Composting is one of the best habit change you could adopt in your household with the BIGGEST effect to reduce waste and be environmentally conscious. More and more of us are living in cities with no garden connection, and the city population will only just increase. As a result, we must rethink how we manage organic waste.
Composting matters because organic waste accounts for the majority (30-40%) of mixed municipal waste, which is transported to incinerators or landfills with the rest of the waste in garbage trucks.
Composting is a way to minimize the quantity of garbage we generate (about 350-400 kg per person per year) by and also make soil from your spoils and lower your eco-anxiety.
Why is organic waste a problem in our household? 🗑️
What is it that we come across almost every day and then throw up the largest amount of in the rubbish?…It’s organic material and it can take up 30-40% of our rubbish bin week after week.
Globally, about one third of all food produced for human consumption goes straight to the bin (FAO, 2011).
In the EU, nearly 59 million tonnes of food waste (131 kg per capita) are generated each year (Eurostat, 2022).
In Hungary, around 1.8 million tonnes of food waste is generated annually. A significant proportion of this is produced in households (55%) (Eurostat, 2021). According to a survey by Nébih 2021, we produce 65.5 kg of food waste per capita per year, a third of which could be avoided (Nébih 2021). In other words, we are wasting. Let’s change our habits – Let’s change! Read more about this at www.maradeknelkul.hu!
What is organic household waste?
If you want to collect organic waste properly, you need to know what it is. What is organic waste in your household? 🤔 – Any material that comes from plants or animals and is biodegradable and compostable, which means it can be broken down by microorganisms. ♻️🌱
Not all organic household waste is compostable through indoor or community/garden composting – but more than a third of organic household waste is vegetable 🍃🌿 And you know avoidable organic waste production is up to US alone to minimize and lead a waste-free, waste-minimizing household. 💪🌍
Some examples of the most common organic waste that can be composted indoors:
easily compostable indoors and outdoors ☕🍃🍎
coffee grounds Used tea/herbal tea leaves, used paper tea bags fruit peel Rotten fruit pieces Vegetable leaves (radish/cabbage/carrot leaves) Vegetable peels Vegetable seeds (pepper seeds) Onion peel Old flower potting soil Old dried flowers
Slowly, yes. Small amount to compost weekly (in the indoor composter COMPOT) 🍋🥔🍞
Organic citrus peel Potato peel Peel of citrus fruits Mouldy cooked pasta rotten onion/rotten garlic old black and white newspaper (if you really don’t have anything else dry, but would rather have it in the recycle bin)
Compostable in an outdoor composter, decomposition more than 1 year:
peanuts and outher seed shells stone fruit seeds hair and fur Nail cuttings Branches other woody material eggshells (you dont need to compost it) Herbivore animal’s (rabbit, guinea pig, cow, horse)manure
Please avoid from indoor/outdoor compost:
Meat, milk and food waste contaminated with oil Bones non-bio citrus peels plastic tea bags biodegradable and conventional plastics glossy newspaper cigarette butts Carnivorous animal faeces (specifically banned dog and cat faeces)
What actually is composting? 💚
Composting is an invention of nature: a cycle. Under the right conditions, organic materials (vegetable peel, fruit peel, tea leaves, etc.) are decomposed by decomposing organisms and simultaneously “built up” into humus in the finished compost. In a forest, think of transformation under the leaf litter. Composting is most similar to decay.
Organic waste is NOT trash. Finished compost, humus or “black gold” is actually a concentrated “vitamin cocktail” that helps your plants grow healthy and vigorous. Your plants will thank you for your nutrient-rich compost, and you couldn’t ask for a better way to make your soil fertile. What’s more, you’ll also reduce waste.
Making compost is humans’ way of imitating the natural process of decomposition and accelerated, making a super environment for decomposer organisms.
