Not to get all high-school-term-paper on you, but let’s start with a definition. What is composting? Per the United States Environmental Protection Agency, composting is:

“a controlled, aerobic (oxygen-required) process that converts organic materials into a nutrient-rich soil amendment or mulch through natural decomposition. The end product is compost – a dark, crumbly, earthy-smelling material. Microorganisms feed on the materials added to the compost pile during the composting process. They use carbon and nitrogen to grow and reproduce, water to digest materials, and oxygen to breathe.”

Don’t let that science-y explanation put you off. Basically, composting is the art of mixing together select kitchen scraps with certain types of yard waste, so that it gets broken down by little creepy crawlies into usable soil.

All of kencko’s packaging materials are either recyclable or compostable. The latter category includes our boxes, which are made from unbleached wood or sugarcane pulp, and our film packets, made from a biodegradable plant-based film. Certified home compostable materials, like our new film smoothie & gumdrop packets, are tested to ensure that they break down in normal backyard composting conditions. 

There are several ways you can compost at home, so before you start casually dumping those eggshells and banana peels off your back porch, read on to find out which method might be right for you.

Backyard composting

When you close your eyes and think of composting – something we here at kencko do quite often! – this is likely what comes to mind: a box or pile out on the lawn where you discard your compostables. Here’s how you can get one started!

1. Pick out an area in your yard that can be accessed easily on all sides and that drains well. Then set up an enclosure of some sort so the pile maintains its form – posts and chicken wire work well, but wood or cinder blocks are also fine. If you’d prefer, you can pick up a rotatable plastic tumbler or barrel designed for home composting.

2. Start saving two types of organic materials: green stuff (which provides nitrogen) and brown stuff (which provides carbon). Examples of nitrogen-rich materials include fruit and veggie scraps, grass and leaf trimmings, coffee grounds and coffee filters, tea bags (with staples removed), and eggshells. For carbon, think of dried leaves, twigs and branches, shredded brown paper bags, cardboard (hello, kencko boxes!), wood chips, and home-compostable film like what your kencko smoothies come in. Unless you want to run out to your compost pile every time you cut an onion, you might want a small temporary container in your kitchen – if you are concerned about odor, you can buy a lidded container, or keep it in your fridge or freezer.

3. Start your pile off with about six inches of twigs and other carbon-based materials to ensure the pile can drain. The next layer should be more green. Then alternate brown and green as you add to it.

4. To maintain your compost pile, you’ll need to periodically turn it using a garden fork. You want it to be a little bit moist, so add water if its consistency becomes dried out. If it’s smelly, that likely means it’s too damp, so add more dry yard waste to even it out, and toss everything together.

5. Time to play the waiting game. This probably won’t shock you, but composting is not a pastime for adrenaline junkies. It can take anywhere from three months to two years for most household kitchen and yard waste to rot down into really good compost, depending on the climate where you live and the overall efficiency of your compost heap.

6. And when you’re finally ready to harvest some compost for use as soil, you should give it about a month with no movement. You can extract the oldest compost from the pile to give it time to “cure,” while still working with the rest of the pile.

Worm composting

For those more interested in eyeless little creepy-crawlies or who don’t have a yard at their disposal, don’t worry, there’s a unique form of composting that might be right up your alley: vermicomposting, or worm composting.

1. Time to write a sentence we’ve always wanted to: first, you need to procure a “worm bin.” You can buy a ready-to-use kit, or fashion your own out of plastic or untreated wood – just be sure there are drainage holes drilled into the bottom and air holes on the top. And to avoid pooling worm liquids (yum!), put another bin or receptacle under the bin.

2. For best results, keep your worm bin indoors, out of direct sunlight. If you have to put it outdoors, insulate it well. Worm bin composting works best between 59º and 77º.

3. Now you’ll need three things: bedding (enough lightly dampened shredded newspaper to fill your bin about halfway) with a little bit of soil; food (the sorts of compostable materials listed above as suitable for outdoor composting); and worms (you should purchase some “red wrigglers,” the Cadillac of worms - don’t just go pluck up the first worms you see outdoors).

4. When starting out, establish the bedding first, then place your worms on top of that layer. Once they have burrowed in and made a home, you can begin to introduce the food scraps, then add another little layer of bedding on top. The worms will eat a lot and reproduce quickly so over time, you can add more compostables – but be sure what’s already there has been eaten first.

5. There’s less research out there on whether or not a worm composting setup is able to accommodate and break down home compostable film like kencko’s, but there is at least anecdotal evidence that it might be worth a try.

Community or municipal composting

And of course, if you’re firmly anti-worm, yardless, or just don’t want to do the mildly dirty work of making your own dirt from organic matter, there’s a chance you can still dispose of your compostables in an environmentally sensitive way.

 Composting not only helps us replenish soil – which is essential for food production, healthy ecosystems, and water retention – but it can even help us cut down on carbon emissions.

Plenty of cities and towns offer municipal composting services, and some larger ones like San Francisco, Denver, and Seattle even offer curbside compost pickup. It might not be quite that convenient where you live, but you still may be able to contact a local community garden – programs like these often compost on-site and are in need of kitchen waste!

Items to avoid for all home composting

No matter what type of composting your doing, to avoid attracting pests or interfering with the ideal chemical makeup of your compost, you’re gonna want to keep the following items out of your home compost pile:

• Meat or fish products

• Dairy

• Pet waste

• Fats

• Stickers from produce

• Glossy paper or cardboard

• Weeds

• Diseased plants

• Plants treated with herbicide

If you go the municipal composting route, check with the program provider for exact details on what can and can’t be accommodated at collection.

More composting resources and reading

Municipal composting site locator 

 Worm bin starter kit, from, yep, worm bucket dot com 

 The Farmer’s Almanac guide to composting includes some helpful videos embedded within