How Our System Works
This is what happens to your food scraps after it leaves your kitchen.
It follows a simple, local loop:
Food → Compost → Soil → Food
Everything happens in Bristol.
1. Collection
This is where the loop begins.
At home, you collect your food scraps in a sealed bucket using bokashi to keep things:
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Clean
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Odour-free
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Easy to manage indoors
Simply sprinkle bokashi bran as you go.
When your bucket is full, request a swap.
We collect full buckets across Bristol and leave you a clean one.
2. Fermentation
This prepares food waste for composting
Inside the bucket, food waste is fermented using beneficial microbes.
This process:
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Prevents rotting
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Reduces smell
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Starts the breakdown
It’s similar to how foods like sauerkraut or kimchi are made.
3. Local Processing
Everything stays within Bristol.
Collected material is taken to local composting sites.
It is mixed with materials like woodchip to create the right balance.
Nothing is exported.
Nutrients stay where they came from.
4. Composting
This is where biology does the work.
Microbes and fungi break the material down over time.
The pile heats up, cools down, and transforms.
This stage builds the structure of compost.
5. Maturation
This is where compost becomes living.
The compost is left to settle and stabilise.
Fungal networks develop.
Nutrients balance.
Biology becomes more complex.
This is what turns it into living compost.
6. Use
This is where the loop closes.
Finished compost is used across Bristol:
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Gardens
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Allotments
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Community growing spaces
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Market gardens
It supports soil by improving structure, water retention, and biological activity.
This is what happens to your food waste
It doesn’t disappear.
It becomes soil.
And that soil supports life across the city.
Why This Matters
Most food waste leaves cities.
When it does, nutrients are lost.
Over time, soil becomes depleted.
This system does the opposite.
It keeps nutrients local.
It rebuilds soil.
It creates a loop that continues.
A System That Works Over Time
This isn’t instant.
Good compost takes time.
Different materials are always moving through different stages.
The system runs continuously.
If you'd like to take part
This system is already running across Bristol.
You can be part of it.
testimonial
Turning my food waste into the best compost I've ever used! Couldn't be happier 💚