In the age of Covid-19, we’ve had to move away from your own reusable containers and coffee cups – composting can help lighten the burden

I’ve never laughed or cried and wanted to make brown butter apple cake more than now.

We don’t know how long it will take before we emerge from our cocoon into the world again. But while we can’t at home, many of us seem to have paused to consider our consumer choices.

I hope we keep our newfound habits and not fall back on old ones. Soul-help DIY posts from around the world actually look like social media, at its best, was made for it.

Another realization I have noticed in this search for improvement is the process of literally dealing with one’s follies, whether they are of the spiritual, physical, or organic variety.

It’s the natural order of things, I guess – when we start to think more responsibly. We notice our waste and expand our thoughts to close the loop as much as we can.

It’s important that we don’t let the era of Covid-19 isolation interfere too much with our pre-pandemic waste management practices. We were going to live a plastic-free life, bring a coffee cup, a straw, and a bowl. The era of hand sanitizers and a return to single-use coffee cups are absolutely essential now, but we can balance it out.

Learning how to handle organic litter is an excellent start.

Compost is decomposing organic matter. Think newspapers, fruit and vegetable scraps, eggshells — anything made of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. The good news is that there are a lot of things.

Once you start shopping with the “can I put this in my compost bin” hypothesis, it will affect your consumer choices dramatically. Once I started asking myself this question constantly, I cut the contents of my household trash by three quarters in a week. And when you bring your compost-friendly purchases home, it will dramatically change the way you eat, too.

So How Does One Start a Compost?

If you’re in an apartment, I highly recommend the Bokashi System. You can get them online or at many gardening and hardware stores. You can use a fancy compost bin with a ventilated lid under the kitchen sink, or even a simple airtight bucket on your countertop.

You can make a bokashi item yourself but you can buy it just as easily. The main ingredient is EM (Efficient Microbes), which is inoculated into a host such as wheat bran and blackstrap molasses.

Apply a thin, even layer like lasagna. Spray each layer of scraps onto bokashi. The only thing you should not add is the bones of large animals. Unlike many other forms of composting on the kitchen counter, it’s generally okay to add spent citrus and even animal and vegetable fats and oils—though not to overdo it as to upset the balance. A good rule of thumb to help break down organic matter is to make sure you don’t have too much surface area. Cut it a little.

Bokashi will speed up waste disposal and deodorize waste very effectively. It should smell a little like pickles.

Think of it this way: It’s like a sourdough starter, koji, or kefir grains. Essentially, you’ll be fermenting your kitchen scraps so they can be dug up in your garden or placed in a larger compost pile. If you don’t have it, I encourage you to sneak in the dark and bury it around the trees that are near you. The board can thank you later!

This Leads Me to Compost if You Have a Garden

No need for fancy compost bins if you have the space. Find a corner in your garden – a meter by a meter is a good enough size.

You can use an old drum, or knock a small container out of old picket fences. Be sure to leave a hollow space under the bottom so that you can extract the compost soil after it is broken down and free of pathogens. A good way to do this is to measure the temperature in the middle of the compost heap to make sure it reaches 54-75°C, becomes thermophilic, after which it will start to cool. You can help with this by fanning it with a fork and watering it a little every day.

If it starts to clump, add more carbon material such as newspaper or straw. Sprinkle all your kitchen and garden waste like trimmed branches, old crops that need to be uprooted, mowed lawn, and leaf waste.

Make sure you never use compost in your garden when it’s hot, as this “burns” your crops. It needs time to decompose and nutrients are ready for the plants to access.

An Avian Compost Heap

Another type of compost that I love and use both on the farm and in the city is backyard chooks. Who doesn’t love getting eggs from your kitchen scraps? no one.

Our chickens live very happily in a small barn called a “cock clump” and huddle against the turkeys when they fly to pinch their scraps. The Chicken Rule: Why the Backyard is the Pet of the Decade Read More

I don’t even bother with the compost pile in town where most of our junk is fed into the chooks. In turn, we cover their lovely poop with hemp straw, which is scraped into the corner of their barn to smash it so that when we start a new crop each season, it is added to our vegetable beds. It is teeming with beautiful juicy worms. Produce food, compost, and worm farm – while not forgetting the many hours of girls watching entertainment – all in one place.

There are a lot of resources on stages and different types of fertilizing. If you start self-educating now, I guarantee you will not have everything covered by the time this crisis is over.

The best solution to your living situation may not be the one to start with first, but don’t give up. Like my first permaculture teacher, Michael, of Milkwood Permaculture, he taught me that there are “multi-pronged solutions to tackle every problem.” Which I think is a good mantra for life too.

I encourage you to start where you can and see where that leads you. Who wouldn’t want to close the loop? Imagine how amazing it would be if we could all produce some energy from our own follies?

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade – just be sure to put it in the compost when you’re done.