Last Modified: 11 October 2011
Sustainability
Organic Composting
The organic material generated in your kitchen and garden is a valuable resource.
Treating this resource as a ‘waste’ and sending it to landfill costs you
money when you could be saving money and getting the benefits of having
a composting system at home.
Choosing the right system
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There are a number of options for composting your organic material at home. As a general rule of thumb:
- If you have a small garden that does not produce green garden
waste and you only wish to compost your kitchen scraps either a bokashi
or wormery system will suit you best.
- If you have a larger garden that does produce green garden waste, a
compost heap system may suit you best (Note: many gardeners have both a
compost heap for garden waste and a wormery for kitchen waste!)
- If you have no space at all, you can still have a bokashi or
wormery system, but you will need to find a willing recipient for the
nutrient rich compost your system will produce.
Willing recipients of your compost might include:
- a neighbour with a garden
- family or friends with a garden
- your local community garden
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Bokashi
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Bokashi is a Japanese word, translated means “fermented organic matter” and is made by
treating
plant-based by-products with Effective Micro-Organisms (or EM). The
by-products of EM suppress other harmful micro-organisms (a sterilising
process) and enhance the decomposition of organic matter.
While
the system costs money to purchase and maintain, it is well suited to
indoors applications with smaller volumes of kitchen waste (note: you
must still have a garden or have access to a garden for the compost this
system generates).
Bokashi has been widely used by Christchurch
residents after the recent earthquakes as chemical free emergency
composting toilets.
Click here to find out more about Bokashi or to order Bokashi system supplies
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Upper Hutt City Council wormery
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Hutt Community Survey, 39.2% of
respondents said they compost their food waste at home in a composter
and 9.4% compost their food waste in a wormery.
In addition, 42.9% of respondents compost their green waste at home as well.
Council is also doing its part to divert food
waste from landfill. The UHCC recycled bathtub wormery processes
approximately 30kg of our organic kitchen waste per week.
The council bathtub wormery was built and
commissioned as a part of the on-going Healthy Homes, Happy Pockets
seminar and workshop series.
Click here to find out more about Healthy Homes, Happy Pockets |
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