Food Waste Composting

Food Waste Composting / What's Compost

Composting has numerous advantages. It is the main requirement for healthy planting. It can take place almost anytime even without exerting effort.

Composting, often described as nature’s way of recycling, is the biological process of breaking up of organic waste such as kitchen waste, manure, leaves, grass trimmings, newspaper, worms, and coffee grounds, etc., into an extremely useful humus-like substance by various micro-organisms including bacteria, fungi and actinomycetes in the presence of oxygen.

Actinomycetes are similar to fungus in the way they grow and spread, but its distinguishing elements are that the types of materials they are efficient at decomposing. The active nature in this microscopic bacteria and the sheer number present (about 10 million per 1 gram of soil), make them highly effective at breaking down materials like tree bark and other hard organic material.

Food Waste Composting / A Necessary Resource

One of the most important necessities in our daily lives is food. We would not be able to survive without it. And since we consume it every day, it is also the major source of waste. Excess trimmings of meat and vegetables, cooked or uncooked leftovers, fruits, and all of the edible matters that are usually found in our kitchens come in just small quantities. Hotels, restaurants, food chains, food factories, and big establishments have bigger contributions to add to the mix.

Imagine how much food waste we produce in just a day, and how we produce such each and every day. It just adds up and continuously adding up. Where does all of that go?

Every bit of waste is not worthless if we only realize how we can still make use of it and how it can actually help our environment perform the cycle of life.

Recycling

Composting is a way of nature to recycle all the biodegradable materials. It takes place every day of our lives but to shorten the process, we must contribute our efforts to make sure it produces ideal results. The whole society can benefit from that.

Composting food wastes is more extensive than composting other organic matters. We must mix the appropriate ingredient to produce healthy soil good for planting.

The important advantage of food waste compost is we can plant food using it, unlike other materials that have numbers of pathogens living in it that can cause harm to food crops and to humans eating those.

Balancing the Elements

We must first provide bins for composting. Then, we should separate the green materials from wet materials. The process is extensive because food waste compost has to have the right blending of food. Fruits and vegetables composting produces Nitrogen that helps make the soil healthy.

But aside from food, composting needs the help of Oxygen, Nitrogen, Carbon, and Hydrogen. It has to be balanced for perfect results.

Animal meat is harder to compost and even harder if it came from non-vegetarian animals. It takes longer to decompose than vegetable trimmings and the basic biodegradable matter that produces bad odor in our compost are dairy products and meat scraps so we must bury it deeper so it will not bad feelings with our neighbors.

As for bigger establishments that produces larger amount of food wastes, scraps should sent to an on-site central compost facility that can handle larger quantities.

Sources

http://www.epa.gov/osw/conserve/rrr/composting/basic.htm
http://www.rethinkrecycling.com/residents/throw-buy/materials-name/food-waste
pdf: ecenter.colorado.edu/.../77342c92dbad96e181e5ea3805db9a1dbf39441d.pdf

Thank you for visiting the Food Waste Composting page.

For more information on composting follow these links:

Definition of Composting

How Does Composting Work

Anaerobic Composting

Composting Techniques

Commercial Composting

Composting Newspaper

Composting Coffee Grounds