Start a Food Waste into Organic Fertilizer

Start a  Food Waste into Organic Fertilizer

With the trend toward environmentally friendly, organic and recycled products, people have started to look into natural ways to garden. All of these trends can be utilized with composting, a method of turning organic waste into fertilizer for gardens. With a few simple steps and new habits, you can make use of composting to lower your environmental impact and cut costs

Converting Food Waste into Fertilizer 

Food waste is any unused, left over and any consumable food items being discarded and is usually being handled by waste department and/or privately contracted waste management companies and is being hauled away and dumped into landfills. The sources of food waste mainly comes from leftover of our meals, waste ingredients during preparation of cuisine and the rejected products from food manufacturing and processing industries. In the United States the food waste contributes 35% by weight of the daily municipal solid wastes which are collected from domestic residential, commercial and industrial premises.

Reports indicate that only 5% of the food waste is being recycled and is mainly being turn into fertilizer and renewable energy and the rest sits in landfills and is turning into a problematic issue in health and environment. According to study as high as 50 percent of the food gets thrown into the garbage and that represents $30 billion of wasted food. Plus it cost Americans $1 billion dollars annually just to haul away food waste.

Problems with Food Waste ?

Besides the problem of high cost of handling food waste, rotten food can produce harmfulmethane gas and if not handled properly can create health problem and cost of life. Also food waste contains high organic and moisture contents, when dumped into landfills and decompose produces offensive smell which seriously affect our living environment. 

In addition, as the country and the world are becoming more environmentally conscious it is not acceptable to just dump garbage into landfills which is running out of space to handle them and no city and citizens want new landfills to be in their neighborhood. With this in mind how is the country and the world going to handle this problematic issue. 

Existing Effort of Handling Food                                                  

Mos of the developed countries have tried putting considerable efforts on food waste recycling and recovery because of recognized problems of health issues and simply running out of landfills. The best idea has been and still is turning food waste into compost. However the efforts are without much success for reasons of priority and technology.

Now that many cities in America such as San Francisco, Portland just to name a few, are revitalizing the food waste recycling effort and even enacted new regulations to mandate food waste recycling. This is putting the food waste issue to the forefront and the business of recycling food waste is worth the attention.

Principle of Existing Technology

Existing technology involves the application of heat and oxygen for aerobic reaction so that themicroorganisms in aerobic digester can decompose the organic substances. However, this technology have many disadvantages like high operating cost due to high electricity consumption, requiring pre-sorting of food waste, highly dependence on microorganisms, novice deodorization unit and can not handle large volume of food waste. 

Food waste is decomposed inside the insulated digestive bio-reactor under suitable high temperature and aerobic condition resulting in having a system with full proof of non-toxic by-products being produced and the quality of the fertilizing product and the rate of waste reduction can be guaranteed. 

1. The integrated system which utilizes special designed condenser and bio-filter is tightly sealed to ensure no offensive smell comes out as food waste is being processed and creating an environmentally friendly working condition.
2. The system does not require the use of electric mixer and heater which consume a lot of energy. Instead it only uses a warm air blower to supply oxygen. So the power consumption is around 8 times less than other composting units, thus the operation cost can be reduced significantly.
3. The equipment in the system can be either operated manually or automatically by a computerized control system.
4. The system can be tailored to specific needs from compact in size and highly mobile for small to medium size food service enterprises to large scale processing units such as large institutions and/or municipalities.
5. The system can achieve a higher degree of reduction in total volume of food waste, producing non-toxic by-products such as fertilizer, renewable energy products that can benefit food production and other industrial applications while employing little resource or recyclable material while having a safe and environmentally friendly system design with a goal of achieving 75% conversion efficiency.
6. This system can dramatically reduce the cost of handling food waste and can benefit the masses and government in economic and health terms.

