Why and How
"Ryan, stop eating the leaves on strawberries, it's weird. You're not going to make a difference because of that," my sister told me when she caught me eating strawberries whole — stem and all. I just wanted to reduce the food waste being created in my home; I felt bad about it. When my mom found out about this, she proposed a solution: composting. It sounded like the perfect solution to reducing food waste (and I wouldn't need to keep on eating strawberry stems). After my mom and I ordered an indoor bokashi composter (picture below) from Amazon, we immediately started collecting waste. However, I made a big mistake by not doing enough research, so this entire first batch didn't end up the way I wanted it to. I didn't realize that bokashi composting was supposed to be an anaerobic (no oxygen) process, so the compost I first added to the bucket ended up being rotten by the time the bucket was full.
The composter I bought
Using the composter
I slowly added the food waste bit by bit like this. However, it wasn't optimal because, as can be seen, there was a lot of air between the food waste, which was an opportunity for the waste to rot instead of ferment. Also, because I added bit by bit, even if I knew that bokashi composting was supposed to be anaerobic, I wouldn't have been able to compress the thin layer of food settled at the bottom very well. I also think that opening the composter often led to an increase in oxygen. Hence, I started composting in an empty small, snack container (image below) to decrease the chance of food at the bottom rotting by the time the composter was full. This was an effective method for a period, but the frequency at which compost needed to be buried was a bit too high. I needed another solution...
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