The Power of Indoor Compost 50
Dominic writes "Last week, a certain Sharp kitchen composter was the talk of the internet. But sadly, it used 300W of power to run! Not quite the perfect ideal of nature-friendlyness a composter ought to be. This week, Treehugger has a better model up, The Naturemill, which is actually available in North America, and only uses 4W of power. Best of all, it can still handle enough food waste for a family of 5. So you can get your compost on without all the hastle of a pile. And without the electric bills."
Thanks! (Score:2, Funny)
Thanks, Slashdot. Was always looking for a technical justification for not bothering to clean the house.
What about vermiculture? (Score:5, Informative)
You can build the bin yourself or buy one from a place such as this one that I picked semirandomly from google: composters.com [composters.com]
Re:What about vermiculture? (Score:4, Funny)
Body disposal! Just drop in your least favourite neighbour/spouse/kid, and in a few days time you'll have a beautifully clean skeleton, ready for framing/grinding to make your bread!
Well... it's what they do in museums to make skeletons of samples.
Re:What about vermiculture? (Score:1)
Re:What about vermiculture?...Only on /. (Score:1)
Not Funny?
Re:What about vermiculture? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's also a great way to get rid of the shredded mail that you don't want to put on the curb (things that have credit card numbers, SSN, etc)-- generally after you empty a layer you want to mix bedding with the organic waste. Bedding can be shredded coconut husks, newspaper, or mail that's shredded and moistened slightly. It disappears into the compost.
Re:What about vermiculture? (Score:1)
Re:What about vermiculture? (Score:3, Informative)
Another post talked about meat attracting maggots, but various fly larvae consume all sorts of rotting crud, not just meat.
Plus the smell can be pretty bad if your household is non-veg.
Re:What about vermiculture? (Score:3, Informative)
It's the same issue as with recycling: many people don't care at all (a big reason why there aren't a lot of public recycling bins in most cities -- they end up with trash mixed in), but even of those who want to recycle, following the sorting rules can be quite difficult.
Are people really so lazy? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Are people really so lazy? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Are people really so lazy? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not attracting the woodland creatures (Score:3, Interesting)
While they say you are OK if you don't have fats, meat scraps, or bones, I wonder if coffee grounds, orange and banana peels, and other compost standbys create oders that welcome these creatures. Indoor composting may be the thin
Re:Are people really so lazy? (Score:5, Informative)
2) They also work in cold climates with longer more extreme winters.
3) They work for people in apartments.
4) They are good in educational environments.
5) They can produce liquid fertilizer for indoor houseplants.
6) They won't attract animals
Cjheck out the Worm Bin Factory [gardeners.com] have worms in them. It has a little nozzle, like on a water cooler, that allows you to drain a highly potent liquid plant fertilizer, which can be used for indoor plants more conveniently than a big thing of compost.
Yes! We are lazy - and old, and cold (Score:1)
Re:Are people really so lazy? (Score:4, Insightful)
URL:http://rds.yahoo.com/S=2766679/K=c
For the size of most yards, this is a lot of space. It is hard to generate this kind of volume of the proper materials on a regular basis if you have a standard size suburban lot.
Just run a big pipe (Score:2, Interesting)
Forest for the trees (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, I imagine that these indoor composters are meant for people who live in apartment buildings who don't have any space to compost outdoors. City-dwellers don't need, to be composting, though. People should compost to avoid consuming artificial fertilizers and incurring the environmental damange that they cause. Composting is a great way to fertilize your lawn without poisoning your soil and without being wasteful.
Call me dim, but I just fail to see where people who have no outdoor space to live in are going to find a use for several pounds a day worth of rotting organic matter. It's not like it's somehow better for the environment to throw compost in the trash than it is to pitch banana peels - they will decompose in the landfill just as nicely as they decomposed in your kitchen, and without you having to harm the environment by purchasing a large lump of plastic and burning some electricity.
You could much more inexpensively meet your keep-your-houseplants-happy compost needs by purchasing some of it every so often. I'm sure you can work out an arrangement with somebody at a farmer's market to supply you with the compost you need for far less than the $300 price tag you're looking at for this baby.
