Composting on a micro scale or alternatives?

BendiBus

I've recently stopped buying Marks&Spencer prepared fruit which came peeled & ready to eat in convenient plastic trays and started buying loose fruit.

The result is that I've reduced the amount of plastic I've been recycling and replaced it with banana & orange peels which end up in my landfill bin!

I live in an apartment, have no brown bin and no need for compost (except on a micro scale for houseplants).

Do I have any alternative to the landfill bin for all the fruit scrap? Is it possible to make compost on a micro scale? Any other suggestions?

Do you have a garden area?

A simple black sack can be filled and tied air-tight and work as a compost bin.

silverharp

a worm bin , if you have a balcony

cathald

Yeap, worm bin is a good suggestion - has done well in Canada

BendiBus

silverharp wrote:

a worm bin , if you have a balcony

I do have a balcony. I know nothing about worm bins. I'll do a little research. Feel free to point me in the right direction.

And thanks!

Alun

I have a wormery, a Can-O-Worms which we bought at the ecoshop on the N11, which we use for all our vegetable waste. They'll eat almost anything, but don't tolerate certain things ... citrus peel being one of them unfortunately It's the acidity apparently, which means also no onion or onion peel as well. It can take a while to get everything up and running smoothly, but once they get going they'll munch their way through surprising amounts of stuff.

Look over on http://www.recycleworks.co.uk/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=forum&f=5 for more than you ever wanted to know about wormeries.

BendiBus

Alun wrote:

They'll eat almost anything, but don't tolerate certain things ... citrus peel being one of them unfortunately

Yeah, just found this out myself. That rules it out for me as citrus peel makes up a lot of my food waste

2 stroke

A simple black sack can be filled and tied air-tight and work as a compost bin.

Does this not just produce methane?

jobrok1

Check out the following sites for Worm-Bin info....

http://www.ecobaby.ie/composting/vermicompost-diy01.htm

http://www.ipcc.ie/wormbin.html



Citrus peals can be dried out and will burn pretty well. If you have an open fire. Probably not the case in an apartment.
But still! Even if that's all that you end up throwing out in your rubbish, it should still make a difference to the amount of waste you dump.
Just think of all the other vegie and fruit pealings, egg shels and cartons, cardboard, paper packaging, etc.