Jingkids has been an essential family resource for Beijing international families since 2006. And just as kids grow up in the blink of an eye, Beijing has grown and changed almost beyond recognition in that time. In Throwback Thursday we jump in the time machine, traveling through our 15 year-strong blog archives to dig out the most entertaining, fascinating, and thought-provoking stories for your reading pleasure. Ready? Let’s go…

I don’t know about you guys, but the warm weather these past few days has really lifted my mood! The leaves are turning green and we’ll soon be packing away our winter coats. And since the city’s getting sunny and bright again, it’s time for a refresher course on going green in all aspects of life with an easy indoor composting kit.

Kids are learning from home and this composting kit makes for a fun learning experiment for the whole family. Jingkids writer Anna Pellegrin Hartley shares the step-by-step setup of her OwnMade Indoor Composting system and tips from Daniel Lim – creator of the OwnMade Indoor Composting system.

Setting it up

The OwnMade consists of a felt bag, measuring 30cm x 30cm (about the size of an IKEA box), a fine mesh cover, a bag of dry starter mix, and a metal trowel.

As per Lim’s instructions, I pour the dry mix into the felt bag and mix it through with a 2-liter batch of sugar water. Lim recommends using either brown sugar or molasses (which are high in minerals) for the water mix, but I only have honey around, and he says that will do.

In anticipation of the workshop, I’d been saving my kitchen scraps for about a week. I throw them in my trusty Kitchen Aid blender and blitzed them to a manageable size. This included banana peels, an old carrot, garlic, coffee grounds, some plant cuttings, and a couple of eggshells. According to Lim, as the average human diet is quite varied, food waste compost is uniquely rich in nutrients and nitrogen and produces some of the best compost around. Farmers love it, and I’m hoping that my houseplants will too.

While it is possible to add large pieces of food, Lim doesn’t recommend it as it will dramatically slow-down the composting time, and is also likely to throw the microbe balance of this pocket-sized system out of whack.

I tip the blended compost into the bag with the now-activated starter, and mix it all thoroughly, then cover the bag securely with the nylon mesh to prevent flies and bugs from getting in. If flies do get in and birth maggots, I’ll most likely have to throw out the compost and start again from scratch.

According to Lim, compost systems only smell bad when they become deprived of oxygen, triggering an anaerobic chemical reaction that creates stinky gasses. Therefore, the compost should be mixed through every day, to allow fresh oxygen to reach every part of the mixture. The bag is made of felt, which helps by allowing water to wick up the sides thereby stopping puddles of water collecting at the bottom.

The next day when I add more kitchen scraps I notice that the mixture is already warm to the touch, a sure-fire sign that decomposition has begun.

Two weeks later

Two weeks down the line, I’ve gotten into my rhythm, saving my kitchen scraps in a container, then blitzing them and adding to the mix in the evening. Some days, my husband and I are barely at home and don’t cook at all, and I forget or am too lazy to mix the compost. There have been some odd smells, but nothing too offensive (just vaguely ‘composty’) and they seem directly linked to how wet the compost is. Lim’s also added me to an active local WeChat group where other people using the system troubleshoot and compare notes. I’m heartened to see that I’m not the only one falling under the spell of this system.

Two months later

After two months of almost daily use, and two separate week-long periods in which I am away from Beijing and the compost has to fend for itself, this system couldn’t be going better.

I actually look forward to tending to my strange little pet each day, and marvel at the great disappearing act: within 24 hours, handfuls of regular food scraps have simply vanished! The only evidence of use is that the compost bag is slowly but surely filling up. When it eventually does, I’ll need to take about half out, and let it cure before using. I have a couple of houseplants that will benefit from some compost, and I’ll scatter the rest on the garden of my building compound. The system is super easy to use and manage, creates zero stank, and takes up very little space in my apartment. All in all, I’m totally sold.

Why compost? 

But aside from being a fun and interesting exercise, and assuaging my eco-guilt a little, really what’s the point of composting on such a small scale?

For Lim, the OwnMade is just a tiny part of a much grander vision: fixing our faulty nutrient cycle in which food is grown on farms, shipped far away, and the nutrient-rich scraps end up wasted in landfills. Municipal-scale composting systems have consistently failed the world over because people don’t properly understand how they work, and accidentally contaminate systems. By introducing people to composting via the OwnMade system, and by collaborating with a growing number of Beijing schools, Lim hopes to gradually revolutionize the entire country’s attitude to food, and eventually, our waste management systems.

