South Korea is composting its way to sustainability
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
The segment on composting in South Korea is really cool, but the one on Japan is really neat: they initially started diverting food waste and using it as hog feed, which was a great way to divert it from the landfill. This then blossomed in to a desire for pigs that had been fed only a certain type of waste, so you can now purchase pork that was mainly fed leftovers from pineapples, or pork that was mainly fed leftovers from sake production, and it's created a whole separate boutique pork industry.
Of course some fruits skin don't compost at all. Like watermelon skin, pineapple leaves and skin, but you can definitely cut down on trash.
I think just having a bin there for you to use works as a reminder to use it as a compost bin, no need for criminality or fines.
The usage later on may be more or less tolerant of what people actually put in the bins.
Here, a lot of people throw food waste in plastic bags in the bins, which works about as well as you think. There are people who spend Monday to Friday fishing around around in the compost by hand, fishing out and emptying the bags. More thoughtful people throw food waste in compostable bags in the bins, but those bags aren't quite compostable enough (the city composts for six weeks, those bags need twelve at the very least) so those bags, too, have to be fished out by hand.
It works. I imagine the cost could be lower and those poor people could be employed in less soul-crushing work.
The compost makes earth, which can be used for something. Mechanical separation leaves bits of torn plastic bags, whose number is a function of the amount of plastic in the input and the effiency of the separation. What "something" have they found that tolerates so much plastic that they don't have to push down on the plastic in the input?
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190529084838.h...
- the worms are very fragile, so they must no be too cold, too hot, having not enough food or too much of it or they die
- it supposed to be able to be inside, with no fly. But having no fly requires a very balanced PH, so if you mess up, you're gonna have a bad time
- it's slow. In the summer, I eat so much fresh vegetables and fruits the worms can't keep up.
Eventually I gave up.
The 2 setup that worked for me were:
- I'm in a flat, but the gov have a composting spot for the whole street. Common in Germany, very handy.
- I'm in a house with a garden, then I just have a big pile to compost things outside, no worms required. It's simple, no-maintenance, and handle up to 10 people green trash in the summer in the source of France.
something like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pEq2QkBG4U
There is nothing else to do, it works by itself.
Its far eaiser to just have a "darlek" (https://www.thechilliking.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Tip...) and fill it with both garden waste and food waste.
if you get the mix of waste right, then the worms will come.
There are two types of composting: cold and hot.
Cold is most common becuase you are adding things gradually, so it doesn't have enough mass to get going (or it smells like fart). It takes longer to compost.
Hot composting is where you either get the mix just right, or you have enough mass (0.5m3+) of stuff to get it going. You can expect it to reach temperature of 40-60 degrees celcius. The compost from this is generally better, and doesn't have seeds waiting to cause weeds.
Tips on composting:
o If it rots, it goes in. (this means paper, cardboard, meat, cheese, etc,etc)
o If its smelling like fart, its too wet, put in tree chipping, straw/hay, anything woody that absorbs moisture and reduces overall density
o too much on one thing is bad (grass clippings is notorious)
o autmn leaf fall is brilliant, mix that in
o Mix with a fork once a month
o biodegradable bags only degrade if they are empty. don't fill them full of waste, they stagnate
I never tried worms because I had such good luck with hot composting using the above tips. Although you have to be careful with wood, I end up burning anything thicker than a pencil and then mixing the charcoal back into the pile.
When it gets warmer I will need to put blocks of ice (in plastic bags) in to keep them cool. Will also try separating some worms and keeping them indoors with a much smaller quantity of food.
Good luck!
To keep them happy, you just need enough paper / cardboard to regulate excess moisture. Plus a bunch of drain holes.
If the environment you've created isn't something a plant would want to live in, a worm isn't going to like it either.
Our worms have survived a tremendous amount of neglect.
Sadly, my wife had our worm bins sitting on the driveway on garbage day last fall and the garbage man mistook them for garbage. Trying to rebuild our colony from ones we dug up from the garden where we had deposited them earlier in the year. It's been slow going and we'd probably be just as well off to order a new batch.