How To Make Compost From Food Waste – Your 5-Step Guide to Starting Composting and Helping Fight Climate Change: The Life Kit Whether you have a small apartment or a backyard, there are ways to compost your kitchen scraps anywhere. This phenomenon is the beginning of a method of composting organic waste into fertile soil.
LifeKit shares tips on turning food scraps into fertile soil through composting. Julia Simon to hide the signature
How To Make Compost From Food Waste
About 8% of greenhouse gas emissions come from food waste, and about half of food waste comes from the ‘consumption stage’, meaning catering and household waste.
How Long Does Compost Last?
But no matter how you plan your meals and reduce food waste, there are some things that just don’t do.
Keeping food out of landfills can help fight climate change. And luckily, there’s an easy solution to household food waste: composting!
It doesn’t matter if you live in a suburban home or a small apartment. This guide will help you turn your food waste into beautiful soil compost in five easy steps.
Start with fruits and vegetables – sweet potato wedges, strawberry topping. Also tea bags, coffee grounds, egg shells, old flowers – even human hair!
Compost Infographic Stock Illustrations
However, meat and dairy products are asking for trouble. Leonard Diggs is the COO of Pie Ranch Farm in Pescadero, California. He says you need to ask yourself, “Do you attract mice? Do you attract animals to your pile? Meat products probably will.”
Also note that some products have the word “compostable” on them – for example, “compostable bags” and “compostable wipes”. They are compostable in industrial plants, but don’t really work for home composting.
Layering process to accelerate decomposition. There is a way to add them to the stack (see step 4!) so you’ll need to keep them in a container to add them a little at a time.
“It doesn’t have to be, you know, all those things you find on the Internet that are really cute little ceramic containers,” says Diggs. “It could just be an old milk carton,” he says. “When you make the first piece of that asparagus bit, boom, that’s where it ends up.”
Compost: Turn Food Waste Into Soil Nutrients!
You can also store leftovers in the freezer or in the back of the refrigerator. This is an easy way to get rid of unpleasant odors and pests in your kitchen.
At this stage, you need to think about the place in which you currently live. (I’m sure none of us have thought of that lately… I’m just kidding!)
If you don’t have a yard and still want to compost conventionally, you can take your leftovers to a compost pile that you share with your neighbors or in your community garden.
(Of course, in the age of the coronavirus, make sure your community garden is open and practice social distancing.)
Composting And Food Waste In Your Home
If you want to spread out the food scraps in your apartment, you still have options. Jeffrey Neal, head of the Loop Closing Composting Plant in Washington, is a big fan of worms. He says you don’t need a large container for “vermicomposting” — a 5-gallon box is plenty. Or you can go big.
“There are times when I’ve made [my bug box] a footrest so I can rest my feet on it! You can use it like a piece of furniture.”
Another small-space idea is to ferment food scraps using a Japanese method called bokashi, Neal says. “All you need is a container that you can enclose and mix a colony of bacteria in the grain with Bokashi.” (More information on using worms and bokashi here.)
Of course, if you want to give your leftovers to someone else to compost, that’s fine. Some municipalities collect household food waste. You can also ask local grocery stores, restaurants, or farmers markets if they have food scrap collection programs.
Reduce Food Waste & Make Compost Workshop, Sat 17th July
If you have some outdoor space, your compost bin doesn’t have to be complicated. “I think it’s easy,” says Diggs. An old trash can, an old wooden crate – just work with what you have.
You can also buy a basket online or as Digg will say, “You can just bare stack!” Basically, you can just have a pile of compost – but don’t put it against the wall as it can stain it.
In the world of composting, you’ll inevitably hear about “greens and browns” – the two main ingredients in your compost.
“Green” is usually leftover food, like fruit and vegetable peels, coffee grounds, or if you have a backyard, grass clippings. They add nitrogen – an important factor for microbial growth. The real heroes of this process are the microorganisms that carry the spoilage.
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Browns are more carbon-rich – think egg cartons, newspapers, dried leaves and pine needles. This helps to shred paper products before they are piled.
It’s worth remembering that green materials are usually wet, and brown ones are usually dry. When you layer, you want the dry browns on the bottom with the wet greens on top.
Diggs says browns are important because they allow water and air to pass through, which is called aeration. This will allow the microorganisms to do their job. If it is 100% water, nothing is happening. Microorganisms cannot function. You have that wet, smelly stool,” says Diggs, “so drainage makes a difference.”
A helpful analogy is to think of handling compost like maintaining a fire. Just as in a fire you have to build a wooden structure to warm the air, in composting you have to do the same, add spaces to provide oxygen to these hero microbes.
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And it’s really layering – browns then greens and browns and greens. The number of layers depends on where and how much food debris is left, but try to keep the layers a centimeter or two thick. You can also put some brownies on top to repel flies and odors.
When it comes to “brown” to “green” ratios, you often hear three or four parts brown to one part green. Sometimes two to one. After all, you always want more browns than greens – again, you need to keep them dry for wet to wet.
How long does it take to decompose? “If it’s hot, you can be there in two months, pretty easy,” says Diggs, “If it’s cold, you can be there in six months.”
To keep things moving, you’ll want to flip or flip the pile, like with a stick or shovel. Remember the analogy with fire – you need to make sure the air is flowing, wet, but not too wet.
How To Make Compost
As for how much you flip it, if you have the right ratio of green to brown you’ll minimize it. Diggs says that when you start out, you can turn your compost once every seven to 10 days.
Finally, Neal says he “knows by nose” when the compost is ready. “Bad compost smells, well, bad,” she says, “it’s like a smelly garbage can or garbage can smell like…basically like a garbage dump. It stinks.”
If it smells, it probably means it’s not decomposing – maybe your pile is too wet, or you need to adjust the ratio of green to brown.
Diggs says he likes to smell the finished compost: “You know, it smells like… gosh. A woody, earthy, but sweet smell. Or sometimes sour.
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When you have solid, earthy compost, place it in your garden or plant it on a windowsill. Or you can donate to your local community garden – just write in advance!
Of course, composting requires patience – you may encounter the unexpected. We don’t want you to give up, so see below for more resources.
Texas A&M AgriLife Extension has an excellent “Compost Troubleshooting Guide.” For example, it suggests what to do if the pile has bugs or is too wet.
We would love to hear from you. If you have a good hack, please leave us a voicemail at 202-216-9823 or email us at [email protected] Your tip may appear in an upcoming episode. An average household throws away around 500 kg of kitchen waste every year. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found that plants burning leftover food and horticultural products account for about 30% of waste.
What Are The Golden Rules For Making Compost?
Taking a more zero-waste approach can quickly turn waste into profit with a few simple steps that don’t always require a special composter or expensive bins.
Over the past few years, many people have realized how important it is to stick to the 3Rs principle to avoid waste and go green. Composting is the most natural way to recycle leftovers, kitchen waste and products from your backyard.
By learning to compost, you
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