Talk:Bokashi   

[edit] Bran mix

What is the bran mix in the photo? Can we make our own, or just use dry leaves? --Chriswaterguy 17:10, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't know about dry leaves, I think you need the microorganism thingys. But it seems like you can make your own: http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=96fSXccQx9Q (of course this is probably not very likely if you live in an apartment, but maybe a friend on a farm/large block can help you). --pfctdayelise 00:32, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

The bran mix appears to be an innoculant containing dormant micro-detritivores. See wikipedia:Bokashi composting#Bokashi composting. I accomplish something similar by shoveling old compost on top of fresh leaves, brush, kitchen scraps, etc. in my outdoor compost. A pile of untreated fresh leaves and brush takes longer to break down, because microorganisms have to penetrate the pile before they can eat it. Getting through a few feet of material is probably a long journey for something that is too small for humans to see. Airborne spores will do the trick naturally, but more slowly. I'd guess a bucket of finished backyard compost would make a great bokashi starter, just as it makes a great backyard compost innoculant, although I have not tried any indoor composting methods. My house is on a small lot but I found enough room to handle all my leaves, the leaves from three of my neighbors, my hedge trimmings, the ten Christmas trees I saved from landfill last month, etc. --Teratornis 15:13, 7 February 2011 (PST)

[edit] Life cycle analysis needed

The article says bokashi "is also a powerful carbon sink, since the method produces no greenhouse gases and can be scaled to sequester large amounts of carbon."

• What does "powerful" mean? It seems the maximum carbon sequestration could not exceed the carbon content of the feedstock (food scraps, etc.). The carbon content of food waste produced by the average resident of a country like the US will typically be a small fraction of that person's carbon footprint. For example, simply burning all of one's food waste would provide nowhere close to the amount of house heat consumed in winter by the average person on my street. A life cycle analysis^W is necessary to determine the overall carbon impact of a particular implementation of bokashi or any other composting method. This is not to say composting is not a good idea. Between composting and recycling, I hardly produce any household waste now (just a small bag every two or three months of non-compostables and non-recyclables). That would reduce trash hauling and landfill space problems if everybody did likewise.
  • I have not yet found a rigorous LCA comparison between composting and biochar^W for carbon sequestration, other than claims that biochar can lock away up to half of feedstock carbon in soil for centuries to millennia. How recalcitrant is the carbon content of compost from say a tonne of leaves, compared to the biochar from a tonne of leaves?
• All composting methods emit greenhouse gases, although they have the potential to not be net emitters. All the emitted carbon was recently captured from the atmosphere by plants, and thus is part of the non-accumulating natural carbon cycle.^W The carbon released by my decaying pile of leaves will be taken up by the trees in the following season as they grow new leaves. Controlled aerobic composting methods (e.g. bokashi, vermicomposting, backyard composting) have a significant advantage over landfilling the waste as the aerobic methods do not produce the same amount of fugitive methane i.e. landfill gas.^W Some landfill sites capture some of their landfill gas and burn it as fuel, or simply flare it. Burning the methane is much better than letting it reach the atmosphere because methane is a highly potent (although fairly short-lived) greenhouse gas. Domestic composting also eliminates fuel consumption from hauling the waste to a central facility. To say bokashi "produces no greenhouse gases" is not completely true; a more precise wording would be bokashi produces very little or no cumulative greenhouse gases. (Global warming is a problem because man's burning of fossil fuels and clearing of forests adds large volumes of extra carbon to the carbon cycle, which cannot be removed quickly by natural carbon sinks which are normally in rough balance with natural carbon emissions. Unless humans augment the natural carbon sinks with artificial carbon sinks, such as biochar schemes, our carbon emissions will hang around in the atmosphere for thousands of years to come.)

--Teratornis 15:43, 7 February 2011 (PST)

point taken, i just adjusted the wording of my original statement --Brunov25 19:22, 7 February 2011 (PST)

Thanks. Sorry about the wall of text there. But it's mostly true I think. I googled and found the Internal Journal of Life Cycle Assessment which has some papers evaluating compost schemes. I'll read them eventually. There are a lot of non-rigorous claims floating around about various aspects of green lifestyle, and it's good to quantify things when possible. --Teratornis 22:08, 7 February 2011 (PST)