Composting

HOME COMPOSTING THE BIO-BOTTLEYou don’t have to be Einstein to home compost, however, home composting a bio-bottle is not as easy as it might sound. We’ve tried burying a bottle in our backyard but nine months later it is still there. In other words, composting is not the same as throwing a bottle into the garden. But this is actually a good thing. If our bottle was to degrade as easily as a turnip, it wouldn’t last too long on the grocery store shelves.

Instead, composting a bio-bottle requires a proper balance of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, water and microbes in order to achieve a sufficiently high heat. The dilemma is that most people doing composting at home won’t get the balance right and won’t get the compost hot enough.

If you are still eager to give it a go, then it won’t hurt to find your old biology book.

First you have to get your compost up to 60 °C in temperature. To achieve such temperature, the compost needs to have a balance of 30 parts carbon (green waste, eg.) to one part nitrogen (manure, eg.). The compost also needs 95% humidity (moist but not soggy) and to be aerated above 5% (turned so the microbes get oxygen). Finally, the bio-bottle needs to be less than 10% of the total mass and should be shredded. If you achieve all of the above, then the bio-bottle will go through a “hydrolysis” process where it breaks down into little bits which can be eaten by hungry microbes.

As should be clear, the main challenge is consistently achieving a high-heat, high-humidity, aerated condition within the compost. That said, well-operated composting vessels that are well insulated or are comprised of large amounts of material (several cubic metres) have the best chances for success. For even more detailed info that will help you make your compost the hottest on the block, we recommend you take a look at the following websites:

www.compostguide.com