NatureMill’s urban compost bin does the work right in the house. Now there are no excuses to not composting!
You already know through reading Green Prophet that you can make your own vegetable composter for only $10 worth of easily obtainable materials. With all the interest being circulated dealing with organic gardening at home, including the annual event known as Compost Awareness Week the idea of “manufacturing” your own organic compost in your own backyard or on your apartment balcony is not only realistic but very practical.
Especially in the Middle East (Beirut, Tel Aviv, Aleppo) where most of us live in apartments.
Composting at home (in the city) not only offers a solution to alleviate much of the organic food wastes people would normally throw into their refuse dumpster (enclosed in non-biodegradable polyethylene bags); composting saves on gas transport to the dump, and cuts down methane gases there too.
On the lighter side of life, composting, as James has found in his garden, offers an excellent opportunity to embark on your own home organic gardening project as well. And that’s why we love the idea of NatureMill, which can be shipped to almost any address in the world.
The American company NatureMill, has developed a new state-of-the-art food waste composter that makes organic compost from vegetable peelings, bread scraps, coffee grounds, meat and other animal product food wastes in only 7 to 10 days, and without the flies and unpleasant odors that occur during the composting process.
NatureMill’s latest composter, known as the XE Series, has a number of “chambers” to hold organic waste during the decomposition process, and includes a unique air circulator which helps reduce odors and well as speed up the entire process.
The XE composter is not much larger than a kitchen garbage bin and can make up to 55 Kg of compost per month. Compost which you could use planting chickweed on your windowsill, or which you could give to neighbours with gardens.
The San Francisco based company literally stumbled onto the idea of a compact food waster composter by leaving garbage in a bin, which naturally began to compost on its own – unpleasant odors, the sights and all! By introducing the idea of separate decomposition chambers, together with the air circulation system, the NatureMill people were able to come up with a product that can be used virtually anywhere, even in the laundry room or balcony of a small apartment.
Energy usage is very small, and amounts to less than a dollar a month of electricity. Prices for the device in the USA, vary between $300 and $400, with the more expensive model just a bit more “stylish” and including a foot pedal for opening it to deposit the food wastes.
For those of us living here in the Middle East, we would have to figure paying much more as shipping charges and various duties and purchase taxes could jack up the price to as much as $600 or even more, unless perhaps if we order it from Europe. This means we in this part of the world had better be really in to this kind of thing to lay out the money to buy one!
Not to worry. We’ve “dug” up a poor man’s version of NatureMill’s compost bin. It doesn’t look as good, but it looks like compost (and worms) don’t suffer one bit. See the video below.
[youtube width=”560″ height=”420″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lcv69QL_Ers&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
Photo and source: www.naturemill.com
More articles on composting:
Mulch, Rot and Invigorate the Compost Heap (Part 1)
A Half Empty Bin and Some Worms (Part 2)
Make Your Own Vegetable Composter for Under $10
Author: Maurice Picow
Maurice Picow grew up in Oklahoma City, U.S.A., where he received a B.S. Degree in Business Administration. Following graduation, Maurice embarked on a career as a real estate broker before making the decision to move to Israel. After arriving in Israel, he came involved in the insurance agency business and later in the moving and international relocation fields. Maurice became interested in writing news and commentary articles in the late 1990’s, and now writes feature articles for the The Jerusalem Post as well as being a regular contributor to Green Prophet. He has also written a non-fiction study on Islam, a two volume adventure novel, and is completing a romance novel about a forbidden love affair. Writing topics of particular interest for Green Prophet are those dealing with global warming and climate change, as well as clean technology - particularly electric cars.
There is a new kitchen bench top product I am now using to compost called the Urban Composter. It uses a spray rather than worms or sawdust. It’s cleaner and the spray smells of citrus. It’s also a lot cheaper than $300-400. I bought mine at urbancomposter.co