That smells good to me.

OwnMade Indoor Composting Kit costs RMB 320 including delivery. Order a kit via Weidian here (beta), or Yoopay here, and follow Lim (WeChat ID: dadan8) for updates on future workshops and events.

KEEP READING: Get Clean, Go Dirty – The Raw Truth About Composting

This post originally appeared on our sister site the beijinger.

Images: Anna Pellegrin Hartley, courtesy of OwnMade, Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Food scraps and yard waste are ideal organic materials for compost which offers a natural alternative to chemical fertilizers. So instead of throwing them away, we should use them for composting, which helps fuel plant growth and make your garden thrive.

There are many different ways to make a compost pile. If you don’t have space for an outdoor compost pile, you can compost materials indoors using a special type of bin, such as recycled takeout containers.

We invited Daniel Lim from Homegrown School, which promotes food sustainability education, and Gabby Wilson, a Year 5 student from British School of Beijing, Sanlitun, to show how to make an indoor compost pile using takeout containers. Follow Dan and Gabby along with our instructions, and learn how to grow an indoor vegetable garden. It’s free, easy to make, and good for the environment!

What You’ll Need

– Composting worms
– Three takeout containers
– A soldering iron or a sharp instrument to puncture holes
– A face mask to protect yourself from fumes released by soldering iron on plastic
– Reused plastic forks and spoons for picking up worms and scooping
– Bedding materials that are soft and moist: coco coir, black and white newsprint, recycled paper napkins
– Water
– 3-4 same-sized stones and a scoop of dirt (can be garden soil, playground sand or even aquarium sand)
– Spent coffee grounds (alternatives: pulp from juicing except citrus fruits, tea leaves)

Instructions

1. Make holes all along the bottom of the two containers and around the top of their walls. The bottom holes should be large enough for the worms to travel up and down through them. The ones around the walls are for ventilation and can be smaller.

2. Put the stones into the container without holes and stack one of the containers with holes on top of it. It should sit nicely with a gap between them.

3. Soak paper materials in water from another container, and loosely scrunch them up into a ball so that they are damp but not dripping. Fill the bottom of the worm farm with the scrunched up paper balls.

4. Grab a handful of the expanded coco coir, soak it in the water and cover the paper balls. Add a scoop of dirt and coffee grounds to the top, and mix everything up with the plastic utensils to make the bedding light and fluffy.

5. Put the worms in together with the vermicompost it came in and gently mix the vermicompost into the bedding. Cover the top of the container to keep it moist.

6. After setting it up, keep the worm farm at room temperature, and leave it for a few days to let the worms settle in. You may want to leave the container top off and shine some light to encourage the worms to burrow in. When the material at the bottom is dark and rich in color, your compost is ready to use.

Some tips
– Regular mixing or turning of the compost will help maintain the compost.
– The secret to a healthy compost pile is to maintain a balanced ratio of carbon and nitrogen. If the worm farm starts to smell bad, mix in high carbon bedding materials to balance the nitrogen.
– If your worm farm is too wet, add dry bedding materials to soak up excess moisture. If it’s compacted, use the fork to break it up.
– For how to use the worm farm, please contact Daniel (WeChat ID: dadan8) for tips. He is also offering online courses on growing indoor vegetable gardens and how to start a food-waste-to-compost production line.

This article first appeared in the beijingkids March 2019 Sustainability issue.
Photos: Uni You

The way we live, travel, and shop affects our planet daily, from unnecessary packaging to burning fossil fuels to mass production waste. But we can help create a smaller carbon footprint with better choices and by creating less trash. Simply avoiding the disposable nature of single-use plastics, wasteful “convenience” products, and cheap fast fashion and reusing items instead, or buying second hand or repairing things can make a difference for future generations. 

In the spirit of Zero Waste Month, Yew Chung International School of Beijing (YCIS, Beijing) will be hosting a family-friendly “Recycle, Reuse and Reduce ‘Re-Market'” on Saturday, June 9. Why buy new, when an array of high-quality second-hand books, clothes, toys, and furniture of great quality and great prices will be on offer?

Once you are finished shopping, YCIS, Beijing will also be offering two special workshops for anyone interested in learning about steps that you can take towards environmental protection. If you ever thought about getting into organic gardening, the afternoon will start with an informative composting workshop at 1.30pm followed by tips on “up-cycling” with your child’s school uniforms, and finally a fashion show at 3pm.

To register for the event, visit this page.

Photos: courtesy of YCIS