As a large percentage of the Omicron staff are apartment dwellers, I thought it would be an interesting exercise to explore the question: “Is it possible to compost while living in an apartment or condo?”

I began my adventure by heading to Lee Valley to purchase their 7 Litre Kitchen Compost Pail. At only $18.50 it seemed like a pretty good deal and it comes with its own filter which fits nicely on the top and needs to be changed about every three months.

This is actually not the first time I have tried apartment composting. A few years ago I received this exact bin from a friend for Christmas.  I began throwing all kinds of things in there and the filter really did work at keeping odors under control.  Things did not go smoothly however.  One day I went to open the bin and about 100 fruit flies flew out at me.  Needless to say, the bin was promptly removed from my apartment and until now, I have not composted since.

One thing I didn’t know back then was that it’s a good idea to balance out the green and the brown items in your compost.

Green items include:

• Tea bags
• Grass cuttings
• Vegetable peelings
• Old flowers
• Fruit scraps
• Coffee grounds & filter paper
• Old bedding plants

Brown items include:

• Egg shells – crush them first
• Egg boxes
• Cereal boxes
• Corrugated cardboard packaging
• Newspaper – scrunched up
• Toilet & kitchen roll tubes
• Garden prunings
• Dry leaves, twigs & hedge clippings
• Straw & hay
• Bedding from vegetarian pets
• Wool
• Ashes from wood, paper or lumpwood charcoal
• Cotton threads
• String
• Tumble dryer lint – from natural fibre clothes such as cotton or wool
• Shredded paper

If you don’t have a lot of the dry items, the compost can become too wet.

I had a few fruit scraps so I decided to test my new bin out. (That’s a banana and orange peel going in and my hand is ridiculously out of scale in this picture).

I also found out after taking the above picture, that it’s a good idea to cut up whatever organic material you are putting in there into really small pieces to help speed up the break down process.

Next I placed the bin on my balcony:

This bin is really designed as a temporary holding area that you would then take and dump into a larger outdoor compost. I actually don’t have a place where I can dump the waste once the bucket is full.  A friend, and avid composter, suggested that I find a local community garden and see if I can take it there.  I may do this, but I would also like to see if I can actually complete the compost process on my balcony. This will likely require that I punch holes in my bucket to allow for drainage, to make sure it creates enough heat (it’s pretty small) and that I stir and aerate often.

At this point it is a bit of an experiment, but stay tuned for Part Two in upcoming posts to see how things progress with my little apartment compost.