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Reduced-Workload Community Composting

Research

I’ve long been fascinated by the tradition and engagement on the part of the Indian agricultural research and organic practices community. India’s famous resistance towards genetically modified crops and critical questioning of corporate agricultural patenting is a case study for students of patent law, agricultural policy and international trade. These long-running deliberations have been truly inspirational from the perspective of long-term planning and sustainable agriculture and food, especially in the face of the EU and US government’s willingness to fight for corporate interests over human and national resilience at an inter-governmental level. I count myself very lucky to have met the godmother of India’s agricultural trade wars, Vandana Shiva, while I was studying trade law back in the day.

Visiting India on a family trip recently, it wasn’t too surprising to learn that the action on organic waste management has advanced beyond the preliminary discussions we’re having in many Western countries, especially when it comes to decentralised solutions. Where many of us in the composting world are frustrated by the high-cost, high-tech, high-CO2 approaches focused on centralised industrial waste management, residential apartments in Bengaluru are demonstrating a model that many of us are working towards: onsite composting and application based on highly efficient low-tech processing and community engagement.

What I didn’t expect to find was a solution for labour-reduction in my own systems!

The background to this story is that Bengaluru is one of India’s fastest growing cities, where waste management is not keeping up and a huge amount of mixed waste is not even making it to landfill, let alone getting segregated into different waste streams. Recognised as a large source of bulk waste, apartment blocks and gated communities are incentivised to think more broadly about waste solutions given the shortfall and cost of collection services. Spurred on by experts and organisations like the Solid Waste Management Roundtable, a growing number of apartment managers are tapping into local knowledge and networks to help them set up their onsite systems.

The technology I came across here is what small-scale composters often refer to as something like ‘mesh cylinder systems’, which look a lot like the leaf mould collectors that you tend to see in countries with a lot of deciduous trees. These cylindrical cages are quite easy on the eye, and blend in nicely in parks and gardens.

In terms of the technology at work, these well-aerated vessels work a lot like our super-efficient three-bay compost systems: they hold enough material (i.e. over 1 cubic metre) to reach good ‘hot composting’ temperatures and you essentially just fill them with greens and browns and then wait a month or two for the material to compost.

But seeing a cage standing like this at my family’s apartment block left me confused. I couldn’t fathom the age-old dilemmas in composting: how do you allow one batch to decompose, without constantly adding new organic waste to the already partially decomposed waste, and how do you turn the pile?

Most backyard and community composting nerds I’ve met tend to gradually gravitate to the three-bay composting mode as their operations reach adequate scale, because it allows you to collect fresh greens and browns in the first bay, then turn this material into the second bay once the first is full, giving it a good aeration and letting it decompose there for a month, before turning it once more into the third bay to cure and cool down. This way there is no fresh material being added to the advanced batch. It works very well, but it does involve the heavier task of turning.

The “aha” moment came when I met the composters at another apartment block, who have been running their system for around a decade. Meet Alban and Nivedita! These folks have gradually fine-tuned mesh cylinder composting to process the volume of waste that their apartment complex produces, in a short enough time to avoid overloading.

The roughly 250 family apartments in their block produce around 130 kg of kitchen waste each day, while the lush gardens around the buildings produce adequate dried leaves, so long as these are stored during the dry season for use in the wet months when browns are in shorter supply.

Many apartment blocks like this employ staff to collect the different types of rubbish from each apartment every day. The residents are required to segregate their rubbish by organics, plastics and paper. Up to this point there is no great additional cost or effort involved. The staff take the organics to their composting operations, while the inorganics are passed on to rubbish collection services at a fee. Money is saved by eliminating collection of all organic waste.

Kitchen scraps are chopped smaller by passing the material through a shredder. This, you could argue, increases the workload, but also reduces the time needed for each batch to decompose. It would be up to each apartment block to assess the feasibility of this step for themselves, and it could be left out, allowing kitchen scraps to be transferred straight from kitchens to the compost systems, though composting would then take a little longer.

