Turning food waste into soil is easily done by composting.
Here’s how to do it and avoid smells, disasters . . .
To turn food waste into soil we can ‘compost’ or break down the left over food. After all, food is just soil turned into food. By retuning the food to soil we can continue to grow our food.
So composting equals growing soil to grow food which equals eating.
There are many ways to compost and some I do and some I don’t like.
This ‘how to’ focuses on how to speed up the compost process, not on the different ways to compost.
A ‘compost’ is just a slow-burning fire. The higher the temperature of the left over food, the quicker it breaks down to soil. But. Too high a temperature and the compost burns. Too low and the compost smells, goes yukky and takes forever to break down.
• Paper shredder with paper in it being shredded - tip - watch out for staples as they can damage the shredder
Here’s how to speed up your composting food; add shredded paper.
The photo shows newspaper going into the shredder, drawn in by the shedder after I fed it in. Shredders cost between $50 to $110 or so.
• Shredded paper
This photo shows the bin in the shredder full of waste newspaper after it has been shredded. (Please excuse the partly displayed show-off knee.)
Notice how small the bits are. That means the paper can easily be mixed into the compost, and so absorb moisture and keep the break down process going without odour.
I pull out the bin and tip it into my different compost options. This is useful during winter when the cold temperatures slow down composting; the paper increases the temperature both during winter and summer.
Go to - turn your food waste into compost quicker with shredded paper - and turn waste paper back into soil.
(And, thank you for showing love for our Earth with your left over food turned into soil - excellent!)
Michael
PS: This just in:
“Myth buster: newspapers can be good for making compost as lead has not been used in newsprint for years. The printing ink is usually an organic soy material. So you won’t suffer lead poisoning by putting newsprint in your compost.”
Simon Molesworth, Landcare Broken Hill https://www.facebook.com/LandcareBrokenHill/