You know, when my granddaughter Emma started talking about all the food waste Americans generate – something like 80 billion pounds a year, she told me – I felt this familiar pang of guilt. Here I was, living alone in this big house, still buying groceries like I was feeding a family and tossing half of it when it went bad. The trash can was constantly full of vegetable peels, coffee grounds, leftovers I'd forgotten about. Just contributing to that mountain of waste she was so worried about.
I'd tried traditional composting years ago when my husband was alive. We set up a bin in the backyard, started tossing kitchen scraps out there, but honestly? It was a disaster. The smell attracted raccoons who'd knock the whole thing over and scatter garbage across the yard. Our neighbor Mrs. Peterson complained about fruit flies. The whole pile just sat there, not really decomposing properly, more like rotting. After a few months we gave up and went back to throwing everything in the trash.
But Emma kept talking about climate change, about how her generation was going to inherit all these environmental problems, and I couldn't shake the feeling that I needed to do better. So when my friend Carol mentioned something called bokashi composting at our book club meeting, I figured I'd give it a shot. Carol's one of those people who's always trying new things – she took up pottery at seventy, started learning Spanish on her tablet, grows vegetables on her apartment balcony even though she's got arthritis in both hands.
"It's this Japanese thing," she said, "you just put your food scraps in a bucket with some special bran stuff and let it ferment. No smell, no mess, works in tiny spaces." Sounded too good to be true, but I was desperate enough to try anything.
Turns out bokashi means "fermented organic matter" in Japanese, which makes perfect sense when you think about it. The Japanese have been fermenting things forever – soy sauce, miso, sake. Why not kitchen scraps too? The process uses these beneficial microorganisms that break down organic matter without oxygen, which is completely different from regular composting that needs air circulation and all that turning and mixing I could never get right.
What sold me was how simple it looked. You get this special bran that's inoculated with the microorganisms, sprinkle it on your food scraps in an airtight container, press everything down to squeeze out air pockets, seal it up and wait. That's it. No turning, no monitoring temperature, no worrying about the right balance of green and brown materials like traditional composting requires.
I ordered a bokashi starter kit online for about forty dollars. Came with two five-gallon buckets – one with a spigot at the bottom, one regular lid – and a bag of the bokashi bran. The bran looks like wheat bran mixed with sawdust, smells faintly sweet and earthy. Instructions said you could compost basically anything from your kitchen: vegetable peels, fruit scraps, coffee grounds, even leftover cooked food, dairy, and meat. That last part amazed me because those things are absolute no-nos for regular composting.
Started small, just collecting my daily kitchen waste in a bowl like my mother used to do. Coffee grounds from my morning pot, banana peels, the ends of onions I'd trim off, wilted lettuce I'd bought with good intentions but never used. At the end of each day, I'd dump everything into the bokashi bucket, sprinkle a handful of bran over it, press it down with an old potato masher to eliminate air bubbles, then close the lid tight.
The pressing down part felt weird at first – like I was making kitchen scrap lasagna or something. But it's crucial because the fermentation needs to happen without oxygen. Any air pockets can lead to the wrong kind of decomposition, the smelly rotting kind instead of the controlled fermentation you want.
Within a week, I started noticing changes. When I opened the bucket to add more scraps, instead of the gross rotting smell I expected, there was this tangy, slightly pickled odor. Not unpleasant at all, actually reminded me of sauerkraut or kimchi. The food scraps weren't really breaking down visibly yet, but they had this preserved look, like they were being pickled rather than rotting.
After about two weeks, I noticed liquid collecting at the bottom of the bucket – what the instructions called "bokashi tea." This stuff is supposedly amazing fertilizer, but you have to dilute it heavily because it's quite acidic. I started draining it off every few days and mixing it with water to feed my houseplants. The ratio they recommend is one part bokashi tea to one hundred parts water, which seems extreme, but I didn't want to burn my plants' roots.
My African violets, which had been looking pretty sad and droopy, perked up noticeably within a couple weeks of getting diluted bokashi tea. New leaves sprouting, flowers blooming more abundantly than they had in months. Could've been coincidence, but I was impressed enough to keep going.