But the real ‘secret’ to this whole system is very simple. The kitchen greens and garden browns are distributed for composting in a number of different cages placed all around the gardens. The reason I wasn’t seeing three vessels next to each other as I’m accustomed, is that the team simply fills one vessel over the course of a few weeks, and this batch is then left to compost while fresh organic waste is delivered to the other systems around the site.

With good feedstock material (chopped up food scraps and dried leaves are excellent!) and enough time, the batches are not being turned. The managers have simply installed enough composting capacity (cages) so that each batch can be left to compost at its own rate, even if that means two months rather than one. I have to emphasise how much of a break-through it is, to not have to turn piles from one vessel to another, as this really reduces the workload.

Once a batch is ready, a gate at the bottom of the cage is opened and the compost raked out, or in some models, the entire cage is lifted up and away, leaving a pile of compost open for collection. By placing the cages strategically around the gardens, the finished compost from each cage can be used on beds nearby, which makes a lot of sense for larger compounds where the distance between one central compost pile and all the sources and applications around the site can be far.

I know our ground staff at the 8-hectare site where I work often find it annoying to take green waste to the single three-bay compost system we have had, and I’m now experimenting with more systems around the grounds. The icing on the cake with the mesh cylinders is that they don’t look so much like a compost pile, but rather like an aviary full of leaves. I did note however, that it’s useful to have two cages close together, because you can store the browns that you collect the one that isn’t being used for composting, and take a few buckets of those leaves as you need them when delivering fresh greens.

This mode of composting seems to maintain most of the advantages of three-bay composting, except for the monthly aeration, but many composters would be willing to forego this and leave each batch a little longer so long as there is enough composting capacity. At the same time it looks more attractive than a square pallet, or brick, or wooden bay structure - the cylindrical tower can be covered in shade cloth for camouflage. It will be very exciting to watch how long composting takes in a system like this.

Some of the organisations I came across recommend adding a blend of well adapted microbes to each layer of waste, but these microbes will begin to colonise the area. You can also add a few buckets of previous compost for a similar effect. The only fear I have is that the Australian welders might charge a considerable sum when I show them these photos and request some replicas, but there is always the option of starting with a simple rolled sheet of mesh, and leaving the frame out while piloting. I have seen models like this in use by our colleagues at YIMBY Compost in Castlemaine Victoria, and heard good reports! As always, a healthy supply of good quality carbon-rich materials, preferably brown leaves, makes the compost system airier, faster and less smelly. It also makes the compost better (fungal activity, humification, carbon sequestration). In Bengaluru, the diversion of dried leaves into composting systems also prevents ground crews from burning fallen leaves, and it was amazing to see the local community showing awareness around this!

Reduced-Workload Community Composting

Research

I’ve long been fascinated by the tradition and engagement on the part of the Indian agricultural research and organic practices community. India’s famous resistance towards genetically modified crops and critical questioning of corporate agricultural patenting is a case study for students of patent law, agricultural policy and international trade. These long-running deliberations have been truly inspirational from the perspective of long-term planning and sustainable agriculture and food, especially in the face of the EU and US government’s willingness to fight for corporate interests over human and national resilience at an inter-governmental level. I count myself very lucky to have met the godmother of India’s agricultural trade wars, Vandana Shiva, while I was studying trade law back in the day.

Visiting India on a family trip recently, it wasn’t too surprising to learn that the action on organic waste management has advanced beyond the preliminary discussions we’re having in many Western countries, especially when it comes to decentralised solutions. Where many of us in the composting world are frustrated by the high-cost, high-tech, high-CO2 approaches focused on centralised industrial waste management, residential apartments in Bengaluru are demonstrating a model that many of us are working towards: onsite composting and application based on highly efficient low-tech processing and community engagement.

What I didn’t expect to find was a solution for labour-reduction in my own systems!

The background to this story is that Bengaluru is one of India’s fastest growing cities, where waste management is not keeping up and a huge amount of mixed waste is not even making it to landfill, let alone getting segregated into different waste streams. Recognised as a large source of bulk waste, apartment blocks and gated communities are incentivised to think more broadly about waste solutions given the shortfall and cost of collection services. Spurred on by experts and organisations like the Solid Waste Management Roundtable, a growing number of apartment managers are tapping into local knowledge and networks to help them set up their onsite systems.

