*This post may contain affiliate links and as always the ideas in the post are my own.*
In Seattle where we live, we have food waste pickup so we currently use our Lomi composter at our cabin in the mountains where we do not have garbage pickup. If you’ve been following along our Lomi Journey we’ve had it since around December of last year. The Lomi composter helps us reduce the amount of messy foodwaste we pack home and we use the setting where it turns the food waste into useable soil. My family still finds it really amazing that the Lomi Composter can do this.
How does the Lomi Composter work?
I’ve actually never done the Lomi composter myself. It’s become the job of one of our teenage sons. Every week he empties the dirt from the lomi composter into a collection bucket (we got ours from a popcorn tin we won at Climate Pledge Arena) and then he sorts our current food waste and puts it in the composter. It probably takes about 10 minutes total. We only do this about once a week so we’ve probably run the Lomi composter now about 10-15 times. It’s starting to become a routine and I haven’t had to check in on my son too much about getting this done.
After 3 months of weekly Lomi composting use we have a sizable tin of dirt
We noticed the bucket was almost full and the cabin still has snow on the ground so we brought the dirt home and put it in our garden. Hopefully this nutrient rich soil will help our flowers and vegetables this year. I don’t know if we’ll actually be able to notice the difference. But I often buy soil in April and May to help our garden and maybe I won’t have to this year.
How is the Lomi Composter in terms of cost so far?
We have not bought any additional filters but we probably need to in the next little while. Because we’ve only run it maybe10-15 times, our cost per use is still quite high. But knowing that we’ve kept some of the food waste we created from spilling in the car on our way home, and also being able to turn it into something usable feels better than just throwing it into the compost bin. And I can’t imagine that just before our kids were born this all just went into our trash. I feel like even just doing this small part feels good so I’m glad that we are using the Lomi Composter.
Terumi Pong is a Seattle-based family travel writer and mom of twin teenage boys. She loves coffee and pastries, shopping local and looking for greener ways to live. She is also known as Scout’s mom (Scout is a 5ish pound little black yorkie-poo)