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The first bucket filled up after about three weeks. According to the instructions, you seal it completely and let it ferment for another two weeks while you start filling the second bucket. This rotation system means you always have one bucket fermenting while you're actively filling the other.
When I finally opened that first fully fermented bucket, I was amazed. The food scraps had this preserved, almost pickled appearance. Still recognizable as kitchen waste, but clearly transformed. No foul smell, just that tangy fermented odor. The material is called "pre-compost" because it's not finished compost yet – it needs to be buried in soil where it'll complete the decomposition process and feed the microorganisms that plants depend on.
Since I don't have a big garden anymore – just some flower beds around the house and containers on the back patio – I started burying small amounts of the pre-compost in my flower beds. You're supposed to bury it at least eight inches deep and not plant directly on top of it for two weeks while it finishes breaking down. I was skeptical about whether this would actually work, but my roses and day lilies went absolutely crazy that summer. Best blooms I'd had in years.
The whole process took some getting used to. Had to remember to sprinkle the bran every time I added scraps, had to press everything down properly, had to drain the liquid regularly. But it became routine pretty quickly, and honestly, it felt good to be doing something constructive with waste that would otherwise just sit in a landfill somewhere.
What surprised me most was how much it changed my awareness of food waste. When you're actively composting everything, you start noticing exactly how much you're throwing away. Those half-eaten apples, the vegetables that went bad before I used them, the leftovers I forgot about until they were moldy. Seeing all that waste go into the bokashi bucket made me more conscious about meal planning and actually using what I buy.
I've been doing this for almost two years now, and my regular trash output has decreased significantly. Instead of two big bags of garbage each week, I'm down to maybe one small bag. Most of my organic waste gets transformed into something useful instead of just taking up space in a landfill and producing methane as it rots.
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Had a few problems along the way, of course. Sometimes I didn't press the scraps down well enough and got some nasty black mold instead of the beneficial white mold that's supposed to appear. Had to toss a couple batches and start over. Learned that chopping larger scraps into smaller pieces helps the fermentation work more efficiently. Also discovered that you really do need to keep the bucket completely airtight – even a slightly loose lid can mess up the whole process.
The bokashi bran isn't cheap – costs about twenty dollars for a bag that lasts me roughly two months. But considering how much I was spending on garbage bags and how guilty I felt about all that waste, it's worth the investment. Plus you can actually make your own bran if you're ambitious enough, though I haven't tried that yet.
What I love most about bokashi composting is how it connects me back to something my mother's generation did naturally – not wasting food, finding ways to reuse everything, being resourceful instead of just throwing things away. My mother saved everything: glass jars for storage, paper bags for kindling, potato peels for the neighbor's chickens. This feels like returning to that mindset, but with modern knowledge about fermentation and soil health.
Emma thinks it's "so cool" that I'm doing this, which makes me happy. She's studying environmental science now and always sends me articles about composting and soil carbon sequestration. Makes me feel like I'm finally contributing to solutions instead of just being part of the problem.
If you're living in a small space and traditional composting seems impossible, I'd really recommend trying bokashi. It works in apartments, doesn't smell bad, doesn't attract pests, and transforms waste into something genuinely useful. Takes a bit of getting used to, but once you establish the routine, it's actually quite satisfying. There's something deeply gratifying about <a href="https://zeroemissionjourney.com/the-road-to-composting-turning-waste-into-resources/"><a href="https://zeroemissionjourney.com/the-road-to-composting-turning-waste-into-resources/">turning garbage into fertilizer</a></a>, about participating in this ancient process of transformation and renewal.
My neighbor kids sometimes ask what I'm doing when they see me burying the pre-compost in my flower beds. I tell them I'm feeding the soil so it can feed the plants, which is basically what we should all be doing instead of sending our organic waste to sit in landfills. Simple as that.
Donna’s retired but not slowing down. She spends her days gardening, reusing, and finding peace in simpler living. Her writing blends reflection with realism—gentle reminders that sustainability starts at home, in daily habits and quiet choices.
