Wha-hoo for the first full month of composting for the Fourth World Living Composting Co-Op! I thought I'd post some notes on the project.
First off, I'd like to say THANKS SO MUCH to those participating! This is really going as smoothly as I optimistically expected it would!
Great News! All the yucky scraps have livened up my compost pile and I now have Hot Composting! Cold composting works but takes a long time. Hot composting is quick and happens when you have plenty of greens to keep the microorganisms working hard. They produce heat, so the more heat you have the more breakdown you know is happening, and it's all at a rapid rate. There is steam coming off the pile, and the center of it is 150 degrees F!
Wonderful News!We've kept 463 pounds of food out of the landfill!
....and there's going to be fertilizer in return!
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I keep a logbook of everything, partly from my own curiosity and partly because I think there might be some useful data that can be extrapolated from it all. I note how many buckets I collect, the volume and weight of actual material collected, and the temperature of the pile. I also keep track of all my time.
Based on what's going on now, I anticipate the decomposition rate to be exceptionally fast. This is good because quick results are always welcome, but also because I won't need as many composting bins as I thought. I was expecting to have many bins slowing composting at once, but now I think I'll be harvesting one bin while the second is aging and the third is being added to. If this is in fact the case I will be able to add quite a few more members to the Co-op this summer!
I'm also finding that it doesn't take that much time. In just over two hours a week I'm collecting, weighing, dumping, and covering material; washing buckets; and recording data. If I wanted to become an entrepreneur about all this I could charge each member a few dollars a month and I'd make a decent wage for the time put in. The thing that really excites me about this is that it shows promise for being a feasible neighborhood model. If someone on each street, subdivision, or neighborhood did what I'm doing, we could create part-time jobs, keep food out of the waste stream, and create fertile soils for Juneau!
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So far so good is all I'll say to avoid being jinxed!