Composting is a controlled, aerobic (oxygen-required) process that converts organic materials into a nutrient-rich, biologically-stable soil amendment through natural decomposition. The end product is called ready compost or humus. Microorganisms feed on the materials added to the compost pile during the composting process. They use carbon and nitrogen to grow and reproduce, water to digest materials, and oxygen to breathe.
You can compost at home using compostable waste from your kitchen and dry material depending on the composting type that you choose (paper, dry leaves etc).
To understand, visualize – imagine a forest floor. Nature creates a yearly cycle of growth and decay and rebirth here: leaves fall in the autumn and mix with other dead vegetation and animal waste in a thick layer, gradually decomposing over the months. Full of locked up nutrients is broken down by insects, fungi and bacteria (the decomposers) that live in the soil and some part of it transforms and builds up into brown humus or ready compost. During this process the beneficiary nutrients are released and recycled for plants to use again.
Methods of composting
What does this have to do with composting? How to solve the organic waste problem? ♻️
That part of the solution is composting, and preferably local composting. 🌱🏡 There are already several types of composting solutions (community, garden, indoor – but local:). And for most, you just need more education and more attention, not more money.
We are many and diverse and even a lot in big cities or with big gardens. But believe me there are many different ways of composting for city dwellers with many different lifestyles. Indoor and outdoor composting is a wonderfully diverse activity. Learn more about the composting methods, their pros and cons, so you can choose one that works successfully in your household.
In this post, we’ve compiled a list of urban composting methods.
Composting basics – optimal compost conditions
Forest floor = Compost factory. Most people think the process of composting stinks, but that’s a misconception. Composting is decay, which happens continuously in the forest floor. During composting, organic matter is broken down into minerals by microorganisms and other living organisms in the presence of oxygen. Some of them are converted into humic substances. The end product of the process is the finished compost. COMPOT brings this natural process to your kitchen.
The right conditions include the optimal ratio of temperature, humidity and carbon and nitrogen-rich organic waste. This will make your COMPOT odorless and functional.
Composting is a controlled, aerobic (oxygen-required) process that converts organic materials into a nutrient-rich, biologically-stable soil amendment through natural decomposition. The end product is called ready compost or humus. Microorganisms feed on the materials added to the compost pile during the composting process. They use carbon and nitrogen to grow and reproduce, water to digest materials, and oxygen to breathe.
You can compost at home using compostable waste from your kitchen and dry material depending on the composting type that you choose (paper, dry leaves etc).
The 3 most important things to look out for when composting
If you pay attention to these, your composter will not smell or fail.
1.C and N zen balance
N is the higher nitrogen content of what we often call green matter. These are most kitchen green wastes that are wet and they stink up the compost bin as they rot.
C refers to the higher carbon materials that we often call dry or brown materials in composting. Examples include dry leaves, shredded paper waste, old potting soil, coconut fibre in a garden composter, small branches and wood chips.
Composting is about a balance of these two materials. For indoor composting, this means a C:N ratio of 1:1 or 1:2 at the most and in most composting failures, we should return to a balance of green and brown feedstocks.
2.Ying&Yang relationship between oxygen and water
Composting requires water and oxygen in the right proportions of raw materials, because most decomposing microorganisms need water and oxygen.
The ideal moisture content is 60-70%, which means enough moisture to be moist but not runny, the feel of the soil under the forest floor.
3.Waste cutting into smaller pieces
The most important and critical point is the quality and air content of the organic waste entering the composting plants. You would think it’s not that complicated, you can put in anything that decomposes, but unfortunately it’s more complex.
We would like to emphasise that larger fruit and vegetable residues, peels, peelings, stems should be cut into SMALLER PIECES to maximise the surface area.
Also, remove plastic holders and wrapping from fruit peels, and jelly jars, ties and ribbons from vegetable greens.
I hope these three important rules help you to develop your composting routine!
How to get started with composting?
With this downloadable material, I want to inspire you to get started in creating a food waste saving kitchen.
Downloadable guide:
15 urban composting and food saving tips you can try even if you don’t have a composter
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