The Urban Composting Adventure

Ever wondered if it's possible to manage a full-fledged compost system in a bustling city like Tampa? Join me, Sheila, as I share my personal journey through the trials and tribulations of urban composting with a busy family life. This episode of Zero Waste Imperfectly explores the ins and outs of traditional compost bins, the surprises of vermicomposting, and the simplicity of Bokashi composting. My experiences are filled with successes and failures, offering you an honest look at what works and what doesn't in an urban environment.

Learn how to integrate composting into your hectic schedule without turning your life upside down. I'll discuss the benefits and challenges of various composting techniques and provide practical tips to make it a sustainable habit. Whether you're a composting novice or an experienced green thumb, this episode is brimming with insights to help you reduce waste and contribute to a healthier planet. Join the conversation, and let’s make sustainable living a reality, one small step at a time.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello, lovely listeners, and welcome to Zero Waste Perfectly, the show that talks about all things zero waste with kids. I'm your host, sheila, and I am the owner of Life Essentials Refillery. We are here today and I am the mom of three kids. I have a 15 year old, a 13 year old and an 11 year old, and today I wanted to try doing things differently. So I am recording for my podcast at Zero Waste Imperfectly, and I'm going to attempt to make a video at the same time that we can put on YouTube for folks that want to watch versus listen. So I'm not sure how it's going to work out. This is a test. We'll see. I'd love some feedback about what you think about it. And so here we go. So the idea of our show is to introduce ways for living a more sustainable life with families. We know your life is chaos. It's full, however you want to term it, and we want to bring you the hacks and the tips so that it's easier. We don't believe that your life or that sustainability is about perfection. It's about progress, taking baby steps forward, and we want to show you simple hacks and simple changes that you can make in your life that make a big difference for the future of our kids and the amount of trash that we create but that are not life-changing. So to say so, here we go.

Speaker 1: 1:16

Today's topic, composting and it is definitely a trending term right now on the internet. The analytics show that is definitely a buzzword for right now. People want to know what it is, how to do it. Does it make a difference? And yes, it makes a huge difference. Is it possible? We live in the city of Tampa. Is it possible to have a full-fledged compost bin and compost everything? And it's not so easy when you live in the city. If you're in the country, you have a whole lot more space, but here in the city it is definitely harder. The city itself does not compost. There are third-party vendors that can do it for you for a fee which is not affordable for some people. So what are our options? What can we do that makes composting a reasonable thing to implement in our family without having a huge sacrifice of time? Space smells perhaps definitely errors from learning how to make compost and what to do with it. So what are the options? So we have my family, my poor husband. We have tried so many different things and very few things stuck, but I will tell you about the options that we have tried.

Speaker 1: 2:21

I went through a composting workshop with what is it, I can't even think about it through the county and that was. It was great. I got this big thing I set up next to the house. It didn't work so well because you have to have a perfect blend of your greens and your browns, you have to turn it over, you have to have perfect humidity in there, moisture content. It was not for us and critters did come and the neighbors weren't really fond of it. So that was something that we did not want to do anymore. So we tried that.

Speaker 1: 2:50

Then we started vermicomposting, which is an adventure. So the first time I tried it I got the gray tubs, the big tubs. I drilled the holes in it, I put my worms in, went to bed and the next day there were worms all over the house. And I am not. I love worms for what they do. I don't like picking up worms. It is not for me. So that was quite shocking for me and I have learned a lot about vermicomposting since then.

Speaker 1: 3:17

The next thing we tried was bokashi composting, and I have to say that's a really easy way of composting. You essentially get a five gallon bucket. You put your food scraps in there, you put some Bokashi on top it's a, it's not an enzyme, but it's. I don't think it's an enzyme, it's just a start. They call it Bokashi flakes and you just sprinkle it on top. Then you put a silicone lid on top to keep it, because you don't you do not want air inside here, and then you put your regular lid on and then, when you have more food scraps, you just open both the lid and take the little silicone cover off, put your next layer on, put more Bokashi banana on it and then close it up. And then you go until you fill this bucket. Then, when the bucket's full, you set it somewhere outside and you let it do its magic and then it breaks down. The problem is you still have to dispose of what's left in the bucket. So if you don't have much yard space or a place to dig a hole and bury your bokashi, you still have to do something with it, which is not ideal in most situations, because unless you have space, there's nowhere to put it. So the next thing we have tried is let's see what was next. You can just bury food scraps If you have yard space, you can just go out there and put it in the ground. It will eventually naturally decompose, as long as you're not putting bones in.

