Wednesday, October 5, 2011

General Composting Tricks for the North Shore

Watching the North Shore Recycling Program, I liked the comparison they made saying the compost should have the same moistness as a damp, wrung out sponge. Using this comparison made it very clear what the compost should be like. It was interesting that you need equal amounts of green and brown materials. It's crazy that one household can compost about 500kg of material that turns into 100kg of fertilizer.
Next time I go out to my compost or the school compost, I will make sure to bring an equal amount of newspaper shreddings or other brown materials as well as the fruit and vegetable scraps.
This video made me wonder why people would buy fertilizer when they can make their own, more environmental fertilizer for free? I also am curious as to how long it would take the anaerobic bacteria to ferment the food scraps in a composting bin.
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1 comment:

  1. Physics BloggOctober 7, 2011 at 8:37 PM

    In addition to newspaper, you might want to try sawdust from your school's shop class. Just make sure they don't have too much cedar in it. Your anaerobic fermentation question might be a valid question for your term 2 lab project. I think that in-vessel anaerobic composting will be necessary at the municipal level if we want to keep transportation costs down, so any experimentation that can help optimize conditions for anaerobic composting should be very valuable.

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