Welcome to the expansion of your worldview, where intentional self-coercion becomes a constraint, and that constraint becomes the pressure that forces cognitive dissonance to converge into clarity. Convergence! This is the strange alchemy of emergence: when enough friction, repetition, and reality-feedback accumulate, a new order appears that was never visible from inside the old one. What looked like struggle becomes structure. What looked like chaos becomes a system.

Break out of the matrix of default interpretations and you step into a kind of white room: fewer assumptions, less noise, more signal. Pure awareness. Just “I”. From there, compost stops being “rotting waste” and starts revealing itself as a counterintuitive truth of nature: value can emerge from decay, and order can arise from what looked like disorder, in the same way it remains paradoxical that matter could arise within consciousness. David Deutsch would call it the quantumverse of possibilities, where knowledge selects what becomes real, and constraints don’t limit you, they carve the channel through which enlightenment can happen. (This is more a for fun creative intro 😉 )

This is a 3+ year composting story, not just a tutorial. It’s about systems, patience, mental models, and what real value looks like when you build something slow.

10-point index what this article is about

• A 3+ year journey of building 12 biocomposters at DITO’S GARDEN in Mauritius
  
• How projects form first in the mind: the distillation of thoughts before action begins
  
• Compost as nature’s transformation: decay turning into fertility and usefulness
  
• “Waste” as misunderstood value, and how composting reframes the whole thing
  
• The belief system behind the work: cycles, regeneration, sovereignty, real-world responsibility
  
• GDP as a lens, and the measurement bias of valuing only what moves money
  
• The black plastic compost bin in Mauritius: why it often fails at first, and how people get stuck
  
• The biocomposter setup in practice: general design, ratios, and the rhythm of running the units
  
• Biases and mental models seen along the way: iceberg illusion, effort heuristic, survivorship bias, planning fallacy
  
• The sustainability question: profit, limits of scale, and why real value goes beyond numbers

If you’re into gardening, composting, permaculture, or just building real-world projects that take time, you’ll feel at home here.

Now let’s come back down to earth and into the garden. This is the story of how I built 12 biocomposters over 3+ years in Mauritius, what it cost me in time and energy, what I learned about patience and systems, and why it matters beyond money.

An article like this one is composed first in the mind over an extended period of time. Then comes the distillation of thoughts, and the pressure builds to finally write them out. A sense of agency forms, where the mind concludes that the importance of such a project is worth expressing and sharing with the world for this instance in both video and text. It is the artist, the expression, different to a depression.

Once the article has taken a certain shape, there come various stages of reviewing: asking more questions, epiphanies, what needs to be changed, what could be added. This format, from my observation, is never written in one shot, not in one day, but many. Giving it, it’s time, it ages like fine wine. How so? First there is human fatigue. Reviewing your paragraphs with a fresh mind gives you new ideas on how to improve what you have written. Then comes life, like indirect subconscious research, where you bump into interesting topics, ideas, aha moments and think of how that could fit well into the article you’re writing.

What is compost?

Compost is the end result of organic matter breaking down into stable, dark, earthy material that plants and soil life can use. It is what happens when nature takes “waste” like leaves, kitchen scraps, and manure, and transforms it into fertility. In simple terms, compost is decomposed organic matter, but in reality it is much more than that. It is a living bridge between what was once alive and what will grow next.

Why is compost useful?

Compost is useful because it improves soil in ways that chemical fertilisers cannot. It feeds the soil ecosystem, and in return the soil ecosystem feeds the plants. Good compost helps soil hold water for longer, which is crucial in hot weather and dry periods. It improves soil structure so the ground becomes softer, more breathable, and less compacted. It supports beneficial microbes and fungi, which is what makes soil feel alive instead of dead. Over time, compost increases resilience. Plants grow stronger, roots develop better, and the whole system becomes more stable.

What kind of problems does compost also solve?

Another powerful thing about compost is that it solves a problem while creating a resource. Organic waste is heavy, wet, and often treated as something useless. In reality it is a raw material. If it goes to landfill it rots in the wrong environment, creates bad smells, attracts pests, and contributes to methane emissions. But if it is processed properly, that same material becomes a long-term soil builder. Composting is basically the act of turning a disposal problem into a fertility solution.

