Which compost system suits my wastes?
Standard systems differ greatly in their composting capabilities. The most suitable equipment for you will depend on your main type of wastes.
Get the benefit of our practical knowledge of home composting. Let us show you how the right system can make good compost with less physical exertion and in less time.
Garden waste composting with tumblers & compost bins
Tumblers and open-ended compost bins are well suited to recycle garden waste into compost. Follow these guidelines to compost your garden composites successfully:
Combine carbon-rich garden wastes with waste richer in nitrogen in a 2:1 ratio - they won't compost well on their own. Refer to Compost Nutrition on more information on these two waste types.
Aerate frequently by tumbling or with a spiral mixer. Failing to do so can result in erratic composting and even worse, smells which attract pests like rats.
Take care recycling vegetable and fruit scraps with garden wastes. These vegan scraps generally compost quicker, with an increased demand for oxygen (i.e. more mixing by hand). As they are laden with water, a large amount may be released to wet the composite. Add dry wastes if the composite becomes soggy.
Kerbside waste collection for faraway composting
Councils in Australia offer kerbside collection of garden wastes for recycling at an industrial composting facility. This is an excellent way to recycle woody garden wastes, seeded weeds and dry plant matter.
Some councils also offer to collect food waste in the same kerbside bin, which is renamed FOGO (Food Organics Garden Organics) bin. Residents play a part by excluding contaminants like plastic bags and watching for wastes that can produce odours quickly.
FOGO collection can be viewed as a partial waste solution, since the same amount of wastes is redirected from landfill to an industrial facility. Home composting is a preferred alternative, reducing the amount collected and carted away to a distant site. On a collective scale, it helps councils save money from reduced cartage, and even more from the reduced cost of landfill or industrial composting. The savings can help support other council services.
Home composting also saves money if you want to use compost to grow herbs, vegetables and flowers. Sending wastes away in a FOGO bin for faraway composting means that you have to buy compost from an outside supplier.
Vegetable and fruit waste reuse with worms
Vegetable and fruit (vegan) scraps can be fed to selected earthworms in above-ground worm trays/farms or in-ground digesters. A balanced feed comprises (N type) vegan scraps and C wastes in equal amounts.
The worms are fussy helpers, and they want you to maintain the right temperature and leave out food they dislike. They live close to the surface, feed on wastes pre-digested by microbes, and excrete castings - a nice term for worm dung.
Harvesting above-ground units yield worms and castings. As worms don’t survive in gardens, you may want to rescue them but this is tedious manual work. Castings produced by in-ground units aren’t normally harvested, so their benefits are limited to plants grown nearby.
Compared with mature compost, castings have similar capabilities in promoting plant growth, but have inferior soil-enrichment qualities.
Protein waste reuse by Bokashi fermentation
Protein food (meat, poultry, fish and cheese) can be fermented in sealed buckets with oxygen-intolerant Bokashi microbes.
This method works better with 2 buckets, one to fill and the other to ferment wastes into pickled solids. It also requires you to expel oxygen, and buy Bokashi additives to coat the wastes. Some acidic liquid is produced which you can use as a drain cleaner, or as a very weak acid (diluted 1 tablespoon to 2 litres of water) for watering plants. The microbes in Bokashi liquid perish when exposed to air, so they aren't able to make your soil more biodiverse.
To use Bokashi solids, first turn them into compost. This means you need two separate systems to make compost. A direct route is use an advanced system to compost protein wastes.
Kitchen waste composting with Bioverter
Kitchen scraps are richer in nutrition than garden wastes. Since you get out what you put in, your compost is richer in nutrients if made from composites with a lot of kitchen scraps.
You can compost waste composites with kitchen scraps as your main component in Bioverter.
A basic composting requirement is balanced nutrition. To get the right ratio of carbon to nitrogen, use a composite of nitrogen-rich kitchen scraps and carbon-rich non-food wastes, e.g. waste paper products. It also helps you divert more waste types from landfill.
First, layer your scraps, then add non-food wastes as a thinner cover layer. Layering helps you gauge their relative amounts to balance the overall compost nutrition.
In addition, you can compost protein-rich scraps. Make sure to cut them into small bits and spread them thinly among vegan scraps. Don’t forget to add more non-food wastes to balance the added protein.
Bioverter’s advanced functions - self-aerating and insulated composting - meet the needs for oxygen and warmth. As a result, microbes steadily compost the layered materials in an orderly sequence. Keep feeding the microbes balanced wastes to compost fast at elevated temperatures.
Composting materials self-descend inside Bioverter, ending up in two separate collectors for periodic removal. Its unique slide out collectors make harvesting easy.
Compact with a small base, Bioverter can be positioned for quick access from your kitchen. Make a habit of placing your compostable wastes in it several times each week, and you’ll be rewarded with a routine harvest of compost juice and solids.
You can use Bioverter as a stand-alone unit, or to make rich compost from kitchen wastes to augment your output from an existing garden composting setup.
Bioverter offers a sophisticated solution for simpler and more productive composting. Compared with standard systems, it has a convenient feed-&-collect mode of operation, and maximises the return of richness to your plants and garden.