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Decomposing involves releasing the carbon from the plant fibers back into the atmosphere as CO2 usually. To quote the EPA "Composting also results in biogenic

• nkurz 12y ago
  It's a great article (better than I had found, thanks!), but I think it says pretty clearly that although there are significant losses due to CO2 being released during the composting process, the net effect is large and positive: "Overall, EPA estimates that centralized composting of organics results in net carbon storage of 0.20 MTCO2E per wet short ton of organic inputs composted and applied to agricultural soil." "Based on the expert judgment of Dr. Michael Cole from the University of Illinois, EPA found that between 4 to 20 percent of the carbon in compost degrades very quickly, and the remainder can be considered either slow or passive. Dr. Cole found 400 years to be the average of the reported sequestration times of carbon in the soil." Elsewhere they mention that the carbon content of wet compost is about 20%. Again, so while the conversion is not perfect, is there dispute that composting green materials and adding the compost to the soil results in net CO2 sequestration?