New Year’s resolutions are about initiating healthy habits. For 2016, consider adding regular composting to your standard flossing and gym membership resolutions. Composting is seriously healthy business!

It’s good for your physical health. While bacteria and worms do most of the work, maintaining a healthy compost pile requires some effort on your part. And turning a pile can be immensely rewarding work. Add weekly compost pile turning to your exercise regimen and watch the pounds melt away!

Of course, not everyone has access to enough outdoor space to establish a home composting station, but all New Yorker’s can receive the healthful benefits of composting through their local food scrap drop-off. Save the food scraps you generate from meal preparation, and once a week walk them to a food scrap drop-off. You’ll have an extra skip in your step knowing that the exercise you’re getting will also keep organic waste out of the landfills and help rebuild local soil. The NYC Compost Project hosted by Big Reuse staffs 10 drop-off sites throughout western Queens and north Brooklyn. If you don’t live in our neighborhood, there are a bunch of other drop-off sites located throughout the city. You’re sure to find one near enough for a nice, healthy walk.

Composting is also good for your spiritual health. The things you resolve to do are generally good for you, but one of the primary values of the resolution is in giving you an opportunity to pay closer attention to your daily habits. It’s easy to get caught up in the grind and lose track of the reason why we do certain things. This is definitely the case when it comes to food. Saving your food scraps for composting helps to to take a closer look at what you are consuming, as well as what you are throwing away. By forging a closer connection to your food, you’ll start to feel better about what you’re putting in your body. You’ll also notice that you don’t have to take your trash out nearly as often, and it doesn’t stink as much when you do.

And composting is good for the health of the community, too. Tossing organic waste in the trash contributes to overflowing landfills and greenhouse gas emissions; composting that waste puts it to use toward a good cause. Locally produced compost supports community gardens, parks, and street trees. When you compost your food scraps, your daily routinely literally improves the community you live in.

Make 2016 a year of personal growth, and help some local plant life grow at the same time. Resolve to compost!