The technology I came across here is what small-scale composters often refer to as something like ‘mesh cylinder systems’, which look a lot like the leaf mould collectors that you tend to see in countries with a lot of deciduous trees. These cylindrical cages are quite easy on the eye, and blend in nicely in parks and gardens.

In terms of the technology at work, these well-aerated vessels work a lot like our super-efficient three-bay compost systems: they hold enough material (i.e. over 1 cubic metre) to reach good ‘hot composting’ temperatures and you essentially just fill them with greens and browns and then wait a month or two for the material to compost.

But seeing a cage standing like this at my family’s apartment block left me confused. I couldn’t fathom the age-old dilemmas in composting: how do you allow one batch to decompose, without constantly adding new organic waste to the already partially decomposed waste, and how do you turn the pile?

Most backyard and community composting nerds I’ve met tend to gradually gravitate to the three-bay composting mode as their operations reach adequate scale, because it allows you to collect fresh greens and browns in the first bay, then turn this material into the second bay once the first is full, giving it a good aeration and letting it decompose there for a month, before turning it once more into the third bay to cure and cool down. This way there is no fresh material being added to the advanced batch. It works very well, but it does involve the heavier task of turning.

The “aha” moment came when I met the composters at another apartment block, who have been running their system for around a decade. Meet Alban and Nivedita! These folks have gradually fine-tuned mesh cylinder composting to process the volume of waste that their apartment complex produces, in a short enough time to avoid overloading.

The roughly 250 family apartments in their block produce around 130 kg of kitchen waste each day, while the lush gardens around the buildings produce adequate dried leaves, so long as these are stored during the dry season for use in the wet months when browns are in shorter supply.

Many apartment blocks like this employ staff to collect the different types of rubbish from each apartment every day. The residents are required to segregate their rubbish by organics, plastics and paper. Up to this point there is no great additional cost or effort involved. The staff take the organics to their composting operations, while the inorganics are passed on to rubbish collection services at a fee. Money is saved by eliminating collection of all organic waste.

Kitchen scraps are chopped smaller by passing the material through a shredder. This, you could argue, increases the workload, but also reduces the time needed for each batch to decompose. It would be up to each apartment block to assess the feasibility of this step for themselves, and it could be left out, allowing kitchen scraps to be transferred straight from kitchens to the compost systems, though composting would then take a little longer.

But the real ‘secret’ to this whole system is very simple. The kitchen greens and garden browns are distributed for composting in a number of different cages placed all around the gardens. The reason I wasn’t seeing three vessels next to each other as I’m accustomed, is that the team simply fills one vessel over the course of a few weeks, and this batch is then left to compost while fresh organic waste is delivered to the other systems around the site.

With good feedstock material (chopped up food scraps and dried leaves are excellent!) and enough time, the batches are not being turned. The managers have simply installed enough composting capacity (cages) so that each batch can be left to compost at its own rate, even if that means two months rather than one. I have to emphasise how much of a break-through it is, to not have to turn piles from one vessel to another, as this really reduces the workload.

Once a batch is ready, a gate at the bottom of the cage is opened and the compost raked out, or in some models, the entire cage is lifted up and away, leaving a pile of compost open for collection. By placing the cages strategically around the gardens, the finished compost from each cage can be used on beds nearby, which makes a lot of sense for larger compounds where the distance between one central compost pile and all the sources and applications around the site can be far.

I know our ground staff at the 8-hectare site where I work often find it annoying to take green waste to the single three-bay compost system we have had, and I’m now experimenting with more systems around the grounds. The icing on the cake with the mesh cylinders is that they don’t look so much like a compost pile, but rather like an aviary full of leaves. I did note however, that it’s useful to have two cages close together, because you can store the browns that you collect the one that isn’t being used for composting, and take a few buckets of those leaves as you need them when delivering fresh greens.

