Compost needs to evolve to meet the needs of our current society yet no one is doing anything about it. Compost technologies just don't exist. We want to change that, the way compost is analysed and how that data is accessed to make it more accessible to the everyday composter. Here's why compost needs to be quantified and what Earth Offset is doing to make it happen.
The founder of modern management Peter Drucker once coined the famous expression and timeless truth - “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”. While there doesn’t seem to be much record of Peter foraying into the wonderful world of compost, his work has serious application in improving the field.
The fact of the matter is that the numbers simply haven’t been run on at-home compost enough to manage or improve it. If you want to compost faster, you have to rely on months of trial-and-error. If you’re confused about why your compost has turned into a mini landfill in your backyard, you need to scour outdated internet forums for trouble shooting.
Of course there are books, blogs and other resources for at-home composters but finding insights specific to your compost and applying them is a massive effort. And even when things finally seem to be going right, there’s always the question of “could it be better?”.
Testing compost with stringent scientific principals and experiments unfortunately remains confined to large-scale commercial composting. This makes almost the entire field of research inaccessible and irrelevant to the everyday composter. And even this field is woefully limited in terms of its data analysis with most only utilising temperature metrics taken at infrequent intervals.
Compost is one of our secret weapons against climate change but we won’t be able to fully utilise it unless we optimise it. Big data analysis has already been applied to practically every single industry to improve processes - it’s compost’s turn now.
Earth Offset's mission is to revolutionise the way we compost on a micro to macro level. Our monitoring device and analysis model is trying to do this. Being able to continuously track the data produced by and affecting a compost set-up, we can identify patterns and insights to optimise the speed of decomposition and effort required. That means that if you're way too busy or just have no idea how to compost, we make it simple through our custom management instructions. Or if you've tried everything but can't seem to make your compost faster and better, our analysis will figure out how to.
We're bringing home composting into the future. Keep your eyes on this space to stay up-to-date with the development of our IoT monitoring device and get the latest news, tips and tid-bits on composting.