Speaker 1: 4:31

But my favorite so far has definitely been vermicomposting, and I will tell you why. Because if you do it right, it works really well. Oh, wait a minute. We did another one. We did the cardboard box composting, which was awesome too. That worked really well too, so I can tell you about that one. So vermicomposting is where you use worms and they eat your waste.

Speaker 1: 4:52

So with Uncle Jim's Worm Farm we got a cute four-layer bin. It has cute little legs, and then you start with one layer at a time. You put your bedding in, which is a coconut core, and then you start feeding your worms. So, basically, any leftover food that you have, you cut up smaller, you put in there and the worms eat it. And then you can layer the trays. You cycle them through and then, one after another, you fill up the trays and then the only downside is it can make worm tea, which is a liquid that drains from the bottom, and so you will have to put this, you dilute it and you can put it on your plants. It is something you can do inside.

Speaker 1: 5:28

The trick is on the first night when you put your worms in, you have to have a light shine so that it encourages the worms to go down instead of coming out of the bin. And I was so paranoid the second time we did it. I took a 55-gallon drum. I put my worms in it. Well, the container with the worms in it Put the light on it so hopefully the worms would not climb up. It worked, I had no escapees. It was good. So leaving a light on the first night is a big thing and you can check out more about vermicompost and there's so much information on the internet. Uncle Jim's Worm Farm is a great asset for finding information. They're great with questions. The experience was fantastic and if you're in the Tampa area on 75 and either Fowler or Fletcher, you can buy worms right there at that off ramp. There's a person there that sells the worms and I cannot remember what the name of his business is, but if you've driven by you will definitely recognize the place.

Speaker 1: 6:22

Cardboard box composting was really cool. You essentially just take a cardboard box. You put charcoal powder in. I think it was charcoal. No, it was ash. You put ash in and I think coconut coir I'll have to Google it again to make sure and you bury your food scraps in there. I did not think it would work, but you keep it moist and you just keep burying your food scraps. It decomposed everything. It was fantastic. I just used a small box and I think we decorated the outside of it so it looked pretty. We kept it under the birdcage, not just in the storage area underneath the birdcage, and then every day we put our scraps in. I was expecting bugs. It didn't happen. As long as you keep everything covered, it worked really, really well.

Speaker 1: 7:05

There are also some more modern ways of composting. So you essentially take a Vitamix and a dehydrator and they put these two things together and it's a machine. You keep it in your kitchen. You just throw all your food scraps in. It dries them, it crumbles it up and then you can just dump that stuff anywhere in your flower pots, in your garden, in your grass. So that is an easy, easy solution to sort of composting. It's not 100% composting, it's not 100% composting, but definitely reduces the amount of the food waste and makes it more manageable and avoids pests. So those are a couple things to try.

Speaker 1: 7:35

So my favorite number one was vermicomposting, followed by cardboard box composting and then, least of all, my least favorite is traditional composting. Just because it's hot in Florida, there's mosquitoes, we don't have yard space. I don't enjoy being out there that long dealing and trying to find the greens and the browns and layering it and tossing and turning it, and that just wasn't for me. But maybe it works for you. But I would love to hear from you have you tried composting? What styles have you tried? What worked for you? What didn't work for you? Do you have any suggestions?

Speaker 1: 8:07

Have you tried the Vitamix version of their composter? And have you gotten the biogas? What's it called Biogas? Oh, I'm drawing blanks today. It's essentially a big contraption that the city of Tampa is giving away right now and it is going. You put food scraps in it, it makes methane and the methane is used for cooking. So those are coming Biogas ingester, that's what it's called and they're coming to the Tampa area. We're on the list, we're getting one. Yay, but yeah. So there's so many methods for getting rid of the food waste. So I'd love to hear from you what have you tried? What worked, what didn't? You can find us on all platforms at Life Essentials Refillery. Thanks for listening and watching.