The beautiful kit that turns food waste into fertilizer, and is perfect for urban homes

You can grow plants in it too! Photo credit: Bionicraft.

Imagine you’re cooking a delicious meal, one with all kinds of fresh vegetables and fruits. You go to chop everything up and find you have some leftovers – maybe a portion of your onion has turned black and you have plenty of carrot tops left over. Your apple core lies unused on your kitchen counter.

Food waste ends up sealed away in the ground, encased in something that won’t break down for several years.

So what do you do? You probably throw it away into a plastic bag, cloth bag, or piece of newspaper. The garbage is collected from your house. Most of the time, it ends up sealed away in the ground, encased in something that won’t break down for several years. It’s a shame because your produce bits can break down in a matter of weeks if they’re left lying in soil, giving nutrients back to the dirt.

But what are you supposed to do – not throw it away and leave an appetizing pile of produce bits lying around outside for your neighbors to scoff at? Taiwan-based startup Bionicraft, founded by Brooklyn Chao, thinks the solution can be a lot simpler, using a method that you probably learned about as a child in your school’s science class.

Bionicraft’s product is called Biovessel, which they advertise on their Kickstarter page as “an ecosystem powered by food waste.” The actual product looks like an artful, vaguely rectangular piece of pottery, about the size and width of an adult’s chest. It has three openings in the top for you to pour your leftover fruit and vegetable tidbits, water, and the secret ingredient: earthworms.

Once inside their own Biovessel ecosystem, the earthworms do what they do best – decompose the leftover food, leaving behind soil with added nutrients. That soil can then be used for plants, poured onto other soil, or serve as the earthworms’ habitat for your next batch of food waste.

The Kickstarter page notes that the earthworms help the smell of the process. Thanks to them, it will only smell like wet soil, and not rotting food. Biovessel has raised US$20,331 of its US$30,000 goal from 141 backers. Kickstarter has deemed it one of its “Projects We Love.” Biovessel’s campaign ends on October 29, leaving 50 days left for it to finish that last third of its goal.

Harnessing science

Brooklyn Chao, Bionicraft’s founder.

Though Biovessel would look at home next to potted plants or on a windowsill, Bionicraft claims that the at-home composting system was designed after over 20 months of research to most suit the earthworms. The holes in the top, for example, were put there to provide oxygen for the worms, but the company also created them with the golden ratio in mind.

It’s found all over in nature. A popular example is the sunflower, which follows this ratio to maximize its number of seeds and the number of nutrients that each seed receives. (Play with this site for a visual explanation of the golden ratio.)

Inspired by the golden ratio and the sunflower, Biovessel’s holes are also made to mimic sunflower seed spirals. Brooklyn says that this is meant to maximize airflow to the earthworms.

Nature, not machines