Home composting of organic waste - part 1: effect of home composter design

Bijaya K. Adhikari, Anne Trémier, José Martinez and Suzelle Barrington

International Journal of Environmental Technology and Management, 2012, vol. 15, issue 3/4/5/6, 417-437

Abstract: Worldwide, health and environmental considerations encourage landfill diversion of the organic fraction (OW) of municipal solid wastes, through alternative such as home composting. Of poor sanitation, and trace element and toxic hydrocarbon content (PAH) documentation, this study compared against a laboratory composter (LR), the performance (temperature regime and compost quality) of four 300 to 400 L home composting systems (HC), namely the Plastic (P) and Wood (W) Bins, the Rotary Drum (RD) and the Ground Pile (GP). All were batch loaded with the same food waste (FW) and yard trimmings (YT) mixture for uniform testing. The P and GP performed best in terms of temperature regime, followed by W and LR, while all demonstrated similar dry and organic matter and chemical oxygen demand except for RD with a higher dry matter because of poor aeration. All composts respected regulatory pathogen/parasite counts, trace element and PAH levels.

Keywords: organic waste; home composters; compost quality; MSW; municipal solid waste; composter design; composting; solid waste management; waste disposal. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=49238 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ids:ijetma:v:15:y:2012:i:3/4/5/6:p:417-437

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Environmental Technology and Management from Inderscience Enterprises Ltd
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sarah Parker ().