Compost in the city because your GFT is valuable.

GFT is often collected separately, but still….

Cat litter pellets and cigarette butts

Your carefully properly separated organic waste ends up in the municipal compost pile. Along with the neighbor’s cat litter, that woman around the corner’s cigarette butts, and that cute baby’s dirty diapers. All these things do NOT belong in the GFT bin, but you have no control over them. The compost you can often pick up for free at central composting facilities is free for a reason. In your own compost you use only uncooked fruits and vegetables, cardboard, coffee grounds, and if you buy all of that organically you are therefore making organic compost. Pleasant idea and better for your plants

Mileage eaters

An average Dutch person produces 146 kilograms of GFT waste. That, of course, includes bread, meat and cooked vegetables. It’s better to keep throwing those in the garbage bin to avoid problems and pests. The rest you can compost yourself. Even if it is only half of your GFT you will still save 73 kilograms of transportation per year.  The more people do this, the fewer greenhouse gas-producing garbage trucks need to drive around

Never buy potting soil again

Actually, it’s quite strange: you throw away banana peels full of valuable minerals, and buy bags of potting soil or bottles of plant food at the garden center. Making your own is more economical and as described above: better for the environment

Sometimes separate collection is not possible

Inner cities often do not yet participate

The most obvious (and saddest reason) is that there are still places in the Netherlands where GFT is not collected separately. Your valuable wastes are then burned with the residual waste, or they are extracted from the residual waste via post-separation.

choosing between two evils

Combustion is the only possible option, though: precious organic matter is lost and  CO2 ends up in the air instead of in the soil. Post-separation sounds like a good solution. Only then the GFT stream is contaminated with small pieces of plastic and who knows what else. So the quality of the compost is not optimal either. In addition, GFT in the residual stream also reduces the quality of the plastic that is recovered. So not a good idea.

OK, But how then and can composting also be done in the city?

If you have enough space just start a compost pile. If you live in the city then a worm composter is a better idea.  Even if you only have a balcony or small city garden!  This can be done easily and odorlessly with a worm composter or worm composter. Both inside and outside.

Compost worms eat uncooked fruit and vegetable scraps. Interspersed with increasingly carbon-rich waste such as cardboard, sawdust or dead leaves. In addition, they love coffee grounds. Never feed your worms cooked food scraps, bread, meat, etc.  And note that compost worms do not like onion, garlic and hot peppers.

At Balkonton, you’ll find worm composterin a variety of materials, colors and types. See which worm composter suits your situation and taste.