                   

System Characteristics

• It prevents the emission of toxins
• It uses an aerobic fermentation involving microbes and does not generate toxins by burning waste
• Destroys Escherichia coil 0-157
• Fermentation heat reaches 70  to 80  degrees. It destroys germs that have harmful effects on people
• Solves the issue of odor for neighborhoods
• It collects odor through one duct and deodorizes in the tank. Preventive measures for deodorizing are in place
• A single tank can process large quantities of food waste
• Special designed units are capable of treating large quantity of food waste for municipal application
• Producing high-quality organic compost
• Efficient utilization of space
• System is durable and thermal insulated
• Triple layer tank structure (inner wall: stainless steel, middle wall: heat insulating material, outer wall: steel)

How to Compost Food Waste

Instructions

1. • 1
     
     

     

     
     

     Decide what type of compost bin you want. You can buy various types of compost bins from home and garden supply companies or build your own from wood planks or wire enclosures. Prices for compost bins on the market range from $90-400.
   • 2
     
     

     

     
     

     Place your compost bin where it will get plenty of sunlight throughout the day as heat is essential for the decomp. process.
   • 3
     
     

     

     
     

     Start adding your kitchen and yard waste to your compost bin. Kitchen waste includes vegetables, fruits, breads, coffee grounds and filters, tea leaves, paper towels, newspapers, etc. Yard waste includes grass clippings, leaves, saw dust, pulled weeds, etc.
   • 4
     
     

     

     
     

     Add water to your compost bin. Compost should always be moist but not soaking wet. If you are using water from your tap let it set for 24 hours to get rid of chlorine and other chemicals that will kill beneficial microbes in your compost.
   • 5
     
     

     

     
     

     Use a pitch fork or other long-handled garden tool to turn compost at least once per month. If you have a tumbling compost bin you should turn once a week or so to speed up process of decomposition.
   • 6
     
     

     

     
     

     When compost is ready for use it will be a dark, rich-looking soil with a clean, earthy smell. Composting can take anytime from 2 weeks to 6 months depending on the type of compost bin you have. There are electric compost bins that compost in as little as 11 days.
   • 7
     
     

     

     
     

     Add compost to soil as an amendment, top-dressing for plants or as a turf builder.

Step 1

Set up a location to place the organic waste. Select an area near the house and garden so that you are not traveling far with organic material. Keep the composter upwind of you, if you are worried about fumes or odor.

Step 2

Create a container for the organic waste. This can be a 50-gallon oil drum with aeration holes punched into the sides at various points. Make sure the container can hold a good amount of waste as the composting will take up room in the beginning stages; also be sure that the drum has a top that can be secured tightly and has a hole that can be plugged. Paint the oil drum a dark color to help the sun heat the material inside.

Step 3

Collect food waste to turn into fertilizer. Spoiled fruit, vegetable and fruit peelings, coffee grounds, peanut shells, and leftovers from dinner can all be used. Avoid oils, grease, dairy and meat products.

Step 4

Add wood, garden, and landscape waste. Use wood ashes from the fireplace, dried leaves, grass clippings, twigs, dead flowers or other clippings. As an aid to chopping up materials, you might prune your plants before mowing and then put all the dried leaves on the lawn. Use the bagging attachment of the mower when you mow, and this will chop up the clippings and grass and bag them for easy disposal into the composter.

Step 5

Add shredded newspaper. Use a paper shredder or tear the paper by hand. Toss in shredded junk mail or other papers you want to dispose of. Make sure all personal information is removed, blacked out, or shredded thoroughly.

Step 6

Add sawdust from workshop projects as long as they don't contain painted or treated wood. These naturally decompose within the composter and will help heat up the material for faster turnover into fertilizer.

Step 7

Gather manure from chickens, horses, cows, goats and other grain-eating farm animals. If you don't have animals, ask local farmers if you can the pick up waste material from their animals. Add this to the composter.

Step 8

Mix the organic material daily. Tip the barrel over on its side so it rolls. Roll the barrel until it has made a full rotation at least twice. Set the barrel back up in its original location.

Step 9

Obtain the fertilizer. Put a cinder block on the ground. Tip over the barrel so the top of the side rests on the block. Keep the plugged hole close to the ground. Set a bucket against the cinder block under the hole. Unplug the hole. Pick up the barrel from the opposite end. Pour out the liquid into the bucket. This is your "compost tea" or liquid fertilizer. Set the barrel down. Plug the hole. Tip the barrel back upright again. Use the material inside the barrel as mulch to mix into the soil.