Food waste is quite a major factor in our home, I’m trying to address each time I’m cleaning up.
I was recently introduced to the scary fact that a lettuce head will take about 20 years to decompose in the landfill… imagine all other food waste… and in a landfill there aren’t the right microorganisms you’d find composting at home to properly decompose food waste… that scary fact and, now imagine all the millions of households tossing out food waste in their bins ?
At first I just threw all food waste into a packet and popped into my freezer.
As I’m learning, bones and dairy can’t be easily composted as fruit and veg scraps. And worms can only take so much at a time and they can’t have everything…
It being melon season my skins are big and take up a lot of space… I’m not gonna buy melons for a while because it’s a project for me to dispose of them without effort.
Onion peels and garlic, as well as potatoes, pose a threat to compost as they smell and tend to want to regrow… but they can be composted with a little effort (blitzing ?).
Today I decided to experiment a bit.
I boiled up chicken bones and their skins, leftover egg, onion peels and leaves and garlic that was hard done by but not moldy. (I reckon with the effort this takes I’m going to refuse buying chicken with bones for a while and meat with bones)
After about an hour or so I put the stock into a jar – I’m impressed with this I must admit because it smells great and I can defo get used to it instead of store bought stuff – I blitzed the rest in the Nutribullet – what I got was a patè like mush which I’ve frozen ? takes up far less space! and I’m going to compost in a lidded container as soon as I can get to buying one ??♀️ –
that being said I’m now thinking a Bokashi bin may just be the answer here for scraps like all of this to avoid all the boiling and blitzing… vegetarians sure have it easier in composting food waste ?
I also went and blitzed eggshells and coffee grinds, tea leaves and some leftover couscous for the wormies – I just hope that mix is okay for them – apparently this little bit is okay but should be avoided in large amounts as pastas etc go sour.
Basically what I’m taking away from all of this is-
- Refuse meat with bones (unless I have the time to boil and blitz) – or buy a Bokashi bin…
- Making chicken/ veg stock isn’t difficult like I thought it would be – so I’ll defo try harder to freeze my veg offcuts more to boil in one long haul.
- Choose my fruit a little more carefully – just in terms of the after time of breaking the off-cuts down…
- A Worm Farm won’t solve all my food waste problems so I do need another compost bin with a lid and holes
- Watch a bit more closely what we are eating and wasting – tricky with a 3 and a half year old who hardly finishes a lot of the food she gets
Until next time…
waste less • refuse more
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