Adventures in High Tech Composting: Our Reporter Makes Haste To Get Jiggy With Her Waste
by Michelle
Most of us know that composting is a good way to deal with your organic kitchen waste instead of sending it to the landfill. But if you don't have space in your backyard or a lot of time to maintain a compost heap, are you doomed to send your potato peelings away in the garbage truck? How can an urban dweller compost effectively and efficiently?
NatureMill
has developed an automatic compact composter designed to be used either indoors or outdoors, with minimal fuss and maintenance. They promise their low-energy machine, which uses just 5 kwh per month, will recycle "its weight in waste every 10 days" and will divert "over two tons of waste from landfills over its life."
Just prime the composter before the first use by throwing in a few scoops of garden soil, and with a little mechanical help, the natural cultures will do their job breaking down your organic waste. The mixer and heater inside the composter do the hard work for you. What's more, due to the machine's regular churning cycles and its ability to maintain an optimum temperature, the time it takes for your kitchen waste to be transformed into garden fertilizer is shortened dramatically, from several months or more with an outdoor compost heap to about two weeks with the composter.
Here at the Daily Mantra we were lucky enough to receive a review unit. I was incredibly excited to receive such a high-tech composting gadget, and set it up in my kitchen immediately. It sat neatly beside my fridge, and merrily hummed away as it got to work on my waste. I peeked in at my apple peels and used teabags cozily nestled in their new home on the first night before going to bed myself.
I woke up a short time later to a strange clunking noise in the kitchen. I crept downstairs and found it was coming from the mixer in the composter. I was a little unnerved, but the cycle ended shortly after I came down to check on it, so I shrugged and went back to bed.
The next morning I came downstairs to find the composter unplugged. My husband had been woken at 4 a.m. by the same noise from the mixer, and, since he wasn't sure if it was supposed to make it, he'd switched it off just in case. I sent off an email to NatureMill and left the composter unplugged over the weekend. I received a very helpful and reassuring response first thing Monday morning saying that the clunking noise is normal during the first few mixing cycles and will go away as the machine breaks in. So I plugged it back in and started composting again.
After being inactive for almost two days my composter was starting to smell rather, well, rotten, so I moved it outdoors. I made one very respectable batch of compost, which smelled more like dark, loamy earth than moldy cantaloupe, and have now moved the composter back into my kitchen. So far it doesn't smell at all, so I believe the trick to avoiding odors is to leave it on, just like the instruction manual says.
Despite my personal hiccups, the NatureMill composter does do an excellent job. After almost a year of attempting to get a compost heap going in my backyard I hadn't yet produced any usable compost for my garden, but after just two weeks of using the NatureMill I have half a bucket of dark, earthy compost that I can't wait to work into the ground. Like baking sourdough bread, brewing beer or making yogurt, composting takes a little bit of practice and knowledge in order to nurture the bacterial cultures responsible for the magic. With the automatic composter, the process is sped up so much that it takes much less time to learn what makes good compost. The manufacturers provide everything you need apart from the garden soil that starts the initial process. They include a detailed instruction booklet, sawdust pellets and baking soda to keep the acidity balance in check. As a result the machine makes composting almost effortless.
If you're interested in learning more about the NatureMill composter, go to www.naturemill.com. The NatureMill composter can be purchased online via Amazon.com. Canadian shoppers can save customs and importation charges by ordering online from www.homedepot.ca
