This is part 2 of our series on becoming green by composting. Part 1 is an overview of composting.

The EnviroCycle composter consists of a spinning plastic drum on top of a base. The drum has small holes in it that allow for the collection of compost tea which is a liquid mix that leaks out of the compost as the items are decomposing. The tea is mixed with 10 parts water for every part tea and then poured over the garden as water based fertilizer.

EnviroCycle Image from growandmake.com

The composter works by putting a little bit of regular garden soil into the drum initially to provide cultures to start the composting.  You then put in your browns and greens with the dirt and give the drum a spin. Every few days you continue to spin the drum to aerate the compost.

The bacteria and cultures in the initial bit of soil start breaking down the browns and greens placed in the drum. You spin the drum to thoroughly mix the compost and give it more oxygen. As the cultures break down the waste, the compost will heat up, if it reaches the right temperature it will kill any seeds still in the mix, kill any bad bacteria and speed up the process of breaking down the waste.

Pro’s:
•    Doesn’t require worms or any other purchases to make the compost work
•    Easy to start using
•    Large capacity should easily handle all of the waste of our small family
•    Takes 30-60 days for a full compost cycle

Con’s:
•    The compost process will slow down and/or stop in the winter
•    We can’t add proteins to the compost
•    Composter can develop odors if not done properly
•    Need to stop adding waste for 5-6 days at the end of the cycle to allow it to cure before removing all of the compost to start the next batch

Price: $160 + free shipping

Compost Photo by Meaduva

What is composting?

At its simplest, it’s breaking down trash into fertilizer to use in your yard or garden. How it works is you put kitchen and yard waste into a container and it is broken down using various different methods, such as worms or cultures, into a final product that is rich in nutrients for plants and smaller in volume. The end product is compost which can be mixed into the soli in your garden to help enrich your plants. From garden to waste to garden it helps provide a sustainable cycle of growth.

The waste put into compost is made up of two parts commonly called brown & green. Brown has more carbon and is usually made of dry materials. Green has more nitrogen and is made up of wet materials. The proper mix, roughly half brown and half green by weight, is essential to get the compost to break down quickly, without odors, and yield a correctly balanced mix of fertilizer for the garden when the compost process is complete. The ideal mix of finished compost is roughly 25-30 parts carbon to 1 part nitrogen.

Why Do it?

According to the EPA you can reduce up to 25% of your waste stream just by composting kitchen waste and yard waste instead of putting them in the trash. Most of the items that you throw away, even if they are biodegradable, don’t beak down in landfills since it’s so dense and oxygen can’t get down into the pile. The items that degrade end up releasing methane gas, due to the anaerobic process, which is a greenhouse gas and maybe just as bad or worse than C02 in contributing to global warming.

What can you compost?

Brown Items:
•    Newspaper
•    Sawdust
•    Napkins
•    Cardboard
•    Paper towels

Green Items:
•    Kitchen scraps (fruit, peels, vegetables)
•    Coffee Grinds
•    Non-diseased plant cuttings
•    Hair

What’s next?
We have decided the next step in becoming green is to start composting, but we’re not sure which system we should choose. Over the next few days we’ll post about a few different systems that we’ve researched and we’re thinking about using along with the pro’s and con’s as we see them. Any ideas, thoughts or comments will greatly help us make our decision. We’ll let you know what we decide after we’ve gotten feedback and we’ll blog about our composting efforts, good and bad, throughout summer.