Cooked Food Waste can be composted

Councils are moving towards providing weekly kerbside food waste collections, but many people are unhappy at the prospect of keeping food for up to a week prior to collection. Composting can offer an alterative .

It is often said that cooked food waste cannot be composted. That statement needs qualification. Cooked food waste can be composted if the right type of bin is used such as a Green Johanna, Hotbin or Jora but these tend to be relatively expensive and as such are probably not appropriate for the first time composter they do however work well and are easy to use.

 A cheaper alternative is to buy two Blackwall  Bokashi bins, ( available in the UK from  for about £25 for the pair, and to use these to ferment the cooked food waste to produce pre-compost which can then be added to the conventional compost bin. The bokashi bins can be kept indoors so that food waste from the plates can be scraped directly into the Bokashi bin. A bran is added and the bin sealed. I have detail on the use of Bokashi at    Bokashi Composting  ( http://www.carryoncomposting.com/416920212 )   In this post we are looking at the food that can be fermented in a Bokashi bin abfore being composted.

Food suitable for the Bokashi treatment

Bones Smaller bones, such as chicken bones can be added as can bigger bones which will be will be ”cleaned” by the process Bokashi and composting processes  and can be removed when the compost is finally harvested.

Coffee grounds and filters. The filters may be recognisable at the end to the fermentation process but breakdown will continue during the composting stage. 

Cooked foods including plate scrapings. All solid foodse.g   fish, meat, pasta, rice, vegetables. Liquids e.g sauces, soups, etc should be soaked into a solid material such as , unless you soak them up in something bread or kitchen towel.

Dairy products. Solid products such asbutter cheese, etc can be added to the Bokashi bin but. liquids such as milk or yogurt shoed be absorb into bread or paper .

Eggshells. Eggshell should beCrush the shells and add them to the binthe fermentation decomposition is slow and this will be clearly recognised when they are eventually added to the compost bin as part of the fermented pre-compost.

Flowers, pot plants, herbs etc that have had their day. Just avoid soil from pot plants, save it to use later in a ”soil factory” or in the garden.

Fruit and vegetable peelings. F to avoid taking up space in the Bokasshi binruit and veg peelings can be added but if you are producing a lot of food waste they might be best added to the compost caddy for normal composting.

Tea bags please check   Composting Tea Bags      to see which tea bags contain plastic as these should be emptied into the bin  and tea leaves otherwise the whole bag can be put into the bin

Paper. Small quantities of kitchen roll and paper towels contaminated with food waste  can be added. Other  paper is best recycled or shredded and composted .