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Top Tips for Composting In An Apartment

As you may or may not know, composting food scraps is a great way to reduce your carbon footprint while creating quality food for your garden or indoor house plants. We’ll shock you with this tidbit; you can even compost if you live in an apartment!

How do you take part in apartment composting with no outdoor area? Won’t things in your apartment begin to smell? Well, composting can be done anywhere, and it’s much easier than you think.

Indoor composting reduces the amount of organic matter that ends up in landfills, and this stuff does not break down easily as landfills are not aerated. So, read on to learn the art of composting in apartments and help do your part to keep the planet healthy!

food scraps sitting in a waste caddy

What Is Compost?

Before we get ahead of ourselves and dive into composting for apartments, let’s understand what composting is first. Composting is a natural process that allows us to recycle any organic matter. In most cases, this will mean food scraps, which can be composted and turned into a valuable fertiliser to enrich soil and plants.

Composting essentially speeds up the decomposition process by creating an environment for bacteria, fungi, and other organisms to thrive. The decomposed matter ends up like garden soil and is rich in nutrients, perfect for gardening, horticulture, and agriculture.

Small-scale composting is a great way to reduce the amount of waste you create while also making amazing plant food to complete the cycle!

What Are The Benefits Of Composting?

As we’ve touched on, composting is an easy way to reduce the waste you create while also helping your house plants thrive! The primary benefits of composting include:

  • Enriching the soil with compost helps to suppress plant diseases and retain moisture
  • Reduce waste
  • Reduces the need for chemical fertilisers
  • Encourage the production of good bacteria and fungi that work to break down organic matter
  • Reduces methane emissions from landfills
  • Lower your carbon footprint

Essentially, everyone wins with composting! The best part is how simple this task can be once you understand how to compost food scraps.

What Food Scraps are Suitable for Composting?

A big part of learning how to compost in an apartment is understanding what can actually go in your compost. Surprisingly, the list is pretty big, and anything that falls under the banner of organic matter counts.

This extends past just food scraps to include some other things you’ll likely use around the home. Here is a list of everything that can end up in your compost:

  • Fruits and Vegetables
  • Eggshells
  • Coffee Grounds and Filters
  • Teabags
  • Nutshells
  • Sawdust and Wood Chips
  • Cotton and Wool
  • Hair and Fur
  • Fireplace Ashes
  • Paper and Cardboard
  • Yard Trimmings
  • Grass Clippings
  • Houseplants
  • Hay and Straw
  • Leaves

As you can see, the list is quite extensive. You can avoid putting all of this in the bin, which should significantly reduce the amount of waste your home creates.

How Do You Stop Compost from Smelling?

One of the biggest reasons people avoid an apartment compost bin is a fear of bad smells. However, a properly balanced compost shouldn’t smell! If anything, compost should smell like dirt; if it doesn’t, something is wrong, and the organic material likely isn’t breaking down properly.

Here are the primary ways to ensure your compost doesn’t smell:

  • Avoid too much green material as this will smell like sewage or ammonia. Rebalance this by adding brown material like leaves or newspaper
  • Ensure your compost pile isn’t too compacted, as aeration is an important part of the decomposition process. A compost pile that is too compacted will start to smell like rotting eggs. You can fix this by turning the compost pile to get some more air into it
  • Avoid your compost getting too wet as this will cause a similar aeration problem as in the above point. Add some dry brown materials to the compost, which will absorb some of the moisture

Always make sure your green and brown materials are mixed well; if they are not, they will decompose incorrectly and create a bad smell. Turn your compost regularly to keep it in balance, avoiding an unpleasant smell.

a lady planting new vegetation in her veggie garden

Composting Options For Apartment Living

So, you are convinced that this is a worthwhile process, but how do you create apartment compost? There are three main options for you to choose from. All of these are effective; it just comes down to your preference:

Option 1: Worm Composter

A worm composter bin is an easy way to create a good mix of carbon and nitrogen, both of which are required for composting. Carbon covers things like paper, cardboard, and dry leaves, and nitrogen is food scraps. Aim for a 50/50 balance of both.

Worm bins, unsurprisingly, feature worms who help speed up the composting process. Worms love room temperature, making them the perfect indoor apartment housemate. They do their share by eating your food scraps! Red wigglers are the composting worm, and a proper worm bin will keep them contained, so they don’t venture into other parts of your apartment.

Option 2: Compost Bin Caddy

At East Brunswick Village, we care greatly about sustainable living. This is why every EBV apartment features a compost bin caddy, so you are already set up and ready to compost!

A compost bin caddy is specifically designed to hold your food scraps for a few days, preparing them for your compost system. This is a simple and attractive way to store food scraps, with a lid and carry handles designed for a better experience.

Store your food scraps in here when cleaning up after dinner, then empty the caddy into your main compost system, which may be out on your balcony, for example.

Option 3: Use your Garden/Balcony Area

If you want to avoid using worms, you can place a compost bin out on your balcony (which would get too hot for worms anyway). This essentially requires a giant bucket you add all of your compost to. After that, you simply mash the compost down, then add an activator mix to speed up the process of decomposition.

This avoids requiring a balance of nitrogen and carbon, as the activator mix is doing all of the work.

The four steps for composting on your balcony are as follows:

  • Throw your food scraps and other materials into the composter bucket
  • Spray it all with your activator mix
  • Drain the juice every few days – this is known as ‘compost tea’ and can be diluted to feed your indoor plants
  • Mix the fermented scraps for two weeks until they are a pulp, then put them into a different compost bin in which they will break down in roughly six weeks, creating a dark, crumbly soil that can be used for your plants

As you can see, the process for apartment composting is relatively simple, and once set up, is essentially set-and-forget. Being green in an apartment is very easy!

Sustainability Is A Focus At EBV

East Brunswick Village has been designed and built with a focus on environmental sustainability, and the supplied Compost Bin Caddy’s are just a small part of a bigger picture. Our 7.5-star average NatHERS rating, operational carbon-neutral building status and commitment to offsets and renewable energy sources go hand-in-hand with initiatives like encouraging apartment composting.

We have industry-leading Environmentally Sustainable Design (ESD) initiatives that include rooftop solar panels, water-efficient fixtures and much more to ensure that life at EBV reduces any negative impact on the environment as much as possible.

If you’re a resident at East Brunswick Village, it might be useful knowing that we’ve put together a video on how to set up waste in your apartment.

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