As I find myself in an apartment in NYC I decided to trial the bokashi composting systems. A system designed for indoors where space and waste management opportunities are limited. It also eliminates the need to separate your food waste and eliminates unpleasant odors. Basically microorganisms incoculated into molasses and then coated on rice bran, dried that you spinkle over layers of food scraps etc... in a sealed container. You can buy the whole kit for aound $50 USD with a nice manufactured pour spot container or purchase the bokashi and make your own bucket. There are even recipes for making your own bokashi. All these steps bring the price down but ultimately you are still buying in the organisms. If you use EM1 its a propriety blend of organisms developed in Japan, there seems to be imitation brands on the market as well. I decided to go with the original for my trial.

I also made my own pour spout container out of a 5 gallon (20 liter) bucket. Since there is considerable space below the pour spout for liquid to remain I added a disc of left-over styrafoam sealed with silicon to capture all the juice which can be used as fertilizer like worm juice. 

So far i've filled up about half of the 5 gallon container in the span of about 2 weeks. And as long as the lid is closed there is no odor at all. Even with the lid off there is mostly a fermented/pickled odor. I wouldn't call it pleasant but far better then what would be happening without the use of the bokashi. There is an expense involved in continually purchashing the bokashi powder so not an ideal system but one that certainly has its uses. I think urban/ suburban applications where you don't have the space or resources to effectvily manage your own waste or comminity gardens where it eliminates the need to separate food waste.

When the container is full you are meant to seal it for 2 weeks then either bury it in the ground or feed it to your worm farm. I think this two step process is a pretty good system for apartment dwellers who want to turn their food waste into fertilizer. Now to set up the worm farm to get ready for the next step.

The original effecto microorganism blend

foam insert to capture all liquid