This mode of composting seems to maintain most of the advantages of three-bay composting, except for the monthly aeration, but many composters would be willing to forego this and leave each batch a little longer so long as there is enough composting capacity. At the same time it looks more attractive than a square pallet, or brick, or wooden bay structure - the cylindrical tower can be covered in shade cloth for camouflage. It will be very exciting to watch how long composting takes in a system like this.

Some of the organisations I came across recommend adding a blend of well adapted microbes to each layer of waste, but these microbes will begin to colonise the area. You can also add a few buckets of previous compost for a similar effect. The only fear I have is that the Australian welders might charge a considerable sum when I show them these photos and request some replicas, but there is always the option of starting with a simple rolled sheet of mesh, and leaving the frame out while piloting. I have seen models like this in use by our colleagues at YIMBY Compost in Castlemaine Victoria, and heard good reports! As always, a healthy supply of good quality carbon-rich materials, preferably brown leaves, makes the compost system airier, faster and less smelly. It also makes the compost better (fungal activity, humification, carbon sequestration). In Bengaluru, the diversion of dried leaves into composting systems also prevents ground crews from burning fallen leaves, and it was amazing to see the local community showing awareness around this!

Reduced-Workload Community Composting

Research

I’ve long been fascinated by the tradition and engagement on the part of the Indian agricultural research and organic practices community. India’s famous resistance towards genetically modified crops and critical questioning of corporate agricultural patenting is a case study for students of patent law, agricultural policy and international trade. These long-running deliberations have been truly inspirational from the perspective of long-term planning and sustainable agriculture and food, especially in the face of the EU and US government’s willingness to fight for corporate interests over human and national resilience at an inter-governmental level. I count myself very lucky to have met the godmother of India’s agricultural trade wars, Vandana Shiva, while I was studying trade law back in the day.

Visiting India on a family trip recently, it wasn’t too surprising to learn that the action on organic waste management has advanced beyond the preliminary discussions we’re having in many Western countries, especially when it comes to decentralised solutions. Where many of us in the composting world are frustrated by the high-cost, high-tech, high-CO2 approaches focused on centralised industrial waste management, residential apartments in Bengaluru are demonstrating a model that many of us are working towards: onsite composting and application based on highly efficient low-tech processing and community engagement.

What I didn’t expect to find was a solution for labour-reduction in my own systems!

The background to this story is that Bengaluru is one of India’s fastest growing cities, where waste management is not keeping up and a huge amount of mixed waste is not even making it to landfill, let alone getting segregated into different waste streams. Recognised as a large source of bulk waste, apartment blocks and gated communities are incentivised to think more broadly about waste solutions given the shortfall and cost of collection services. Spurred on by experts and organisations like the Solid Waste Management Roundtable, a growing number of apartment managers are tapping into local knowledge and networks to help them set up their onsite systems.

The technology I came across here is what small-scale composters often refer to as something like ‘mesh cylinder systems’, which look a lot like the leaf mould collectors that you tend to see in countries with a lot of deciduous trees. These cylindrical cages are quite easy on the eye, and blend in nicely in parks and gardens.

In terms of the technology at work, these well-aerated vessels work a lot like our super-efficient three-bay compost systems: they hold enough material (i.e. over 1 cubic metre) to reach good ‘hot composting’ temperatures and you essentially just fill them with greens and browns and then wait a month or two for the material to compost.

But seeing a cage standing like this at my family’s apartment block left me confused. I couldn’t fathom the age-old dilemmas in composting: how do you allow one batch to decompose, without constantly adding new organic waste to the already partially decomposed waste, and how do you turn the pile?

Most backyard and community composting nerds I’ve met tend to gradually gravitate to the three-bay composting mode as their operations reach adequate scale, because it allows you to collect fresh greens and browns in the first bay, then turn this material into the second bay once the first is full, giving it a good aeration and letting it decompose there for a month, before turning it once more into the third bay to cure and cool down. This way there is no fresh material being added to the advanced batch. It works very well, but it does involve the heavier task of turning.

