Where have all the food scraps gone?

Sacha November 30, 2021

Where do your food wastes go after you dump them? In Europe, half of them go to landfill(24%) and get burned (27%), 31% are recycled and 17% are composted (EUROSTAT)

Food scraps either go to the local dumpster or a community composting project.

After food wastes go to landfill, even though they are biodegradable, they are compacted underground decomposing without oxygen. This process produces methane, a greenhouse gas 84 times more harmful than CO2. So, I won't lie to myself that food scraps will decompose organically or harmlessly after I dump them.

Food wastes also take up a lot of spaces in landfill. In the EU, each person generates 173kg of food waste per year, which amounts to about 88 millions tonnes of food wastes. Estimated in 2010, Netherland ranked top of the generation of food wastes kg per person (541kg). Belgium comes in second (345kg). The UK is also high (236kg). In France where people have love for food, they generate below average, but still 136kg per person per year.

Food wastes are generated from primary production, wholesale, retailing, processing, catering and household cooking. Surprisingly, household produces 53% of food wastes, more than any commercial procedures, so each person makes 92kg food wastes per year when they buy groceries, cook and eat. That sounds just like what's happening everyday in my house.

We have little to do with the food waste on those commercial levels, including production, processing and wholesale level. However, in your house, you have choices everyday when you shop, cook and eat. You pay for food, why waste them?

You can make choices to control or reduce that 53% of food wastes happening in your home ! By following these three simple tips :

1. Know the difference between the labels "Best Before" and "Use by":

Best Before: the date after which an item may still be eaten but may not be at best in terms of quality. Normally, I would still eat it 3 days within the "Best Before" day. 

Use by: after which an item is no longer safe to eat.

2. Cook and eat your food scraps

Save money, save the earth. Check out recipes for food scraps. You can marinate broccoli stems, a great source of fiber. You can sauté beet greens with lemon butter or make vegetable stock from carrot, asparagus skins and corn cob. Nobody will know they used to be food scraps!

3. If your food scraps can't be cooked anymore, compost them

Food scraps in general contains the right carbon to nitrogen ratio(20:1), close to the perfect C/N ratio for composting (30:1). They also have been chopped into small pieces so no extra work for composting if you use iComposteur. iComposteur composts your daily food scraps up to 2 kg and the compost will be ready in 2 weeks risk-free. 

If you want to start a classic composting pile to compost your food scraps, the steps are:

1). Store your food scraps for at least 2 weeks. In refrigerator or any cool place. In summer, be careful about cockroaches.

 
Outdoor composting pile is made of carbon and nitrogen ingredients, food scraps are the nitrogen ingredients. Together with manure, garden plants and weeds. You need a lot of them to start a one cubic meter large composting heap. The only way is to store your food scraps.
Store your food scraps for two weeks better in the fidget or they may attract cockroaches


2). Scavenge fallen leaves, sawdust, branches, cardboard, grass clippings and hay etc, making sure altogether you have enough ingredients for construction of a 1m*1m*1m pile. 


Other nitrogen ingredients are grass clipping, garden plants and weeds and hay. Carbon sources are cardboard, dry leaves, pine needles, sawdust
Grass Clipping, sawdust, branches, fallen leaves even wood chips are sources of compost

 



3). Classify them into Greens(Nitrogen) and Browns(Carbon) by using this table:

Example: 

For 180 gram of corn stalk, there are about 177g carbon and 3g nitrogen (60:1). While for 180 gram of chicken manure , there are about 162g carbon and 18g nitrogen(10:1). So chicken manure is a bigger source of nitrogen than corn stalk. 

    Carbon Rich Ingredients CN Ratio Nitrogen Rich Ingredients CN Ratio
Corn Stalks 60:1 Chicken Manure 10:1
Corrugated Cardboard 600:1 Coffee Grounds 20:1
Dry Leaves 40-80:1 Garden Plants and Weeds 20-35:1
Mixed Paper Products 200-800:1 Grass Clippings 10-25:1
Newspaper 150-200:1 Hay 10-25:1
Pine Needles 60-100:1 Kitchen Scraps(No Dairy, meat, fish) 10-50:1
Sawdusts, weathered 3 yrs 142:1 Rotted Manure 20-50:1
Sawdusts, weathered 2 months 625:1
Straw 50-150:1
Woody Plants trimmings 200-1300:1

Carbon to Nitrogen Ratios Source: Composting for Dummies P. 108 , 2010, Wiley

4). Chop everything into small pieces, especially branches, twigs and cardboards.

Chop branches and twig down into 5-10 cm pieces. For corrugated cardboard, soak it in water and tear it apart.
Chop the branches or twigs into 5~10cm before adding them to a compost pile

5). Mix them with the Carbon to Nitrogen ratio 3:1 by volume or 30:1 by weight. 

Yes, you need to measure the ingredients either by weight or by volume to have the right CN ratio for the composting pile. It's easier by volume. 

The CN ratio for composting is 30: 1 by weight but it's impossible to measure this way. So just do it 3 :1 in volume. First categorize the ingredients into carbon rich and nitrogen rich. Get a bucket, when you add one bucket of nitrogen, add another 3 buckets of carbon


6). Turn the pile every 2 days, check the moisture, even take temperature in the middle. In general, it should be around 30~70 degree celsius. 

After the composting pile is set up, you need to check it every two days. If it has some moisture? and turn it upside down, inside out to give the bacteria some oxygen.


7). Expect your compost pile will be ready in 2 weeks.


Berkeley Hot Composting method is the quickest. If you have the right CN ratio, chop everything into small pieces and turn the pile every two days, you can have the compost ready in 2 weeks and pathogen free.

 



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