Reverse Engineering of an Automatic Household Composter

An Application Case in Trinidad and Tobago

Abstract

In Latin America and the Caribbean, it is reported that 52% of household waste is food waste. Redirecting this waste away from the landfills and into composting systems represent significant wins for the environment, through the reduction in greenhouse gases; the state, by reducing the cost of garbage collection; and homeowners, through the conversion of waste into an organic planting medium. Based on a survey of homeowners in Trinidad and Tobago, design specifications were developed for a composter, which was then fabricated and tested at a workshop at The University of West Indies. The results showed a 98% reduction in the volume of waste to compost and that the composter took 94 hours to produce stable compost. The chemical properties of the resulting compost were a bit higher than expected, but this was due to the small size of the composting chamber and the composition of the waste which was composted. This paper concludes that upscaling the composter to a commercial scale and testing it in a controlled community is necessary to determine both the financial and technological feasibility of the composter.