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Advice for Kitchen Organic Collection
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Posted by
dottyinduncan z8b coastal BC (
My Page) on
Wed, May 30, 12 at 19:07
Our municipality recently began a kitchen organic collection program and there are a lot of questions being asked about smells and mould. Before I launch myself into the fray, I thought I'd ask the experts here to make sure I'm correct.
I am going to continue putting veggie kitchen waste into my compost pile, but cooked things such as meat, fat, bread and bones can go into the organic collection. If I add enough paper I presume this will be enough of a brown to keep smells to a minimum and stop mould from forming. Is this a simple solution to pass along to others? |
Follow-Up Postings:
RE: Advice for Kitchen Organic Collection
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| Are you adding the browns to your compost bin with your green kitchen waste,or is the town adding browns to the meat, etc.? Browns will certainly help your compost bin, but I don't think it would do much good to a pile of meat,bread, and fat. Just FWIW,what are they going to do with the meat, etc. to keep the animals away? |
RE: Advice for Kitchen Organic Collection
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| I think that they collect the organic waste and it goes to a large composting facility. Pizza boxes, kleenex, greens, left over food etc. can all go into the bin which has a tight lid and we are instructed to keep it in a shaded place until collection day which is once a week. Most people without a compost pile of their own will likely have lots of veggie scraps too. I don't think most people realize that browns can reduce the smell as much as it does. |
RE: Advice for Kitchen Organic Collection
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| One of the problems with municipal composting operations is they usually have an over abundance of certain materials at certain times of the year because those in charge do not seem able to plan ahead. So during the summer when things such as grass clippings are in abundance the compost pile smells bad because somehow the leaves over there do not get mixed in with those grass clippings over here. |
RE: Advice for Kitchen Organic Collection
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| My advice would be to encourage people to use the meat, fat and bones for gravies and stocks. If meat or oil isn't going to be used it should go in the trash. You may mask the smell with enough paper but there is no purpose to it. You'll still have a rotting mound of meat, infested with maggots underneath the paper. The meat will do nothing to increase the quality of the compost. |
RE: Advice for Kitchen Organic Collection
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| I add shredded paper to my own compost bucket to help keep down odors. I toured a municipal organic compost facility near here and was surprised when they said that they didn't want people putting paper into the kitchen waste bins... only because they were having problems with the paper pieces escaping and blowing around at their transfer site and at its final destination. They had to put up a fence to collect the stray paper and they have to clean it off daily. |
RE: Advice for Kitchen Organic Collection
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| I don't know why meat wouldn't be a beneficial addition to compost. It's loaded with nitrogen and minerals. Not that easy to compost, sure, but the odor and pest issues are the only real reasons we usually don't compost it at home. It's organic, it can be composted. If there's a good tight lid it shouldn't have flies. To the OP, no reason you can't put bread or other baked goods into your own bin. As far as mold, nothing you do will probably stop it if it wants to grow. |
RE: Advice for Kitchen Organic Collection
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| Our council provides a plastic caddy with tight hinged lid and a handle which locks the lid so animals can't get in (foxes, cats and seagulls are the main culprits where I live). They also give out biodegradable cornstarch bags to line the bin or you can use newspaper. When the caddy is full you tie off the bag and put it into a larger lock top bin which is collected once a week. I find it does often go mouldy but because it is all so well sealed it doesn't matter. It is no smellier than what most people do which is to put their kitchen waste in the ordinary dustbin. I don't often use the council collection because I compost everything including meat, fat and cooked food. But in winter when my compost bins slow down I find the council collection handy. Did your municipality provide containers for the organic waste? Have they sent out information on what and how to collect the stuff? |
RE: Advice for Kitchen Organic Collection
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| Flora, our council is doing the same as yours, including supplying the bins. We are not supposed to put yard waste into it but can put soiled cardboard pizza boxes, etc., plus kitchen scraps. I didn't think I'd have enough to put in it but I find it useful at times. I'd like to find out more about the final composting operation but I would expect that the cooked foods and meat, etc. would add nutrients to the final compost. |
RE: Advice for Kitchen Organic Collection
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| We've had food scrap collection in our city for several years now. We can put it in the same bin as the yard waste and it doesn't really fasten tightly. It is picked up once a week although they have a habit of skipping my street pretty often and since my pick up day is Friday, that means it sits around over the weekend for an extra three days. Drives me nuts. So I am not very keen on this system. The issue for me with meat or other cooked food scraps in either compost bins or the yard waste bins is rats. Ick. We don't eat much meat or take out pizza, and we generally eat everything on our plates and all our leftovers, so I don't have a lot of this material. So I don't put much food waste in the yard waste bins. Rats. Ick. No thanks. |
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