And you can do it without having to become the proud owner of yet another yuppie gadget that uselessly adds 10lb of plastic to the world and which you know is not going to make your life happy any more than your plasma TV and 5.1 surround sound system did, and which is going to end up on the curb faster than your ThighMaster did.
Re:Forest for the trees (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Forest for the trees (Score:4, Informative)
- it reduces the amount of general waste, thus reducing the cost of moving it out of the city.
- it reduces the smell of compostable waste in a kitchen, thus making this recycling more attractive
- it makes people more aware of their effect on the environment.
Nothing is ever black or white.
Re:Forest for the trees (Score:4, Insightful)
The real reason to compost is not getting fertiliser for your garden, it's preventing waste. Food scraps take up a large volume of the space in a "landfill" and most cities in the world are having to move their "landfill" further out. Food scraps are also a source of the nutrients of life, a resource that exists in large quantities but is still finite. It is a waste of these nurtients to dump them in a "landfill" that is so full of inorganic waste and toxic substances that it is unlikely that life will ever return there without help.
Composting is like most other recycling. It prevents waste from entering landfill unnecesarily and keeps a finite resource in circulation. The nitrogen and trace minerals in the food would be more useful being used to grow more food.
I personally would like to see cities building huge composting depots where you can dump your organic waste and they can sell/give the nutrients released (compost) to farmers who can turn those resources into a useful product (food) using an abundant natural energy source (the sun).
Re:Forest for the trees (Score:5, Informative)
Not true. Landfills are sealed to avoid polluting ground water. Thus a landfill is an environment mostly free of water and oxygen, so organic wastes do not decompose readily. This site [usu.edu] has some good information on landfill decay, including this interesting fact:
"Only one-third to one-half of even easily decomposed materials such as lawn, garden and food waste is decomposed after 20 years."Re:Forest for the trees (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.oregonlive.com/printer2.ssf?/business/
If half of organic wastes are decomposed after twenty years, then you have that much fresh space to re-fill with municipal waste. Given that the base useful life of a landfill is 20 to 30 years, this would essentially solve the issue of landfill space for any community that doesn't have significant population growth.
Re:Forest for the trees (Score:2)
What do you think happens in decomposition? Do you think that all that decomposed organic waste evaporates and drifts away on the wind? You still have lots of solid matter left behind. That's what soil is.
compost for everyone (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Forest for the trees (Score:1)
Except for the nicely decomposed banana will likely be setting it in a grocery bag than into another larger plastic bag (I don't personally use a grocery bag for garbage, however lots of peo
Cheaper option (Score:4, Interesting)
Take vegetable scraps, cardboard etc. (maybe not stuff like potatos, because they attract rats)
Put them in a large bin outside. Special compost bins are nice because you can get to the bottom of them where the stuff that has had time to decompose is.
Wait ages. Have more than one bin, so that after the first wait there is always compost available.
"Outside" may involve a long fall and a thud... (Score:3, Funny)
NatureMill compost maker (Score:2, Informative)
300w a lot of power? (Score:2)
Re:300w a lot of power? (Score:3, Interesting)
At 9 cents per KWh, that's almost $20 a month you're spending just to get a couple of pounds of compost.
Re:300 Watts? (Score:2)
For those who are critcial of using 300W to reduce the amount of garbage produced by a household by 92% (50%, say, if we consider that it only reduces food garbage) will end up saving a lot more watts in the medium to long term.
Compared to 4W, 300W is an aweful lot, especially since composting generates it's own heat once it gets going.
Composting isn't really all that hard, especially in areas where winters are mild. Here in the U.S. SE, I just dump lawn clippings in a big pile all spring and summer.
Re:300 Watts? (Score:2)
Re:Oblig spelling flame (Score:2)
And what, exactly, is wrong with chopping up all . (Score:1)
Re:And what, exactly, is wrong with chopping up al (Score:1)
Throwing the waste into the toilet however would send it to the sewage plant, which is specifically sesigned to cope with high-nutrient matter
Re:And what, exactly, is wrong with chopping up al (Score:1)
That's just about the only way you'll chop up anything fine enough not to clog your throne.
Re:And what, exactly, is wrong with chopping up al (Score:1)
Darn! (Score:2)