The “aha” moment came when I met the composters at another apartment block, who have been running their system for around a decade. Meet Alban and Nivedita! These folks have gradually fine-tuned mesh cylinder composting to process the volume of waste that their apartment complex produces, in a short enough time to avoid overloading.

The roughly 250 family apartments in their block produce around 130 kg of kitchen waste each day, while the lush gardens around the buildings produce adequate dried leaves, so long as these are stored during the dry season for use in the wet months when browns are in shorter supply.

Many apartment blocks like this employ staff to collect the different types of rubbish from each apartment every day. The residents are required to segregate their rubbish by organics, plastics and paper. Up to this point there is no great additional cost or effort involved. The staff take the organics to their composting operations, while the inorganics are passed on to rubbish collection services at a fee. Money is saved by eliminating collection of all organic waste.

Kitchen scraps are chopped smaller by passing the material through a shredder. This, you could argue, increases the workload, but also reduces the time needed for each batch to decompose. It would be up to each apartment block to assess the feasibility of this step for themselves, and it could be left out, allowing kitchen scraps to be transferred straight from kitchens to the compost systems, though composting would then take a little longer.

But the real ‘secret’ to this whole system is very simple. The kitchen greens and garden browns are distributed for composting in a number of different cages placed all around the gardens. The reason I wasn’t seeing three vessels next to each other as I’m accustomed, is that the team simply fills one vessel over the course of a few weeks, and this batch is then left to compost while fresh organic waste is delivered to the other systems around the site.

With good feedstock material (chopped up food scraps and dried leaves are excellent!) and enough time, the batches are not being turned. The managers have simply installed enough composting capacity (cages) so that each batch can be left to compost at its own rate, even if that means two months rather than one. I have to emphasise how much of a break-through it is, to not have to turn piles from one vessel to another, as this really reduces the workload.

Once a batch is ready, a gate at the bottom of the cage is opened and the compost raked out, or in some models, the entire cage is lifted up and away, leaving a pile of compost open for collection. By placing the cages strategically around the gardens, the finished compost from each cage can be used on beds nearby, which makes a lot of sense for larger compounds where the distance between one central compost pile and all the sources and applications around the site can be far.

I know our ground staff at the 8-hectare site where I work often find it annoying to take green waste to the single three-bay compost system we have had, and I’m now experimenting with more systems around the grounds. The icing on the cake with the mesh cylinders is that they don’t look so much like a compost pile, but rather like an aviary full of leaves. I did note however, that it’s useful to have two cages close together, because you can store the browns that you collect the one that isn’t being used for composting, and take a few buckets of those leaves as you need them when delivering fresh greens.

This mode of composting seems to maintain most of the advantages of three-bay composting, except for the monthly aeration, but many composters would be willing to forego this and leave each batch a little longer so long as there is enough composting capacity. At the same time it looks more attractive than a square pallet, or brick, or wooden bay structure - the cylindrical tower can be covered in shade cloth for camouflage. It will be very exciting to watch how long composting takes in a system like this.

Some of the organisations I came across recommend adding a blend of well adapted microbes to each layer of waste, but these microbes will begin to colonise the area. You can also add a few buckets of previous compost for a similar effect. The only fear I have is that the Australian welders might charge a considerable sum when I show them these photos and request some replicas, but there is always the option of starting with a simple rolled sheet of mesh, and leaving the frame out while piloting. I have seen models like this in use by our colleagues at YIMBY Compost in Castlemaine Victoria, and heard good reports! As always, a healthy supply of good quality carbon-rich materials, preferably brown leaves, makes the compost system airier, faster and less smelly. It also makes the compost better (fungal activity, humification, carbon sequestration). In Bengaluru, the diversion of dried leaves into composting systems also prevents ground crews from burning fallen leaves, and it was amazing to see the local community showing awareness around this!

Reduced-Workload Community Composting

Reduced-Workload Community Composting

Reduced-Workload Community Composting

Top Community Composter Shuts Operations

Top Community Composter Shuts Operations

Top Community Composter Shuts Operations