simple open crate constructed out of scrap wood, and we turn it with a hoe. Once it’s ready to use—when it’s nice and dark, and has that earthy smell instead of the food smell—we just use a shovel.