Virtual Booth

Food waste remains a major component of household solid waste, yet its conversion into compost offers an opportunity to recover organic matter and nutrients while reducing disposal to landfill. Although home composting is widely promoted as a sustainable practice, its successful implementation is limited by variation in household waste composition and a lack of practical understanding of important composting conditions such as carbon-to-nitrogen ratio, moisture content, and aeration. Conventional composting guides commonly provide fixed recipes or general ratios that may not correspond to the type and quantity of materials actually available to individual users. 

Studies have shown home-produced compost may be found to achieve quality on par, if not better than, certain industrial compost. This is due to household feedstock inputs containing fewer physical contaminants that may affect compost quality. The disadvantage, however, is that home systems tend to be generally less controlled, resulting in important parameters in a controlled condition, such as moisture, aeration, and temperature, being variable. These inconsistencies can affect the efficiency of decomposition of the waste, hence affecting the quality of the compost.

NutriCycle is an interactive platform designed to optimise household compost mixtures according to the waste materials available to the user. The system uses a database containing estimated composition and moisture properties of common household food wastes and bulking materials. Based on the type and mass of materials entered, NutriCycle applies material balance principles to evaluate the initial mixture and recommends appropriate quantities of available materials that users input to achieve favourable composting conditions. The application also provides practical guidance for compost preparation, monitoring and maturation.

The proposed system will be validated through a short term comparative experiment using small-scale compost mixtures. A NutriCycle recommended mixture will be compared with a conventional mixture and an intentionally unbalanced mixture using the same types of food waste and bulking materials. Over several days, simple indicators such as temperature, moisture condition, pH, mass change, odour and visible decomposition will be monitored to determine whether the optimized mixture provides more favorable early composting conditions. This preliminary validation is intended to demonstrate the practical potential of the recommendation system rather than to assess fully matured compost.

By adapting the composting process to be dependent on the materials that users already possess rather than requiring rigid ingredients, NutriCycle aims to transform home composting from general environmental advice into an accessible and practical waste management practice. Future development may incorporate artificial intelligence to identify unintroduced waste material and provide more responsive recommendations based on individual users. Future commercialization potential may involve the development of a smart composting bin equipped with sensors and automated monitoring systems for household and small-scale industry use. NutriCycle may also evolve into a community platform where users can share gardening and composting experiences, hence encouraging wider participation and helping to integrate composting into everyday sustainable practice.