Home Composting- Because everything starts at home

Five easy steps to make compost at home.

Imagine a time when waste pickers stop coming to pick up your waste and there is no landfill left for dumping your waste. This will increase the dumped waste in your neighborhood and eventually increase the mosquito population, which will lead to more infectious diseases. To avoid this in the future, steps can be taken right now. Out of the daily waste generated at households, kitchen waste which is mostly organic in nature can be composed and later used as manure/natural fertilizer for plants.

What is Compost?

Compost is a mixture of food scrap, garden waste, and other organic matter mixed and this pile is kept in an environment where bacteria, fungi, and worms can break down all these naturally. As a result, we get a dark earthy material that is nutrient-rich and can be used as a natural fertilizer.

Photo by Neslihan Gunaydin on Unsplash

Let’s see some benefits of composting at home.

• You are making a nutrient-rich natural fertilizer that will make your soil healthier.
• You are putting less food waste into the landfills and hence reducing your carbon footprint as well. If the food waste is dumped into landfills it would break down and release harmful greenhouse gas like methane.

How to get started

There’s a common myth about composting that it’s messy or smelly, but it’s the opposite and is simple and easily doable. In this blog, get to know these five easy steps for making compost at home.

1. Select your food scrap/ Select the correct browns and greens

• Browns are any plant material like dried and fallen leaves, wooden products, dried grass, and paper. Greens as the name suggests are the fresh green leaves, kitchen scraps, and grass clippings.
• You can start with food scraps that include fruits and vegetables, the skin of an orange, potato, or carrot are few examples. (You can add human hair as well)
• What we can avoid adding is dairy and meat products, basically, avoid such products that would attract rodents.

2. Storing the food scrap

• Composting is done by layering the food scraps to fasten the decomposition process. There’s a method to add them in layers and hence you need to store them accordingly so they could be added bit by bit.
• Storing the initial batch of the food scrap in a container or in a bag and keeping it in the fridge will avoid the unnecessary odor.

3. Choose a place for your compost

• The traditional way of composting can be done in the backyard of your house and if that is not possible you can also do it inside your apartment; in both cases, a simple compost bin is used.
• Make sure you select a dry, shady place for your compost and it needs to be near a water source.

4. Make the compost mix

• First, identify the browns and greens, as mentioned before. An easy way to identify is that browns are typically dry whereas greens are wet.
• Greens provide nitrogen which is very crucial for the growth of microorganisms who are the main heroes/components for the decomposition process.
• Browns are carbon-rich and help in water flow and airflow which are important for aeration.
• While layering, the browns are placed at the bottom, then a green layer at the top. Depending on the size of your compost bin the layers might increase or decrease but follow the brown-green sequence.
• Keep things moving- occasionally turn your compost mixture to provide aeration.
• Also, keep watering your compost and make sure it remains moist.

5. Wait a while and aerate

• After your compost bin is full, wait for 45 days, on the 46th day remove the non-degraded residue and the remaining earthy particle is your compost.

Conclusion- Composting takes time and patience but once you get the results, it is totally worth it.

Contributed By- Ashlesha Karande, Communication Executive at Social Lab

Social Lab Environmental Solutions is a waste management company, which helps brands take-back and scientifically dispose of post-consumer plastic waste of their products. Brands take our services to fulfill Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) obligation under Plastic Waste Management Rules, 2018.

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