Bokashi Bin for busy kitchen!
Jennie Walker asked 7 years ago
Hello,
We are trying to start a Bokashi composting system for our small guesthouse/B&B. We produce a lot of food waste/plate scrapings during our busy breakfast service and need an efficient way of dealing with it – will it harm the process if the bin is left open during service (around 2 hours) as waste is added gradually, and contents then squashed, sprinkled and sealed at the end of each morning? It will take approximately 2-3 days to fill each bin, so we are thinking that the contents will not have time to putrefying in that time, even though bins will obvs be exposed to oxygen? Keeping a separate bin that needs decanting into the Bokashi every day will simply not be practical. Many thanks in advance for your advice.
Nicki Casley Staff answered 7 years ago
Thanks for your question. Great to see that you are incorporating bokashi into your kitchen. Obviously leaving the lid off the bokashi bucket for long periods of time is not ideal, as bokashi composting is anaerobic process. However, it shouldn’t do too much harm as the bin is going to be filled rapidly. A few things to consider to make sure your bokashi composting is successful:
1. You’ll need to sprinkle some bokashi bran throughout the breakfast service. We recommend adding 1 or 2 heapting tbsp of bran for each 1″ of food waste. You’ll likely need to add it 3-4 times during each service. Maybe once at the beginning, once in the middle and then at the end (plus another time if you have a large amount of food waste).
2. Consider adding a thin layer of cardboard or paper at the end of each day. This will act as a ‘lid’ on the days waste and so less air will get through to the previous day’s food waste whilst the lid is removed.
3. You’ll need to have more than 2 bokashi buckets in your system as you’ll want to leave each bin for at least 2 weeks to fully ferment. If you’re filling each bin every 2-3 days you’ll need at least 5-7 bokashi buckets. Please contact us if you are looking to buy bins from our website (we may be able to offer more efficient ways to ship on larger orders).
We hope that helps. Feel free to call or ask further questions here if you have them.
It would be great if you could send some photos of your bokashi system in action; we would love to be able to case study your B&B on our website and social media.