If you're interested in learning more about this, the movie Wasted! (one of Anthony Bourdain's last appearances before his death: https://www.wastedfilm.com/) has interesting perspectives on handling food waste around the world.
The segment on composting in South Korea is really cool, but the one on Japan is really neat: they initially started diverting food waste and using it as hog feed, which was a great way to divert it from the landfill. This then blossomed in to a desire for pigs that had been fed only a certain type of waste, so you can now purchase pork that was mainly fed leftovers from pineapples, or pork that was mainly fed leftovers from sake production, and it's created a whole separate boutique pork industry.
I eat tons of fruits (currently mandarines) and I don't know if it's a good thing but, instead of throwing the skins in the bin, I cut the skins in smaller pieces, and scatter them in the nature. It seems to degrade quite fast, it loses its bright color quickly at least
In the outdoor hiking community the "leave no trace behind" movement warns to not leave this otherwise obvious biodegradable trash behind. It is usually not native to the area, or too much for nature to absorb, or might contain pesticides, or... it is probably okayish to leave stuff like that behind in areas where there is a lot of human presence, but outside in the real wilderness it is not recommended.
I like that idea, but I work in an office (I'm sure a significant chunk of HN users do as well) and don't know how I'd be able to scatter fruity pieces during my lunch break. There are a few courtyard parks close to where I work, but the cleaning staff might complain that I'm making a mess. And wonder what I'm doing.
Bins and human nature are a surprisingly interesting topic. I would not draw the same conclusion as you did for where I live. Having the bin there would prompt -some- to use it, and they would probably use it wrong. Uncompostables in the compost bin and so on. It always boggles my mind how otherwise intelligent people in my life arrive at our colour coded bins, with clearly marked instructions on the lid, and choose instead to use their trusty intuition to sort the trash.
The usage later on may be more or less tolerant of what people actually put in the bins.
Here, a lot of people throw food waste in plastic bags in the bins, which works about as well as you think. There are people who spend Monday to Friday fishing around around in the compost by hand, fishing out and emptying the bags. More thoughtful people throw food waste in compostable bags in the bins, but those bags aren't quite compostable enough (the city composts for six weeks, those bags need twelve at the very least) so those bags, too, have to be fished out by hand.
It works. I imagine the cost could be lower and those poor people could be employed in less soul-crushing work.
Where I live, the guidance is actually that plastic bags are ok (yes, non-biodegradable ones). Given that there is bound to be a certain amount of contamination, including things that are harder to break down than the process allows, I would imagine that mechanical separation is accepted as a required part of the process.
Yes. I'm curious though — do you happen to know the end result of the process?
The compost makes earth, which can be used for something. Mechanical separation leaves bits of torn plastic bags, whose number is a function of the amount of plastic in the input and the effiency of the separation. What "something" have they found that tolerates so much plastic that they don't have to push down on the plastic in the input?
I have a green bin in my kitchen with an airfilter that I line with old newspapers or paperbags from bread or veggies and just dump food scraps directly into that and then into my apartments foodscrap bin. You need to wash the bin out occasionally but works pretty well without needing plastic liners.
Composting is great. One thing to note though is that compostable food containers potentially not great because of the PFAS which could get into the water supply and potentially make its way into plants.
- the worms are very fragile, so they must no be too cold, too hot, having not enough food or too much of it or they die
- it supposed to be able to be inside, with no fly. But having no fly requires a very balanced PH, so if you mess up, you're gonna have a bad time
- it's slow. In the summer, I eat so much fresh vegetables and fruits the worms can't keep up.
Eventually I gave up.
The 2 setup that worked for me were:
- I'm in a flat, but the gov have a composting spot for the whole street. Common in Germany, very handy.
- I'm in a house with a garden, then I just have a big pile to compost things outside, no worms required. It's simple, no-maintenance, and handle up to 10 people green trash in the summer in the source of France.
have you tried putting the worm bins directly into the soil with the bottom cut out? It is a permaculture technique and i believe the soil keeps temperature relatively stable.
I am in scotland and it never gets below -4 degrees celsius or above 25.
if you get the mix of waste right, then the worms will come.
There are two types of composting: cold and hot.
Cold is most common becuase you are adding things gradually, so it doesn't have enough mass to get going (or it smells like fart). It takes longer to compost.
Hot composting is where you either get the mix just right, or you have enough mass (0.5m3+) of stuff to get it going. You can expect it to reach temperature of 40-60 degrees celcius. The compost from this is generally better, and doesn't have seeds waiting to cause weeds.
Tips on composting:
o If it rots, it goes in. (this means paper, cardboard, meat, cheese, etc,etc)
o If its smelling like fart, its too wet, put in tree chipping, straw/hay, anything woody that absorbs moisture and reduces overall density
o too much on one thing is bad (grass clippings is notorious)
o autmn leaf fall is brilliant, mix that in
o Mix with a fork once a month
o biodegradable bags only degrade if they are empty. don't fill them full of waste, they stagnate
Regarding grass clipping: I find it helps to let them dry out first (not completely) before mixing into pile. Otherwise they tend to mat up and not mix well.
I never tried worms because I had such good luck with hot composting using the above tips. Although you have to be careful with wood, I end up burning anything thicker than a pencil and then mixing the charcoal back into the pile.
I've been trying for a year and I'm on my third batch of worms. The first two batches died (I think due to summer/compost heat) but the soil they produced was really high quality so I will keep trying.
When it gets warmer I will need to put blocks of ice (in plastic bags) in to keep them cool. Will also try separating some worms and keeping them indoors with a much smaller quantity of food.
We've had worms for composting for about six years now.
To keep them happy, you just need enough paper / cardboard to regulate excess moisture. Plus a bunch of drain holes.
If the environment you've created isn't something a plant would want to live in, a worm isn't going to like it either.
Our worms have survived a tremendous amount of neglect.
Sadly, my wife had our worm bins sitting on the driveway on garbage day last fall and the garbage man mistook them for garbage. Trying to rebuild our colony from ones we dug up from the garden where we had deposited them earlier in the year. It's been slow going and we'd probably be just as well off to order a new batch.
If you do this, please do not release the worms into the wild unless you know they are a native species that isn't over running the local habitat. Worms can cause a lot of havoc.
We're looking into this as well (also vegans), it's just me and my girlfriend though and we wonder if we would produce enough food scraps to feed them. Do you keep them inside? and do you have any issues with them getting too cold?
They self-regulate in terms of food, assuming they have enough space. So if you don't generate enough food, their population dwindles a little bit. But I'm pretty sure a small household would be able to generate way more than what a reasonable single bin can handle. Especially if you eat fruit. Just a few banana peels and you're sorted for like a week! Also, remember they eat paper and other bedding which goes along with the food waste.
The best compost design for worms is called "horizontal migration". It provides a gradient of temperature, moisture, decomposition stages, and allows for eggs to develop undisturbed.
The segment on composting in South Korea is really cool, but the one on Japan is really neat: they initially started diverting food waste and using it as hog feed, which was a great way to divert it from the landfill. This then blossomed in to a desire for pigs that had been fed only a certain type of waste, so you can now purchase pork that was mainly fed leftovers from pineapples, or pork that was mainly fed leftovers from sake production, and it's created a whole separate boutique pork industry.