Do you own an outdoor composter or have a compost heap in the yard? If you do then you will know that collecting compostable fruit and vegetable waste can be a difficult routine to maintain. You need to collect the scraps of compostable food and take them out to the compost heap after every meal is prepared. I often find myself asking;

I wished there was a way to store compostable fruit and vegetables in the kitchen until I was ready to take all the scraps out to the main compost heap!

I was given this perfect solution by my Mother and Father in law for my birthday and it makes the routine of collecting compostable food waste so easy… It is a counter top kitchen compost bin with a built in odor filter and it works great.

Counter Top Compost Bin

Fall seemed the appropriate time to talk about worm composting. Worm composting is a way to recycle food waste into a rich, dark, earthy-smelling soil conditioner. This type of composting is somewhat unique in that it can be done indoors, as well as outdoors, this allows for all year composting. If you live in a zero lot line home or an apartment, you can also compost using this method. The short version goes something like this: worm compost is made in a container, plastic or wood, filled with moistened bedding and redworms. Add your food waste over a period of time, and the worms and micro-organisms, over a period of time, will convert the entire contents into rich compost. It is a natural method for recycling nutrients in food waste. The resulting compost is a good soil conditioner for house plants, gardens and patio containers. The following information is from the experiences of a network of worm composters linked to City Farmer, Vancouver, and the excellent and practical book: Worms Eat My Garbage by Mary Appelhof.

1. THE CONTAINER:
You can use wood and plastic containers, you can either build or buy them or recycle something like a old barrel, old dresser drawer, wooden crate, think creativly. A container made of wood seems to work the best because it is more absorbent and a better insulator for the worms.
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Do you throw away old fruit and vegetable scraps, egg shells, tea bags and coffee grounds? Our semi-vegetarian household goes through lots of fruit and vegetables and being from England I drink lots of tea! Our trash bags no longer contain anything that can be recycled, we make sure all our recyclables go into our recycle bin, but our trash bags are often full of orange peels, banana skins, bell pepper cores and other scrap fruit and vegetables. We also have a monthly clean out of our refrigerator and often throw away half a lettuce, half a cucumber etc, that have gone bad.

With all of our waste fruit and veg we decided to start composting. A Home Compost bin is easier to setup than you might think and we found a cheap solution at our local hardware store. The “GardenView” Super Composter is approximately $50 and is available in the garden center section of most large hardware stores. The Super Composter holds 115 Gallons of compostable waste and stands about 3ft tall. The product is made from 90% recycled plastic and features a snap shut lid to keep unwanted pests out.
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Summer is in full swing here in Texas and our grass is growing at an incredible rate. We will soon be mowing every week and I have been looking for ways to make our yard work a little greener.

One area that has annoyed me for a long time is that I could not find any compostable biodegradable plastic bags for all of our grass clippings and yard waste. All that changed on a recent visit to a local Ace Hardware store.

I found a brand called “Bag-To-Nature” that produce fully biodegradable and compostable leaf and yard waste bags. I picked up the box and started reading… These bags are awesome, they have all the strength of regular yard waste bags, they won’t leak and are unaffected by moisture. The bags are made from a blend of biopolymers which allow them to totally biodegrade without leaving any residues.

They can be filled with leaves and grass and dumped straight into a backyard composter, they are also compatible with fast action commercial composters.

Lets get technical! These bags have been tested and meet the EN 13432 Standard and ASTM D6400, that’s smart language for “Yes, they do biodegrade!”.

I’m not going to lie, these bags are expensive! I paid about $8 for a box of 10, but they significantly reduce my environmental impact and make me feel good about doing yard work!

P.S. I looked on the Ace Hardware website and they did not have the yard waste bags, but they do have kitchen waste bags;

Bag-To-Nature  Kitchen Waste Bags

We just finished mowing our back yard and filled two of these large Bag To Nature bags, they were strong enough to take some abuse and tied off easily.

Our weekly visit to the grocery store often includes a visit to the cleaning products aisle to check out the latest green products, one aspect which is still woefully lacking is the availability of biodegradable trash bags. We have searched far and wide but nowhere appears to stock them yet.

image by Cezary Okupski

The reason may be that no large corporations are producing biodegradable plastic bags, we did manage to find small biodegradable dog waste bags, but we really wanted a solution for our kitchen and other household waste.
A quick internet search uncovered several smaller companies emerging as producers and retailers of the much sought after “biobags”. This is our round up of the most interesting out there;

1/ Lets Start by Defining “Bio-Degradable”

The terms biodegradation, biodegradable materials and compostability are very common but frequently misunderstood. Hopefully we can clear that up by defining the characteristics that a material must have in order to be defined as “biodegradable” or “compostable”. A recent European standard stated that a compostable material must have the following characteristics:

Biodegradability is determined by measuring how fast something degrades or metabolizes into carbon dioxide. To be classed as biodegradable 90% of a product must be essentially “gone” in less than 6 months.
Compostability involves seeing how quickly a product dissapears into compost. The test literally measures how much of the product you can still see in a pile of compost after 3 months! Other key tests involve actually using compost including the product to measure its effects on plant growth, essentially an ecotoxicity test. If you want to read more there is a great site maintained by the association of European Bioplastics;

http://www.european-bioplastics.org/

2/ Biodegradable Bags in the USA

BioBag is a US company that sells certified 100% biodegradable and 100% compostable bags made from a patented material, Mater-Bi. Their product is available in select natural food stores throughout the US and I will be trying to track one down locally.

When placed in a composting environment their BioBags will biodegrade in 10 – 45 days, leaving no harmful residue behind.

You can find out more information regarding BioBags at their site;

http://www.biogroupusa.com/

3/ Biodegradable Bags in the UK

Another company priding itself on creating biodegradable plastic alternatives is Biopac in the UK;

Their products are made from 100% waste potato starch and their new “Biopac Good Bag” rots down completely and safely turning into healthy compost in just 12 weeks if put on a compost heap. The Biopac bags can also be discarded within domestic food-waste trash. The bags ultimately turn into carbon dioxide, water, and non-toxic raw materials, and all that from a potato!

Another cool product is their cornstarch cups which are an equal quality alternative to plastic, and being smash proof, they are perfect for outdoor events! They produce cold cups which are available in different sizes with the option of both slot and dome lids.

You can find out more information regarding Biopac products at their site;

http://www.biopac.co.uk/cornstarchbagsnews/

So happy shopping and let us know if you find any local suppliers of biodegradable plastic alternatives, the future for landfills looks alot brighter!

If you want to read more about biodegradable plastics there is a great book available from Amazon.com all about green plastics;