Giant Step To Zero Waste
The city of Busan, South Korea’s second largest city and world’s fifth busiest seaport, had a huge waste problem in the early 1990’s – too much waste, too little space to put it.
A group of women living in a high rise apartment got together and implemented a pilot scheme. Householders put their food waste and bokashi mix into airtight buckets and put the buckets out for weekly collection. This waste was then distributed to local farms where it was turned into compost without any additional processing.
Within a year 150,000 households were taking part and over the next four years that number grew to half a million homes. Busan was able to slash it’s waste tonnage by 31%.
Bokashi converts *all* food waste.
Other composting systems have rules about what you can and can’t add. Bokashi takes it all, removing the ‘smelly stuff’ from your trash.
Bokashi creates rich organic soil quickly.
Your plants will benefit from bokashi created compost within four weeks – much quicker than other composting methods.
Bokashi is easy!
Using the bokashi method is easy for apartment dwellers, single family homes, office kitchens and dorm rooms. No smell. No vermin or flies.
Bokashi Gives Long Lasting Food For Plants
Bokashi is a process of fermenting or pickling food waste. After filling the bucket, the food waste sits in an airtight bucket, in a shady spot for two weeks. After the two week ‘pickling’ process, the food waste will look unchanged, but it will not smell or attract flies or vermin. At this stage the food waste is pre-compost. The options are to add it directly to the garden via a trench, or to add it to a regular compost pile where it will speed up the composting process. Alternatively create a ‘soil builder’ which is a large container where a 1/3 of regular soil is added, then the contents of the bokashi bucket, topped by another 1/3 of regular soil. Within 2 weeks the food waste will have broken down and create rich soil, with long lasting benefit for your plants.
How Can I Get Started?
Bokashi systems don’t have to be expensive. A 5 gallon bucket with a screw on lid is all you need as a container for food waste. Inoculated with a range of microbes that ferment the food waste, Bokashi bran is the magic ingredient. There are recipes to make this yourself online, but it’s also available for sale pre-made.
Periodically we run a Bokashi Composting Workshop. Sign up for our newsletter to be the first to hear when we schedule this class again.
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