How do I recycle food waste? I start with a bucket. Virtually everyone has a bucket around the garage or basement. I don’t mean a mop bucket or an ice cream bucket, I’m talking about a 5-gallon bucket. If you don’t have one kicking around your garage already, just stop by a local hardware and pick one up with a matching lid and you are in business. 

And no, it doesn’t have to be a five-gallon bucket. Some folks cannot lift or carry a 35-pound bucket, so in that case simply adapt whatever size of a container you prefer.   

I know one older person that uses a recycled dish washer pod container and kept it off to the side of a counter. Out of the elements, sealed and packed tight. 

When I am recycling food waste, I like to get a small shovel of mulch to cover the bottom of the bucket by a couple inches. I have also used leaf mulch. Just that little bit (a few cups) is going to contain Billions of microbes that are going to help you recycle your food waste.   

 Fortunately, food waste recycling isn’t hard. 

You can use various naturally occurring inoculants from forest, pastures or composting. Or you can buy commercial inoculants. I am always experimenting with a variety of possible combinations. That has led me to use Natures inoculants instead of buying them. Homemade sauerkraut can do more than cover a hotdog! 

This is how I recycle food waste. Please note, these are not hard and fast “rules” and individual experience can vary. I get a bucket and add about a scoop of year-old mulch, just enough to give about an inch or so in the bottom. Then I add an “inoculant.” I either use a bit of sauerkraut and/or combination of bacterial strains or commercially available product. 

Now is the time to start recycling food waste. I add food scraps. Kitchen waste, leftovers, coffee grounds and sometimes shredded paper as I make it. If it organic waste it is fully fermentable. Obviously, rubber, plastic and glass aren't organic, but carboard and corrugated board are. Sometimes, for good measure I’ll add a shot of molasses along when I am adding my inoculant because the added sugars multiply bacterial growth. A note on sizing. Don’t get all carried away with this, just realize that the more you cut something the more surface area you create. Many little pieces get coated with bacteria is better than one.  

I've seen a lot of imaginative ways to do this over the years and none are perfect. Like using a candle stub. This is one method; you fill a bucket up and leave about 4 inches of space. Then light the candle stub and then seal up the container. Within seconds the candle burns up all the available oxygen creating the perfect environment for fermentation.  

Too pack or not to pack. The answer to that question is to pack your food waste each time you are adding to your bucket for best results. Packing squeezes out excess air and makes a better environment for your anaerobic bacteria to multiply and take over the container. 

Make sure you have an air-tight seal for your container. I guess there is a rule after all, you really must keep your bucket covered at all times. It doesn’t hurt to cover it with something, anything to keep it safe from elements and peeking. (every time you open that container and look, you let in air and that only slows the process down. So, don’t do that unless you live in Rio Linda.  

 

Based on nothing more than my personal experience, our household of 4 takes about 2 weeks to fill a bucket and the final weight is about 30 lbs. That 30 pounds of food and organic waste comes to roughly 720 lbs. If not recycled, that’s about 540 pounds of carbon emissions per year, not even counting the Methane produced. 

The choice is ours; we can eliminate those emissions and our recycled food waste will absorb several times its weight in atmospheric carbon. That’s right, it takes carbon out of the air and fixes it in the soil. This is nature’s way of carbon sequestration.   

I just have one more thing to add here before I wrap it up. Have you ever stopped to consider just how much are we paying a disposal service to let natural resources rot in a landfill and pollute our environment?