Breathalyze your compost!

Where would composting be without microbes? We rely totally on this teeming hoard of invisible bugs to convert our waste into a more useful range of less polluting products. Over the years our understanding of this process has increased enormously and we can now manage these creatures to improve the efficiency of the composting process.

Because nearly all living creatures consume oxygen and produce carbon dioxide (we call this respiration), we can "breathalyze" compost and learn directly about the microbe population responsible. The more active an organism is the more rapidly it breathes. This can be seen during the initial most active thermophilic phase of composting which then declines during maturation - a less mature compost will consume more oxygen and produce more carbon dioxide than a more mature compost. We are now entering the era in which measuring the respiration of these microbes provides us with nearly all the information we need to determine when the process is complete and how good the finished product will be.

WRAP and others in the UK are currently addressing the problem of how best to measure this respiration? In the US they are some way ahead of the UK with the easy to use range of Solvita test kits. The tests all involve subjecting your soil or compost to a painless 4 hour breathalyzer test!

The big advantage of such a kit is that it can be used on site by non-experts. Where compost is concerned, this must surely represent the way forward if we are to produce a quality controlled and marketable end product without the time and cost penalty of frequent laboratory testing.

If you are interested in " breathalyzing " your soil or compost to check its health - click here