WHAT TO COMPOST
Do compost: 4 Fruit and vegetable scraps 4 Grass clippings, twigs, leaves and wood chips
4 Eggshells (broken into small pieces)
4 Coffee grounds and tea bags 4 Unbleached coffee filters, paper and cardboard
Don’t compost: 4 Pet waste 4 Meat and dairy (except in Green Cone device)
pile or bin; average to large households with yard waste.
Multi-tiered composters are a
series of stacked boxes with remov- able panels to allow the organic waste to move downward throughout the decomposition cycle. Finished compost comes out of a door at the bottom. Because the boxes are smaller than a large pile or bin, compost will “cook” faster; some users report their first batch took just four to six months. Collectively, stacked boxes are often comparable in size to a large holding bin, so they can compost a large amount of waste.
Worm Bin Good for: People that want to
compost indoors; apartment dwell- ers and small households that don’t generate yard waste.
For everyone that has wanted to compost, but had insufficient outdoor space, a five-or-10-gallon bucket and some red worms could be the answer. Worm composting, or vermicompost- ing, is so compact that a worm bin can fit under most kitchen sinks. Because red worms are so efficient—each pound of them will process half a pound of food scraps daily—a worm bin doesn’t need aeration and won’t smell or attract pests. Note that worms won’t process brown waste, meat, dairy or fatty foods.
Green Cone Good for: People that just want to dump their kitchen waste and be done with it; those that want to compost fish or meat; households that don’t generate yard waste. Solarcone Inc.’s Green Cone system will handle up to two pounds of kitchen waste daily, including meat, fish and dairy products. It won’t compost brown waste. Users bury the bottom basket in the yard, and then simply put green waste together with an “accelerator powder” into a cone hole in the top. According to Solarcone, most of the waste turns into water. Every few years, users need to dig a small amount of residue out of the bottom that can be added to a garden.
Tracy Fernandez Rysavy is editor-in-chief of the nonprofit Green America’s Green American magazine, from which this article was adapted (Green
America.org).
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natural awakenings March 2015 21
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