Any ideas/experiences on rotating composters which are not plastic?

General
1

Hi all,

Been composting in clay matkas on my terrace for years now, and recently started even making leaf mould on my terrace since the last year and got a beautiful harvest of that too.

IMG_20240211_182545
IMG_20240211_182545800×600 31.4 KB

Our leaf mould setup
PXL_20240825_074034747.MP
PXL_20240825_074034747.MP1920×2550 436 KB

First harvest of our leaf mould!

My regular compost setup is stacked clay pots (Stack in pairs of two, and have two such setups).

Some observations on the composts:

  1. In the regular compost, rotating once in a while would help in slightly making the process faster. We are almost always out of space in all of our matkas.
  2. In the leaf mould setup, our simple design yielded great compost, however the leaves at the very bottom, and those on the edges (side, top) were not composted fully : the below ones due to the weight and lack of aeration I think, and the top ones because of too much aeration and lack of moisture.

So we are thinking to build a rotating composter for our home compost, to have a uniform and a bit faster compost. Some example images below of rotating composters:
image

image

We would like to make a non plastic composter which can rotate.
I would love to first try clay as that’s the best material for composting anything, but it would be a bit heavy and a bit risky of breaking to rotate, but have folks tried it?
Metal could be next. Not sure how over it would react with the wet waste/leaves over time (many years?).
Any other materials ? Wooden barrels?

Do folks have any experience/ideas on this?
Any better composting setups for wetwaste/leaf mould among the community for home/terrace setup which are not plastic?

Thanks! :slight_smile:

3 Likes
2

A DIY idea would be to look for junked washing machine drums which are stainless steel. Two of them with a stand ?

The size would be quite big and occupy a lot of space.

1 Like
3

Hey, we at Rizzome (www.rizzome.com) make rotary drum continuous composters made with stainless steel 304 material (highly rust-resistant). We mostly sell large size composter for poultry farmers to compost their daily farm waste. We have made small composters too, but they were not really our target market until now.

cc013r
cc013r1920×1440 79.9 KB

Features:

  1. Made of durable rust-resistant material

  2. Works in the FIFO method, it has a different input and output side. So we need not batch the waste. Add the waste as and when you have it, just maintain a daily average.

  3. The composter comes with a sieve at the output side that separates the composted and the uncomposted. You could reintroduce the uncomposted to the input side if it’s a compostable item.

  4. It takes a very negligible amount of power for timed rotation (for continuous aeration), but if you wish, we can make it hand rotation.

  5. The composter is shipped flat-packed; you can have fun fixing it while saving on shipping costs.

Note: We are currently raising our first round of funding to set up in-house manufacturing and scale production.

If you are interested in the product or the company, feel free to reach out.

Best regards,
Hemantha P D
[email protected]
Founder at Rizzome Sustainable Solutions Pvt Ltd