What Actually Happens to Your Food Waste
- Alex Montgomery
- 6 days ago
- 3 min read
Most food waste disappears.
It leaves kitchens, cafés and workplaces in sealed bins and is taken somewhere else. Processing happens out of sight. Outcomes are abstract. Responsibility feels distant.
At Generation Soil, we built a different loop.
We collect food waste from households and small businesses across Bristol, compost it locally through the Bristol Living Compost Project, and return it to soil as living compost that feeds gardens, allotments and community growing spaces.
This is what actually happens.
1️⃣ Food waste is stabilised before it ever smells
Most food waste systems rely on rot.
That is why bins stink.
Our system starts with fermentation, using bokashi microbes to stabilise food waste in sealed buckets. Instead of breaking down anaerobically in a caddy and going slimy, the food waste is preserved, acidified, and made far easier to handle safely.
If you want the practical version, start here: Why Your Bin Stinks: Bokashi vs Food Waste Caddy (and What Actually Works) and What Is Bokashi? How Microbes Transform Food Waste into Soil.
And if you want the bigger Bristol picture: The Ultimate Guide to Food Waste Collection in Bristol.
2️⃣ Buckets are collected and swapped locally
Once food waste is fermented, it becomes a stable input to a compost system, not a hazard.
Buckets are swapped across Bristol on collection rounds. That matters because the loop stays visible.
When people can trace where their food waste goes, it stops being “something to get rid of” and starts becoming participation in a living system.
If you missed it, this post frames that shift clearly: What Happens When Food Waste Stays Local.
3️⃣ The material is composted at human scale
Fermented food waste is mixed with carbon-rich materials (like woodchip) and composted under controlled conditions.
Not to maximise speed, but to protect biology.
This is where a lot of modern waste narratives get it wrong. Composting is treated as disposal, or a throughput target. But composting is a living process, and living processes respond to care, timing and balance.
Two posts that unpack this from different angles:
If you want the full “how we do it” version: How Generation Soil Turns Food Waste Into Living Compost and Our First In-Vessel Composter: A New Chapter for Community Composting in Bristol.
4️⃣ Compost is matured, not rushed
Fresh compost is not finished compost.
After active composting, material needs time to cure and mature so it becomes something soil organisms recognise. This is where “good compost” becomes biologically complete rather than just broken down.
If you have ever bought compost that looks fine but behaves like dead material, this is usually why.
For a deeper explanation of why biology matters, read: Why Living Compost Feeds More Than Plants and Living Ground: Is Dirt Living? The Science of Living Soil.
5️⃣ It goes back to soil, not into abstraction
The point is not just that compost is produced.
The point is that nutrients return to local soil.
That changes what compost is.
It becomes infrastructure for local resilience: improving soil structure, helping gardens hold water, and rebuilding microbial life that supports plant health over time.
If you want a strong reframing of gardens as the “receiving end” of this loop: Gardens Are Infrastructure, Not a Hobby and Gardening Isn’t Radical. Disconnection Is.
Why this matters in Bristol
Keeping food waste local does three things at once:
It shortens nutrient chains
Food already travels too far. We do not need waste chains stretching further.
It makes responsibility visible and shared
People learn through practice, not perfection. See: What People Learn by Composting Together.
It builds soil health where people live
Soil health is not a nice-to-have. It connects to food quality, water resilience, biodiversity, and in the long run, human health too. If you want that bridge, read: Soil health and human health: what connects them?
Want your food waste to stay local?
If you are Bristol-based, you can join the loop through the Bristol Living Compost Project (households) or our business food waste collection service (small businesses).
And if you are composting already but something feels off, the Compost Clinic is there for practical troubleshooting.
Related reads if you want to go deeper:
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