Composting is an eco-friendly way to return banana peels, veggie scraps, coffee grounds, grass clippings, and beyond back to the earth. After a few months, your efforts are rewarded with “black gold,” a rich organic matter to be spread on plants, flowers, gardens ─ anything that could use a nutritional boost. And during a year, you can reduce your emissions as much as driving 1,000 miles in the process.
But whether you already compost or have considered it, what about those hard-to-break-down leftovers you’d also like to get rid of — things like fish bones, eggshells, orange peels, meat scraps, dairy, and cooked foods? Or what if you live in a small space and don’t have room for an outdoor compost bin? Or it’s the dead of winter and everything outside is frozen? That’s where bokashi comes in, a different way to recycle food waste that can take composting to the next level.
Bokashi, a Japanese term for fermented organic matter, is an anaerobic process. That means it happens without oxygen, unlike traditional composting, which requires oxygen. According to the Spruce, bokashi was developed in the early 1980s by Teuro Higa, a professor at the University of the Ryukyus in Okinawa, Japan, and is used throughout Asia to ferment food prior to composting. Once the bokashi process is complete, the result can then be added to a traditional compost pile to complete the decomposition process.
To get started, you need an airtight bokashi bucket (can be bought online or you can make your own using two five-gallon buckets), something like a plate or circular piece of cardboard for compaction, and bokashi bran (a combination of bacteria and yeast that ferments the food scraps). Like the bokashi bucket, you can buy ready-made bokashi bran or make your own. Here’s an easy-to-follow recipe from master composter Rebecca Louie.
Can first-timers successfully undertake bokashi? “Yes!” says Angelina Brandt, director of sustainability at Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency. “Bokashi tends to be viewed as an advanced composting technique, but it is not exclusively for experienced composters. It is most often used as an add-on for people who already have a compost pile. Composting is a critical strategy for our community to recycle more materials and reduce the amount of municipal solid waste that requires landfill disposal, and I think anyone interested in bokashi’s benefits would enjoy this method.”
And what exactly are those benefits? For starters, as stated above, bokashi allows you to compost any organic material, even meat, dairy and fats. It does not generate greenhouse gases, does not require turning, and only needs a small amount of space, typically indoors. Faster than traditional composting, bokashi takes approximately two weeks rather than several months, and can be done year-round, even in winter ─ a big plus in the Northeast. Best of all, since organic material is fermented or “pickled” rather than decomposed, there is no odor to attract insects or animal pests such as bears, raccoons, and opossums.
Ready to transform your barbecue ribs into lovely, nutrient-rich earth while cutting food waste? You’re ready for bokashi! For information on free educational classes and workshops offered by Ulster County’s Recycling Outreach Team, including bokashi composting, click here.
