How to Compost When You Live in an Apartment? (Easy Methods And Tips)

Can you compost in an apartment? Indoor composting is still an option if you want to lessen the food waste you throw away.

One of the most effective strategies for waste reduction is composting. Indeed, the simplest ways to care for your indoor plants and lessen your carbon footprint is to compost your food wastes at home. However, if you live in an apartment, you might be unsure about the process’s feasibility. This article will explain the step-by-step procedure to compost even if you’re living in an apartment.

According to the theory, kitchen waste makes up more than 35% of the average garbage container, waste that could be avoided entirely if it were composted. Moving those particles is crucial. Methane gas is not produced when organic waste is composted; instead, it is produced when it is dumped in landfills.

What to Do With Compost in an Apartment?

Nowadays, composting is streamlined and odor-free, giving you options to accommodate even the smallest of apartments. Not only can apartment occupants use that black gold to feed house plants and patio containers, but you can also decrease your household waste and save yourself a trip to the dumpster.

Since a worm bin doesn’t take up much space and worms like a temperature of 55–80°F, composting with the aid of earthworms is a great alternative for indoor composting. Indeed it does not have to be as complex as it appears. It is a convenient plan for choosing what to compost and how it presents almost any organic matter to your bin.

Things You’ll Need

• Compost bin
• Drill
• Some worms

Carbon Rich Material

• Eggshells that have been rinsed-out 
• Cardboards, paper towels, or newsprint
• Ashes from smoking untreated tobaccos
• Small pieces of cotton, wool, or silk clothing

Nitrogen Rich Material

• Coffee grounds and compostable tea bags
• Bread, cooked or uncooked rice, and pasta
• All vegetables, except smelly garlic and onion 
• All fruits, except citruses since they are too acidic 

Awesome Tips

• The first thing you will need is someplace to put your worms. Thus you could buy a compost bin, or you could use your container.
• You can create your compost bin with a mound of stinking black earth enriched with vegetable strips, nutshells, and stripped apple cores.
• Put the worms in your bin, together with a decent amount of potting soil. Additionally, discarded soil from a dead houseplant will do the trick. You can add enough water to moisten the soil. 
• You can form food scraps into tiny particles. The smaller, the better. You also need to avoid dairy, meat, and products that are harder to decay and could smell up the bin.

4 Easy Steps To Compost In An Apartment 

Step 1 

Place your food scraps such as; dairy, fruits and vegetables, meat, fish, wilted flowers, tea bags, and coffee into your compost bin. And make sure to cut them into tiny pieces. 

Step 2

You can spray it with a compost accelerator sprayer. Indeed vegan citrus-based spray is loaded with microorganisms that will dissolve and break down the leftover food particles.

Step 3

Afterward, it would be best if you started draining the juice from the bin every few days. The compost tea has nutrients and good bacteria, which you can add to your indoor plants. 

Step 4

Combine the fermented particles into a large portion of soil such as; a worm farm or an outdoor composter. The particles will break down in about six weeks. The resulting compost is ready to use on your plants when it’s dark, crumbly, and mostly broken down with an earthy, soil-like smell to it.

Conclusion

Instead of letting your holiday leftovers rot in your refrigerator, consider giving them a second life with indoor composting. You would probably think that it might smell bad. The reason your trash stinks is that you’ve mixed organic materials with non-organics which are preventing the decomposition process. Good compost will have an earthy, even pleasant, smell. You can place your composting system under your sink or anywhere in your apartment. You can imagine all the advantages you can do just by eliminating organics from landfills.

What other advantages do you see from composting in an apartment? Post your comments and ideas below!