Why One-Time Soil Treatments Aren’t Enough

When properties are contaminated, the instinct is often to look for a single fix, a one-time treatment that will “solve” the problem. But soil doesn’t work that way.

Think of it like human nutrition: eating once won’t sustain you. You need regular meals to stay healthy. Soil microbes are no different.

Microbes are the workforce of soil recovery. They bind, transform, and stabilize contaminants. But they can’t thrive in isolation. They need a steady diet of organic matter to keep working.

The good news is we already have the food they need: our food scraps, yard trimmings, and greenwaste. When turned into compost, these materials become the fuel that sustains microbial communities over time.

Treating contaminated soil once is just the beginning. True resilience comes from regular applications and feeding the soil the way we feed ourselves. This ongoing care transforms “treatment” into restoration.

If we reframe contamination response as a long-term relationship with the land, we empower communities to turn waste into renewal, and microbes into allies.