Commercial "foodcycler" devices - do they do more harm than good?
Hello Tildes,
I've been doing bokashi composting for pretty much all my vegetable and fruit scraps since last year. Lately, I've been wanting to level up my game and recycle meat scraps and chicken/fish bones as well. That's how I came across these "foodcycler" devices. They basically chop up and dry food scraps in a sealed container. I assume it works much like how industrial composting machines work, except it's scaled way down. At around 300-400 dollars, they're certainly not cheap, and probably generate a lot of greenhouse gasses during the manufacturing process. What's more is, every time you run a cycle, it has to run for 4-8 hours, though the manufacturer says the device is "energy conscious."
I'm trying to assess whether I'll do more harm than good by buying one of these things to convert more of my food scraps. My ultimate goal is to try many different ways to recycle food waste and try to get my friends to try it out as well. Some of them have already shown interest in bokashi composting, but none has actually tried it out (too much work).
Do you think commercial "foodcycler" devices do more harm than good? How should we go about evaluating this?
Edit: I've asked this question on many different places, and it looks like the general consensus is there's no strong need for something like this unless you live in apartments, in a city/town that does not collect food waste. Some believe recycling food waste via the more traditional methods (e.g. bokashi, vermicomposting) would yield better results because the foodcycler would dry up and kill a lot of the bacterial presence, though I believe the dried up scraps can be somewhat "revived" by mixing them in wet soil. Nobody seems to be able to definitively tell whether using the foodcycler would be a net positive or negative, because there's no way to verify its manufacturing process. I may do an experiment on how much power it draws if I get my hands on one in the future.
If you're trying to be as environmentally conscious as possible then IMO you need to heavily optimize for CO2 over landfill space. Throwing away a little bit of potentially compostable bones/meat adds essentially no extra carbon to the atmosphere. As long as your waste is getting responsibly handled then it's not causing any problems on the scale of climate change.
Great point! I view what's going to ultimately "solve" the climate problem at a fundamental level is a series of changes in our daily lives. Our worldview needs to change, along with our lifestyle. Recycling food waste is EASY to do and easy to replicate, and it's a practical step toward achieving near-zero or total-zero waste lifestyle. In short, I see it as a good way to start a ripple where other people can join in, and it also helps with CO2 emissions (well, maybe not when people start buying expensive machines to recycle their food scraps, hence the post) as well as reducing plastic waste.
I haven't tried composting with bokashi, but I've been reading about it for a while. The bins just seem a bit pricey for what they are, and i've been debating trying to make one myself or just pull the trigger and buy one.
But, I actually use the bokashi bran as a soil amendment to add effective microbes to my soil for my plants. From my understanding you can compost meat and bones with bokashi, they just take longer to fully compost. Have you tried it?
I wonder how effective it would be to pre-compost meat/bones in a bokashi bin and then throw them in a worm bin to compost them faster. Or you could probably just bury the bones after running them through the bokashi bin and just let them do their thing. Once fermented, you shouldn't have to worry about pests trying to go after them.
Never heard of a food cycler before, and it seems interesting. The obvious drawback over something like bokashi is that it uses electricity instead of microbes to break down the material. Also the end product with bokashi or regular composting seems more valuable to me as it's full of beneficial microorganisms. The foodcycler seems like it just dehydrates and compresses the waste.
So while they seem interesting, my gut says they probably aren't that necessary.
The way I do bokashi composting is, I chop up food scraps (manually or using a food processor), put them in a bottle (plastic or glass), add bokashi bran, shake, let sit for about a week, then mix in soil. It's been working amazingly well and I didn't have to buy anything but a bag of bokashi bran, which I hear can be made at home as well. I have yet to try with meat and bones because I've heard they're much more likely to attract bugs and animals, and apparently the smell could get unbearable for those who compost indoors. I will probably try it out in the near future, though, since I have a small backyard.
I agree that it's probably not ideal or necessary for someone like us, but I'm wondering if my bougie engineer friends will find it in themselves to reuse their food waste if they can just dump it in the foodcycler. i can't go around recommending it if it causes more harm than good, though. I wish we have a proper framework with which to evaluate whether something will be a net positive for the environment or not.
Thanks for your feedback :)