Monday, August 29, 2011

composting with bokashi



here's a little video i made about my newest composting system: the bokashi bucket.
bokashi is an anaerobic (lacking oxygen) composting method that essentially pickles your food waste with the help of some special microbes. you can even compost meat and dairy - which I'm stoked about.
i never know how to dispose of old meat scraps, and so i've been saving used ziplocks and sealing them up in there and throwing them out - but that feels so gross. i just know somebody down the line (either picking up my garbage bin or at the dump) is doing to have to deal with the nastiness that is some rotting meat in a plastic bag. eew. so i'm stoked beyond words to have a legitimate way of returning that stuff back into the ecosystem.
the process is pretty simple, you sprinkle the microbe mixture on top of any food scraps you put in the bucket, and then when the bucket is full you dump it into a hole and bury it in the ground for 2-4 weeks, and then it's decomposed! magic. you can even make your own bokashi powder, which i'd like to try when i run out. 
i've been hearing about bokashi and wanting to try it, but i was hung up on making my own bucket system (which of course never happened), and then i saw a deal come up on Kanu Values - full disclosure, this is where i work- but i've really been chomping at the bit to get a bokashi kit, and the deal sold out in about 30 minutes. the kit comes from each one teach one farms, here on o'ahu, and then have some pretty great resources on their website.
let me know what you think of the video - i'm pretty proud of my nascent video editing skills - next time i'll use my phone to film in HD, and probably repaint my fingernails.

btw, i'm over apologizing for not posting in forever, i fell of the "project a week" wagon. hard. and now i'm doing my best to get back on the horse.