Todd Veri - Better Bokashi: …Better Earth

Bokashi (pronounced bo-KAW-she) is a Japanese term meaning fermented organic matter. It usually refers to a method of indoor composting that uses beneficial micro-organisms (MyCrobz) to quickly ferment any type of food waste. This includes fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, small bones, bread, dairy, soiled paper, cooked foods, and more.

Indoor Bokashi composting is a relatively new take on the traditional type of outdoor composting (also called Bokashi) practiced in south-east Asia. Todays Bokashi is a simple 2-stage process that (when done correctly) produces no gas, heat, or rotten smells. It does not attract unwanted visitors such as vermin, maggots, or even bears, making it suitable for almost any situation that produces food waste.

Bokashi is great for moms, dads, teachers, kids, grandparents, office managers, chefs, gardeners, and the environment. It is one of the easiest ways to act locally (and think globally) with regard to reducing your carbon footprint. And its fun!

Bokashi is simply the best composting method for our time.

Benefits of Bokashi

Your reason for coming to love Bokashi will depend on your situation: a grandmother in a condo, a small cafe owner, or a family on a farm will all have different realities. The point is, if you are at all environmentally aware and consider all the composting options, you will come to love Bokashi (perhaps just out of necessity) because it is easy to learn, simple to do, and is hands down the best way to recycle food waste. Here are some of the benefits:

• Bokashi composting preserves all the nutrients in your food waste and adds MyCrobz and numerous beneficial compounds to the soil
• You can convert food waste to soil in as little as 30 days
• If you fully utilize your fermented waste you will never need to buy fertilizer for your garden again
• You wont have rotten smells or ugly messes to clean up
• Fermented waste does not attract vermin, house flies, skunks, or bears
• Bokashi composting does not create greenhouse gases or heat during either stage of the processthis is unique in the world of compost!
• Bokashi is suitable to any size household, school, office, business, or event
• Bokashi reduces the volume and smell of the garbage you produce
• Great for do-it-yourselfers, as you can use recycled items to make your Bokashi Bucket and you can make your own Bokashi Starter
• Bokashi is a great teaching aid for science class
• Its eye opening: you get to see the actual amount of food waste you produce (eye-opening)
• Recycling food waste helps the environment--and that makes you feel good!
• Its simply the easiest and most environmentally friendly way to recycle food waste

The concept of Bokashiculturing micro-organisms to ferment waste into fertilizerlikely has its roots somewhere in south-east Asia. No one seems to know for sure.

The first modern promotion of Bokashi composting came with the Nature Farming movement of Japan and Korea in the 1930s. Nature Farming is similar to the Biodynamic movement that took place in Europe around the same time. Both were early examples of sustainable organic farming systems.

The Bokashi practiced by these nature farmers was Traditional Bokashi, a method of outdoor composting that used easily cultured IMs or Indigenous Microorganisms (naturally occurring lactic acid bacteria and yeast) to quickly turn animal and agricultural wastes into an organic fertilizer. Heat and smells were created in this process, but the temperature was maintained at a lower rate than conventional composting and thus more nutrients were preserved, along with enzymes, amino acids, and many of the microbes.

Traditional Bokashi differed from todays Bokashi in two critical ways: it used IMs instead of EM and it was not an anaerobic (air-tight) process. EM (Effective Micro-organisms) are the combination of beneficial micro-organisms that were accidentally discovered in the 1980s by a soil scientist in Japan.