Turning Japanese: Bokashi

Alright, turning Japanese is probably a bit of an exaggeration, but I am incorporating a little bit of the land of the rising sun into my life; I've bought a bokashi bucket system. The Japanese are the masters of practical solutions for living in small spaces, and bokashi is touted as a paragon of food waste management for apartment-dwellers. I bought my bokashi bucket system from my favourite facilitator of reuse, Trade Me, for the bargain price of $26 (compared to the new price of around $65).

I've been feeling guilty about putting my food scraps in the rubbish since I moved into my new apartment late last year. I thought about getting a worm farm. I was excited by the prospect of looking after living creatures; my apartment building doesn't allow pets, but I was confident a worm farm wouldn't be regarded as transgressing that rule. As it turned out, worm farms aren't small, and putting one on my balcony would have impinged on our BBQ-ing and drinking wine in the sun space. So, I opted for the more compact and tidy bokashi bucket system. It fits in the cupboard under the kitchen sink, you can put almost any kind of food waste in it, and it doesn't smell - sounds perfect. I've never used bokashi before, but it seems pretty simple; put the food scraps in, squish them down, sprinkle magic Compost-Zing on top, let it ferment for a while, and voila, pickled compost stuff for the garden. I don't actually have a garden to use the compost on, so I plan to offer it to the wicked backyard gardeners of Ooooby.

I'll post an update in a few weeks to let you know whether bokashi turns out to be as brilliant a system as I hope it will be.