A Week Inside a Community Compost System

Community composting is often described in simple terms.

Food waste goes in. Compost comes out.

But between those two points is a system of care, timing and attention that is rarely seen.

This post follows a typical week inside Generation Soil’s community compost system, showing what actually happens to food waste when it stays local and is composted at human scale.

Not as a step-by-step manual, but as a way of making the work visible.

Day 1: Collection, bucket swaps, and arrival

On bucket swap days, we collect the full sealable tubs from members who have indicated they need a replacement. A clean bucket is left behind, and bokashi bran is topped up where needed.

This happens across Bristol, with households, gardens, cafés and community spaces in neighbourhoods including Bedminster, Southville, St Pauls, Easton, St Werburghs, Redland and surrounding areas taking part. The collected food waste is then transported to our central composting hub in Bedminster, keeping nutrients within the city and keeping the work visible.

If you want a simple overview of the wider system, How Generation Soil Turns Food Waste Into Living Compost is the best place to start.

These buckets are not anonymous. Each one represents a household or organisation choosing to take part rather than dispose.

If you’re considering joining, the practical details live here: Bristol Living Compost Project.

Why bokashi matters before composting even begins

Most of the food waste we collect has already been stabilised through bokashi fermentation.

Bokashi does two quiet but important things.

First, it reduces the problems that make food waste hard to handle in real life: smells, flies, leaks, and the general sense that it is becoming something you want to get away from.

Second, it begins a controlled biological shift that makes the next stages of composting more reliable at community scale.

Bokashi fermentation is not the end point. It is a preparation stage that helps the later composting process stay aerobic, balanced, and easier to manage.

If you’re new to this method, start with What Is Bokashi? How Microbes Transform Food Waste into Soil, and keep What Can and Can’t I Bokashi? handy for the everyday questions.

If bokashi is mainly on your mind because your kitchen bin is unpleasant, Why Your Bin Stinks: Bokashi vs Food Waste Caddy (and What Actually Works) is a helpful read.

Day 2: Creating the right conditions inside the Ridan

When buckets arrive, they are opened and combined with carbon-rich material, primarily local wood shavings.

We work at roughly a one-to-one volume balance of food waste (nitrogen rich) and wood-based carbon (carbon rich), adjusting based on feel and feedback rather than rigid rules.

This mix goes into our in-vessel composting unit (a Ridan Pro system). The point of using an enclosed, manually operated vessel is not to “industrialise” composting. It is to hold the key composting conditions steady when you are working with many buckets of mixed food waste from across a city.

Composting will happen wherever the basic ingredients are present: carbon, nitrogen, air and water. The difficulty is that at community scale those conditions can drift quickly if you cannot keep moisture, airflow and mixing in balance.

Inside the vessel, the mix is turned daily using a handle-driven system that aerates and blends the material. As microorganisms (including bacteria and fungi) break down the organic matter, heat is generated naturally. This warmth supports active decomposition and helps excess moisture leave the system as steam.

The system is unpowered. No electricity is used to “make” heat. The warmth is a by-product of living processes doing what they do when conditions are right.

If you want more background on why tempo and conditions matter in living systems, Why Living Systems Break When We Rush Them is worth reading alongside this.

Reading the material: smell, moisture, texture, temperature

Compost gives feedback constantly, if you know how to listen.

Moisture and airflow

Too wet and air is excluded. Anaerobic conditions creep in and smells sharpen.

Too dry and microbial activity slows. Breakdown becomes hesitant and patchy.

Smell

Sharp, sour or putrid smells usually signal imbalance, excess moisture, or a lack of oxygen.

Earthy smells suggest stability.

Temperature

Temperature is also part of the feedback loop.

A steady warmth tells us microbial activity is underway. Sudden spikes or drops suggest the mixture needs adjusting.

Heat is information, not a target.

This is one of the advantages of working at a scale where people can still observe the material directly. The system stays responsive rather than forced.

A related way we describe this practice is in Why Living Compost Starts With Listening, Not Fixing: Lessons From Bristol’s Soil.

Day 3–5: Active composting and daily turning

As the mix settles in the vessel, microbial activity increases. The community of bacteria and fungi expands and shifts as the food waste and carbon are broken down.

During this phase:

• temperatures typically rise into an active range

• the mix changes texture as it becomes more uniform

• excess moisture is driven off gradually

• daily turning keeps oxygen moving through the material

Turning is sometimes misunderstood as a way to speed composting up.

In our system it is primarily about maintaining balanced conditions:

• oxygen stays available

• moisture is redistributed

• the mix remains consistent enough for decomposition to proceed evenly

• anaerobic pockets are avoided

This is care work. It is repetitive and physical, and it matters.

If you’re interested in what this kind of shared practice teaches people, What People Learn by Composting Together connects the practical work to the human outcomes.

Day 6–7: The end of “hot” and the beginning of curing

By the end of the first week, the material coming out of the vessel looks recognisably composted.

But it is not finished.

What emerges at this stage is still biologically active. It requires a curing period where the intensity drops and the longer processes of stabilisation and maturation can unfold.

Curing is quieter work, but it is not optional.

This phase allows:

• microbial communities to settle into a more stable balance

• fungal networks to develop

• remaining acidity from earlier stages to dissipate

• nutrients to become more plant-available over time

• soil organisms to begin recognising the material as habitat, not disturbance

This is one reason compost quality varies so much across different systems. Material can look “done” long before it is truly mature.

If you’re looking for guidance on what to look for in finished compost, Best Compost Suppliers in South West England (and What to Look For) is a useful reference point.

And if you want living compost for a growing space, this is the practical route: Living Compost.

Why community scale changes what composting can be

At this scale, composting is not hidden infrastructure.

People can see where their food waste goes. They can visit the site. They can touch the compost and watch it change.

That visibility changes participation.

Smell becomes information rather than something to fear. Compost becomes familiar rather than mysterious. Questions shift from “is this disgusting?” to “what does the system need?”

Understanding grows through involvement.

If you want to see how this shows up in member experience, What Our Members Say About Bokashi Composting in Bristol is the clearest place to hear it in other people’s words.

And if you want a wider systems view of why locality matters, What Happens When Food Waste Stays Local is a good companion to this post.

What this week represents

A single week in a compost system contains many loops.

Food waste becomes compost.

Compost becomes soil.

Soil supports plants.

Plants feed people.

People return nutrients.

Nothing here is abstract.

It is ordinary work, done carefully.

A related reflection, from a different angle, is Gardening Isn’t Radical. Disconnection Is.

Keeping the system visible

Community composting is not just about managing food waste.

It is about keeping biological processes visible, local and relational.

When food waste stays close, responsibility is shared and learning is continuous.

The system works because people can see it, feel it, and take part.

If you want to take part directly, the simplest starting point is Bristol Living Compost Project. If you’re coming with a specific compost or soil problem to solve, Compost Clinic is designed for that kind of practical troubleshooting.