From Green LA Girl: Successful apartment composting stories wanted
Los Angeles apartment dwellers could probably make use of a community composting initiative.
Successful apartment composting stories wanted
If you have a lawn or garden, you can easily transform food scraps into healthy, eco-friendly, compost. All you need to compost is basically a bin with holes at the bottom. But apartment-dwellers who don’t want to send fruit peels and veggie pieces to the landfill have a harder go of it. You need more involved equipment — and have to get more involved yourself.
This is why I haven’t started composting yet.
In fact, none of my local green, apartment-dwelling friends compost. And it’s not cuz we’re lazy!
…
It’s just tough to compost indoors. Jenn of Tiny Choices wrote a great post about the 4 ways to compost indoors. Guess what: Jenn doesn’t compost herself.Are you a successful apartment composter? Share your story [greenlagirl@gmail.com] to encourage us all, and I’ll include them in a future post. In the meantime, I’m going to figure out how I can push Santa Monica, the city I live in, to give us green bins we can put our food scraps in for city composting. Homeowners get these green bins, but not apartment dwellers.
Composting indoors is a challenge but if you have no outside compost bin, then a combination of using bokashi and a worm bin* may do the job.
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*client
Themocracy
Hey Al!
Thanks for the mention and for (indirectly) letting me know about the Green LA girl post.
Cheers
Bentley
Greetings Al! I’ve been reading your blog. I feel that throwing the organics away is a waste. But I’m very busy to resort to composting. Can I just Chop em up and dig a pit and dump them? My apartment has a backyard so I think there’s plenty of space. Bury the organics and let nature do it’s thing. What do you think of this? Thanks for your time!!
Dennis, Trench composting is the solution for you:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Trench-compost/
See also http://tinyurl.com/5nmdbm
Cheers,
Al
Many apartments have common areas with grass. If you get permission from the apartments you may be able to use it. However; how many apartments want that sort of thing visible to other tenants. It may upset some individuals. With trench composting you still may need a dirt hole and that may not work for apartments either.
Sure,
you have to realize that many apartment owners have to take into account the other renters as well. If this composting stinks then it may affect the others too.
Anybody know of a good composter for an apartment balcony? Most ones I have come across are too large…
Great topic and one that should be considered a whole lot more than it is. Everyone is so up about recycling bottles and cans. Why not garbage??
Most people, including myself, are amazed at how much stuff we throw down our garbage disposals. I finally said ENOUGH!
I live in Hawaii on the 27th floor of a hi-rise. About a month ago, I got a Can-O-Worms kit and a couple of pounds of worms (Hawaii doesn’t allow for red wigglers which are less expensive). The size of the Can-O-Worms is great and easy to keep on my lanai as well as convenient to put my kitchen scraps in. It would fit just about anywhere, inside or out. No mess, no smell.
I have been very happy with what the worms are doing and have seen worm eggs and juvies as well as many adult worms just workin away. It has actually been rather fun gathering the garbage for them from my kitchen and since I do eat out often here in Waikiki, I take zip-lock bags to restaurants and bring my “scraps” home. A new kind of “doggie bag.”
Most to the eating places here offer fruit so the rinds are a treat for my worms.
I also do hydroponics and recently made a grow cabinet where I am growing tomatoes, lettuce and more. See my blog for more info. and to order your own Can-O-Worms if you’d like.
Keep up the good work of just having these kinds of subjects out there. Hopefully more people will at least think of how easy it is to do their part and get thier own “pet” worms.
Good luck to us all. And RECYCLE GARBAGE!!
Composting with worms is a great way to begin the “composting life” with little effort. I began to compost with redworms this year and it is unbelievable how well they work.
here’s a link to instructions for making an apartment composter
http://www.ehow.com/how_2059924_make-apartment-composter.html