Which home compost option is best for you?
COMPOST, BOKASHI, WORM FARMS & ANIMALS
Want to find the right solution for your organic kitchen waste? Here’s our guide to help you find the right approach for your specific situation.
Everyone agrees that waste is dumb. Especially biodegradable waste, often called organic waste, putrescible waste or simply, food waste. It’s so great we can all agree on something!
When handled well, organic waste can be returned to the earth. Improving soil health and fertility, and increasing nature's resilience. Handled incorrectly, soils remain depleted while it ends up in landfills, producing a dangerous greenhouse gas and contaminating waterways.
Dealing (or not dealing) with our organic waste is as simple as choosing between two paths. One leading towards environmental regeneration and the other towards degeneration.
Which do you choose?
There are a few common systems for composting organic waste at home. Here’s our lowdown on some that may suit you depending on location, lifestyle, price and the type of waste you’re dealing with.
COMPOST
Good composting is all about creating an environment with the right carbon, water and oxygen mix for microorganisms to thrive. These digest organic matter, breaking it into its rawest form. Earth. Substandard composting practices are fairly common, as many compost bins are too small and don’t breathe well. Without air flow, or room for the right amount of carbon, these can be stinky and attract creatures looking for a free meal.
What’s the difference between and hot and cold compost?
There are two types of composting; with the presence of mesophilic bacteria (cold) or thermophilic bacteria (hot). Both are transformational, but cold composts take a lot longer than hot. The best composts are thermophilic, but there’s a real science to building them. The most common compost in people’s backyards are mesophilic/cold, which is quite a generous statement. The forest floor is the ultimate demonstration of a mesophilic compost, which makes a pile of rotting food scraps hard to describe as such.
Meat, dairy, bones or other animal products don’t break down well in mesophilic composts, while thermophiles can make short work of them before the flies can lay their eggs. It is common that a compost has thermophiles on the inside, and mesophiles on the outside, and it’s necessary to turn it to give the outside a chance to get hot.
How big should I make MY compost?
Composts are best at scale. Farm scale, city scale, and community scale is the most ideal. In general, mesophilic composts can fit into smaller than thermophilic ones. If you have the space you can potentially create larger compost piles, which generate more heat, and break down faster and more evenly. Shared urban spaces can be used to do this for multiple waste producers to do the same. This is healing the earth in its most explicit form.
Get the right carbon nitrogen ratio
The key is to have enough carbon to get the right ratio with the rest of what you wish to compost (often defined by nitrogen).
Carbon is the building blocks of nature, brown stuff; leaves, sawdust, cardboard, paper, wood chip etc etc.
Nitrogen is the more rich material; food waste, garden waste, green or colourful and often more moist.
Different carbon to nitrogen ratios produce different results:
Higher carbon ratio - more fungal compost.
Lower carbon ratio - more biological compost.
No carbon ratio - stinky gooey mess.
I’m keen to make compost. How?
Check out our 2.5 min video making a compost vessel out of waste, and for a more comprehensive video, this 10min tutorial looks at building hot compost.
Pros and Cons OF composting
Pros:
Can take most types of waste.
Most complete solution available.
Can process large amounts of organic waste, if space is available.
Creates fertile soil.
Fairly cheap once set up.
Cons:
Requires some knowledge and time to do well.
Requires space.
When cold it can be messy and smelly if animal product waste is present.
Bokashi
How does bokashi work?
Bokashi ferments your organic waste into a “pre-compost pickle” with an inoculated carbon-based substance that activates biological processes to break down food waste.
This system originated in Japan and takes up very little space, often located conveniently under the kitchen bench. Waste is layered into an airtight vessel with Bokashi mix so that anaerobic fermentation can occur. Bokashi bins can process meat, dairy and fish scraps that don’t go so well in compost or worm farms.
What does Bokashi produce?
What’s finally produced is concentrated liquid fertiliser and solid fertiliser, and this needs to go somewhere. Folks often compost this solid component, dig it into their gardens, feed it to worms or if they live in the city with no other option, throw it in the bin. The liquid component can be fed to plants, or tipped down the sink.
Pros and cons of bokashi
Pros:
Clean and tidy.
Compact.
Great for small spaces.
Processes animal product waste.
Produces concentrated fertiliser.
Cons:
Limited volume/capacity.
Requires ongoing investment for bokashi mix.
Some labour.
Not quite a complete solution.
Worm Farms
When we feed our waste to worms, this is known as Vermiculture. Worms can eat their own weight a day, transforming waste into an extremely high value soil component. Worms play a lead role in weaving together the complex physical, chemical and biological processes that enable life to exist (more on this in our Instagram post)
How to manage a worm farm?
Worms respond to food, air, and temperature, and we manage their environment by adjusting the parameters of these factors. When managed well, worm farms are smell free and can even be inside the house or office. Without the right balance, worm populations can slow/stop eating, escape or die off, leaving the remaining food to get funky.
What do I put in my worm farm?
Foods that throw out the balance are processed foods, acidic foods and fatty food. Foods that restore balance are carbon rich - such as paper towels, cardboard or newspaper. These waste materials are also found in the home or office, and it makes a lot more sense to build soil with them than ship them over long distances for recycling. Read our article What Goes In Your Worm Farm? for more detailed instructions.
What does a worm farm produce?
The liquid fertiliser from worm farms is great for plants, and worm castings are far richer and easier to work with than compost. Learn how to make worm tea from castings from our article.
What’s the best worm farm?
There are a number of worm farms available, and some are better than others. You can also make a worm farm out of stuff lying around (old bathtubs are a classic). We prefer the Hungry Bin, which is similar to a wheelie bin in appearance, and fits easily into urban environments. This approach can be scaled with multiple worm farms, providing a solution that responds to how much waste is produced. Due to these factors, we believe vermicomposting has a higher capacity for waste minimisation over a range of applications.
Pros and cons of worm Farming
Pros:
Tidy and compact.
Suited to suburban and urban environments.
Good for office and household waste.
Produces excellent easy to use fertilisers.
Cons:
Some waste unsuitable for worms.
Limited capacity, unless more bins are added.
Does need some care.
Animals
Feeding your waste to other living organisms
Many folks feed their food waste to their pets or other animals (dogs, pigs, chickens etc), that may produce food as a result (eggs, meat). We fully encourage this. A significant part of our ecological impact is from the food we eat, so any chance to localise our food systems and develop resilience against global fluctuations is worthwhile. Not to mention it’s way better for us and our families.
If you’re looking for an easier solution. You may like to sign up to our Managed Worm Farm Subscription.
Part of our subscription service is that you have an expert on-hand to support you when things need a tune up. However, we are so passionate about education and also want you to have access to resources like this article.
If you need any further advice on your organic waste solutions, please get in touch.