COMPOSTING

If you have a little space in your backyard, or even in the confines of your apartment, you can find a way to compost. Composting not only reduces the volume of trash going to landfills, but produces great fertilizer and soil for your outdoor or container gardening needs.

Key ingredients to successful “aerobic” composting (requires oxygen):

Green ingredients (ideally 1 part): This is “fresh” or "wet” waste including vegetable and fruit scraps, new plant and grass clippings (including weeds), eggshells, coffee grounds, tea bags, select pet manures (herbivores such as from rabbit and guinea pig pets). This type of waste contributes nitrogen to the compost. If there is a higher ratio of green to brown compost (see below), then the compost may not decompose effectively and usually will start to smell. Do NOT include the following waste for general aerobic composting: Cooked or uncooked meat, fish, meal scraps, dairy, or fats. To compost these, see “All in” section below.
Brown ingredients (ideally 3 parts): This is “dried” waste including dried leaves (only if mulched otherwise will trap too much moisture), twigs and chipped or mulched branches, straw or hay, dried garden waste, coffee filters, shredded paper and cardboard. This type of waste contributes carbon to the compost. If there is too much brown ingredients, then the compost may not decompose effectively as there is not enough green ingredients or moisture.
Air: As this type of composting is aerobic, it requires oxygen in order for the compost to heat and decomposition to take place. This can be achieved by aerating or turning the compost pile with a rake or shovel periodically. Turning the compost every time you add more scraps is ideal, but once a week is fine too, and if you can’t get to it because you’re out on vacation for a few weeks, don’t fret over it. The bottom line is, the more exposure to air, the faster the decomposition.
Moisture: The compost should maintain 40-60% moisture in order to enable the compost to heat and decomposition to take place. If the proper ratio of green ingredients is used, this should maintain the moisture. They say that a good rule of thumb is the “sponge test”: your compost should have the consistency of a wrung-out sponge when you squeeze it. With this in mind, it also makes it easy to judge by eye as you stir the compost whether it feels too wet or too dry. If the compost looks too dry, especially during hot summer days, you can drench it with a quick sprinkle from the hose (we use water from our rain barrel).

Methods of composting: There are a variety of ways that you can compost, and depending on which you select and how diligent you are determines how fast you can produce compost. Basically, the larger the pile and the more you aerated it, the fast the compost will break down. This is because the bulk combined with the right balance of wet to dry ingredients will facilitate the generation of heat, which accelerates the decomposition process. On average, expect the compost to be ready in 6-8 months if you aerate it regularly. However, you can also just let the compost pile sit without much care, and it will eventually decompose, although it may take up to two years for the compost to be ready for use.

“SIMPLE / QUICK”

Start with a small compost in a corner of your backyard. This can be a basic tumbling composter that make it very easy to turn the compost to ensure air is filtered in and maintain heat. In general, you may be able to produced finished compost in 3 months using this method - just give the compost a few spins every time you go fill it up! If investing in a pre-fab composter is not an option, you can also pile the waste in a DIY bin made from a trash bin, wooden planks or pallets, or even chicken wire (there are a number of ideas and instructional videos online). And if you have more backyard or outdoor space, you can also just start a mound of compost in a far corner, with no container necessary.

On a daily basis, we accumulate green waste in a covered bin on the kitchen counter - there are a number of different types of countertop compost bins that you can purchase, or it can be as simple as using a large bowl with a plate as a makeshift lid, or a 5-gallon bin with a lid, depending on how much scraps you generate and/or how often you make the trip to your backyard compost pile. To avoid the buildup of smells, we generally leave the lid open during the day and closed at night (the more aerated, the less the smell). You can also layer in odor-absorbing ingredients such as spent coffee grounds (awesome for this!) and hand-torn paper or cardboard scraps such as brown paper grocery bags, cardboard tubes from toilet paper or paper towel rolls (pictured below) - this is a great way to directly recycle paper products (click here for more information on types of paper products that you should/should not compost).

“SLIGHTLY MORE INVOLVED”

As we have a bit more space and generate more waste (with 6 people in the house and a lot of cooking from scratch), we opted to for a larger bin. We built our compost “bin” from straw bales (12 or 16 bales) which was inspired by Eliot Coleman. This method allows a larger volume of compost to be processed, and the volume - in combination with the thicker straw bale walls - enable heat and moisture to be more effectively maintained. And once the straw has done its job, it becomes a compost ingredient as well. Note: only straw bales should be used and not hay bales, as hay tends to clump up and therefore does not allow as much air to filter through.

When managing a larger volume of compost, it is helpful to use a light garden fork to turn or aerate the compost. As this can be heavy work if you have a lot of compost, investing in a lighter or specialized pitchfork helps lighten the load; here is an example of a fork designed for turning compost, but there is a wide variety of options and price range available online.

“ALL IN”

There are differences of opinion as to whether to include meat/bones, fish/bones, fat/oil, dairy/eggs, and meal scraps (cooked or processed food) as there is higher likelihood of unpleasant smells and attracting rodents, as well as harboring pathogens if the compost is not managed properly. As the type of bacteria that thrive on meat waste are “anaerobic,” unlike aerobic composting it avoids fresh air. Therefore composting these types of wastes requires a specific compost bin that is reenforced (to keep rodents out), limits inflow of oxygen, and maintains heat (click here for more information). We went “all in” with the Green Johanna Composter which is designed to take on all kitchen scraps, thereby reducing the volume (and stench) of the waste that we send to the landfill. However to be on the safe side, we’ve opted to not use compost from our Johanna Composter for our vegetable garden, and instead use it in our non-food areas such as under trees, shrubbery and flower beds where the compost will not directly come in contact with edible parts of plants.

A BETTER TRASH BAG

Once you have reused, composted and recycled all the byproducts and waste that you are able to, you will most likely have some trash leftover destined for the landfill, such as non-recyclable containers and cooked food or meats (if you are not yet easily set up to compost this type of waste). One more helpful step that you can take at this stage is to consider how you can dispose of this waste with the least amount of plastic as possible. Some best practices that we have adopted include:

Use trash bags that are biodegradable or compostable (Note: depending on the brand and how quickly the bags break down, they may start to dissolve under high temperature or moisture, therefore take care not to store bags in a hot place or use for liquid or wet trash).
Use trash bags that are made of recycled plastic
As our food and perishable waste is composted, what we have left is minimal and therefore requires less frequent change of trash bags as it can take up to 2 weeks to fill our kitchen wastebasket (we’re striving to get this number up!). As the trash does not contain perishable waste, the same bag can last a few weeks without emitting bad odors.

HELPFUL REFERENCES: