A Letter from Larry Green

A Superior Alternative to Composting:

For Gardeners, Home owners, Farmers, and Industrial Practitioners in Organic Waste Processing

Much has been written and published on the subject of composting, gardening, greenhouse gases and global warming.  Waste is the common denominator linking these topics.

We produce an enormous amount of waste that must in some clever way be handled and disposed of.  Food waste and yard waste, rich in energy that could be more efficiently processed is carelessly deposited in cans at the curb side and sent to either the landfill or for composting.  We attempt to compost our accumulated yard waste in smelly piles.  We employ a lot of people to carry off trash and handle it for us.  We use a lot of machines, fuel and land to accomplish the task.  It’s all wasted.  There is a better way to handle waste that is simple and fast.

Bokashi fermenting involves simply mixing microbes in with the waste in closed containers that exclude oxygen. You don’t need to be a biologist, microbiologist, or chemist to make it work.  The highly evolved microbes in a Bokashi culture mix with their enzymes begin immediately to convert waste that would have putrefied had it been left alone into a valued product that can be put back to the soil where it will do a lot of good.

Even though Bokashi fermenting in one form or another has been in practice for hundreds of years and was popularized in Japan after 1970 with the coined term EM, it remains today hardly noticed by the general public or industrial practitioners involved in waste disposal.

This is going to change quickly.  Why?  It is far more efficient and cost a lot less to ferment the organic waste in a bokashi fermenting system relative to any other process now in practice.

Bokashi fermenting can be done at home by anyone with the culture powder and a fermenting system.  It can be scaled to handle virtually any volume of waste simply and requires a lot less equipment and space.  It also, and perhaps most importantly on an industrial scale has the great advantage that greenhouse gases are miniscule relative to composting operations.  It is the nearly perfect solution to sustainable farming practices.

I have organized and pieced together a number of photos, observations and thoughts that I hope will make you realize there are better ways to handle waste.  Our old ways of composting are primitive and clumsy and impractical.  We need to change.  We need to clean up the air and water and get away from our dependence on petro fuels and fertilizers.  At the heart of the matter is a path to truly sustainable agricultural practices and I hope you will find the journey as fascinating and exciting as it is for me.

Larry Green
