The Power of Indoor Compost

Dominic writes "Last week, a certain Sharp kitchen composter was the talk of the internet. But sadly, it used 300W of power to run! Not quite the perfect ideal of nature-friendlyness a composter ought to be. This week, Treehugger has a better model up, The Naturemill, which is actually available in North America, and only uses 4W of power. Best of all, it can still handle enough food waste for a family of 5. So you can get your compost on without all the hastle of a pile. And without the electric bills."

Comments

What about vermiculture?

[djdead]

I know of an organic indoor composter that uses 0W. It's called vermiculture. essentially you have a bin of worms in your home (basement, under the sink, heated garage...). You place the organic waste in the top and the worms crawl around and eat it and produce very rich soil.

You can build the bin yourself or buy one from a place such as this one that I picked semirandomly from google: composters.com

Re:What about vermiculture?

[real gumby]

The other major problem with these things is swarms of flies -- not something I really want in my basement! For example the bots (fly eggs) will also be in your food preparation trimmings, so travel into the compost without having been killed via cooking.

Another post talked about meat attracting maggots, but various fly larvae consume all sorts of rotting crud, not just meat.

Plus the smell can be pretty bad if your household is non-veg.

Re:What about vermiculture?

[real gumby]

Whoa - aren't you supposed *never* to put any kind of animal waste (meat, milk, etc) in your compost?

You are very much correct! But in reality table scraps etc end up indiscriminately in these things.

It's the same issue as with recycling: many people don't care at all (a big reason why there aren't a lot of public recycling bins in most cities -- they end up with trash mixed in), but even of those who want to recycle, following the sorting rules can be quite difficult.

Re:Forest for the trees

[Pooh22]

While I agree with you on the "think before you buy" aspect of your rethoric. In this case I think it could help:

- it reduces the amount of general waste, thus reducing the cost of moving it out of the city.
- it reduces the smell of compostable waste in a kitchen, thus making this recycling more attractive
- it makes people more aware of their effect on the environment.

Nothing is ever black or white. /Simon

Re:Forest for the trees

[ddewey]

It's not like it's somehow better for the environment to throw compost in the trash than it is to pitch banana peels - they will decompose in the landfill just as nicely as they decomposed in your kitchen

Not true. Landfills are sealed to avoid polluting ground water. Thus a landfill is an environment mostly free of water and oxygen, so organic wastes do not decompose readily. This site has some good information on landfill decay, including this interesting fact:

"Only one-third to one-half of even easily decomposed materials such as lawn, garden and food waste is decomposed after 20 years."

Re:Are people really so lazy?

[MobyDisk]

1) Indoor composters compost faster, and they work all year round.
2) They also work in cold climates with longer more extreme winters.
3) They work for people in apartments.
4) They are good in educational environments.
5) They can produce liquid fertilizer for indoor houseplants.
6) They won't attract animals

Cjheck out the Worm Bin Factory have worms in them. It has a little nozzle, like on a water cooler, that allows you to drain a highly potent liquid plant fertilizer, which can be used for indoor plants more conveniently than a big thing of compost.

NatureMill compost maker

[gardengranny]

I checked out that machine and it really seems to be ideal for folks like me. It looks like it's automatic and fairly attractive. Being an older person, I don't always have the energy to mix and turn my compost pile, and it's very cold and wet outside during the winter so not ideal to be making trips to the compost pile.

Re:Forest for the trees

[Scott7477]

Actually, Oregon and Washington have existing power plants that burn methane emissions generated by decomposing garbage at landfills:

http://www.oregonlive.com/printer2.ssf?/business/o regonian/01/02/fn_11enrgy04.frame

If half of organic wastes are decomposed after twenty years, then you have that much fresh space to re-fill with municipal waste. Given that the base useful life of a landfill is 20 to 30 years, this would essentially solve the issue of landfill space for any community that doesn't have significant population growth.