Global Ecovillage Network/Solution Library/Composting difficult-to-compost waste

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To safely and hygienically transform food waste - including cooked food waste - into compost in limited space and a short time span. Beyond the creation of useful compost also reduces refuse collection and land fill.

A bokashi bran inoculated with bacteria efficiently transforms food waste into compost. Can be used in households with very limited space.

Alys Fowler reports her test of the system:

The bokashi bin is a Japanese system that pickles your waste (bokashi means fermentation) and is perfectly suited to small spaces. You need two bins (they can be kept indoors) and special bran inoculated with good bacteria. In goes all your cooked and uncooked kitchen waste and a sprinkle of the magic bran.

I tested the system indoors by loading it up with the most revolting mix – fish skin, pork bones, soured milk, old meat, cheese plus all the regular kitchen scraps – and it smelled, well, just pickled. Once one bin is full, let it rest for two weeks (outside if pickling smells offend you), and start to fill the other.

What happens in those two weeks is fascinating. Your waste is zombified. It looks pretty much the same, apart from perhaps a little white mould and the whiff of fermentation, but something has happened internally: the good bacteria in the bran have got to work. Much like the undead, it may look similar on the outside, but inside decomposition is well under way.

Bokashi waste breaks down rapidly into traditional compost. Dig it into the soil or add to a traditional bin. Once in the ground, it doesn't seem to attract rats. I'm starting this year's bean trench with it.

• Seeds, Food & Soil.
• Water Cycles.

• https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/jan/27/bokashi-bin-compost-alys-fowler
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96fSXccQx9Q