Compost Scoop

Author: Ellen Bell

If you have recently purchased a compost tumbler bin, let me be the first to say congratulations! You’ve just taken the first step toward aerobic composting. What is aerobic composting, you ask, and why is it so great? In this article, we’ll explain how aerobic composting works and what you need to do to get started.

There are two main types of composting, aerobic and anaerobic. Anaerobic composting basically consists of piling up a bunch of organic materials, then letting them sit and rot. Pretty gross, huh? Well truthfully, yes, it is. Anaerobic bacteria are slow and inefficient, which means that your compost pile will have to sit there for at least a year, maybe longer, before the materials at the very bottom are fully composted. Second of all, microbes that do the decaying in anaerobic composting produce methane and sulfate gasses as a byproduct, something which we humans find very offensive. If you’ve always thought of composting as a smelly and gross process, now is the time to make an important clarification: it’s anaerobic composting that’s a smelly and gross process. (more…)