Bokashi

He says:

The Seymour household has recently become a zero organic waste establishment. We were using a worm bin to compost most of our food wastes, but this system couldn't compost any meat/dairy/oils. It was nice because we could keep it indoors, but since it was made out of huge Rubbermaid tubs it took up a lot of space. Our new rental duplex is significantly smaller than our previous house so the worms had to be moved outside. This was fine during the spring/summer/fall but come winter we'd have a bunch of frozen earthworms.

I found a different system for composting using microbes instead of worms. It's called bokashi. The microbes are delivered to the food by inoculated wheat bran. You can buy this stuff premade, but it's simple enough to make at home by fermenting rice water (which Abby was unaware of) then using that to ferment milk (which Abby didn't like) then using that to ferment wheat bran (which Abby really didn't like). I kept the fermenting wheat bran sealed and under our bed. It didn't smell until Abby accidentally opened it one day. She thought it smelled like the worst thing ever. I thought it smelled like sour barbecue.

Using the wheat bran, we can essentially pickle any type of food waste (except uncooked meat - for health reasons) in an airtight bucket. There's virtually no smell associated with it at this point, far less than the fermenting wheat bran or even a bin full of worms, and the whole process is done in as little as two weeks. After that you just go out and bury the waste which decomposes in the ground in about 2 more weeks.

We both like that fact that we're not letting any food waste unnecessarily go to the landfill, and we don't have to feel bad about murdering worms.