Why did I start making my own compost?

I think compost is fascinating. The idea of materials decomposition leading to a new form of material from which forms of life can benefit is amazing! This led me further into also looking into making vermicompost which became a whole adventure of it’s own. You’ll find several posts and videos about this activity and I also sell vermicompost, worm bins and worms. I share other facets of my story on how I got into making compost further in the story. I’ll say here that it’s fascination and seeing value in making compost. Also, it made sense to go that route considering that I do have a lot of dried brown leaves at DITO’S GARDEN.

Compost is also a form of local independence. It is a way of producing value on-site from what already exists around me. It reduces my dependence on imported soil mixes, synthetic fertilisers, and external inputs that can be expensive, inconsistent, or unsustainable. Compost also gives me control. Instead of guessing what is inside a bag from the shop, I know exactly what went into my compost, how it was processed, how it matured, and what quality it reached before I apply it in my garden. I’ll share with you my exact ratios that go into the biocomposter.

Compost from DITO’S Biocomposter

In the context of my biocomposter system, the compost I make is a deliberate design choice. The biocomposters are not just bins where waste disappears. They are controlled environments where I build the correct balance of materials, oxygen, moisture, and volume so that decomposition happens efficiently and produces a stable, usable output. What comes out is not random rotten material, but compost that is structured, mature, and intended to become part of a larger loop. This compost becomes the foundation for my raised beds, my soil mixes, and eventually even the next stage of worm processing in my regenerative system.

In short, compost is the most basic form of wealth a garden can produce. It is slow, it is quiet, it does not look impressive on a spreadsheet, but it builds everything. When you produce compost, you are not just feeding plants. You are building soil. And when you build soil, you are building the future harvests before they even exist.

The Value and Belief Behind the Project

For me, compost is not just a gardening input. It represents a way of seeing the world.

It starts with a simple belief: nature does not produce waste. What looks useless in one context becomes nutrition in another. Leaves, kitchen scraps, manure, paper, garden trimmings, all of it can be transformed into fertility. Compost is proof of that transformation. It is the conversion of something “finished” into something that still has a future. I find this whole process of transformation fascinating! Just like I find bees, ants and worms very interesting in what they do in their own ways all part of the ecosystem.

That is what I value

I value cycles over waste, regeneration over depletion, local independence over constant dependence on imported inputs. I value building systems that don’t rely on endless buying, endless replacing, endless outsourcing. Composting is a practical form of sovereignty. It is producing something essential from what is already here, using knowledge, attention, and time instead of quick fixes.

And once you see that value, it becomes hard to unsee it.

Because you begin to realise that compost is not just “dirt”. It is stored potential. It is resilience. It is water held in the soil during hot days. It is microbial life rebuilding what chemicals can’t rebuild. It is a foundation you can stand on. It’s slow wealth. Quiet wealth. The kind that doesn’t shine on a spreadsheet, yet determines whether a garden collapses or thrives.

This is also where the GDP lens starts to feel limited. GDP counts transactions. It sees spending, sales, imports, and movement of money. But compost is not primarily a transaction. Compost is a shift in reality. It reduces problems before they become problems. It builds stability in the background. And those things don’t always show up as “growth” in the economic sense, even though they are real value.

So why did I keep going? Why did three years go by?

Because the project isn’t only about producing compost. It’s also about producing a certain kind of person. A person who learns to work with time instead of fighting it. A person who doesn’t quit just because the reward is delayed. A person who builds something real, even if it isn’t instantly validated by the outside world. Composting forced me to accept that the best results come from consistency, not intensity. From repeating the process, improving it, adjusting it, and staying present. It is also a great test of patience, you have to wait it out until you can have the finished compost.

In that sense, the biocomposters became more than equipment. They became a mirror. They reflected back patience, discipline, faith in long-term outcomes, and a deeper relationship with cause and effect.

What is being valued here is not only compost.

It is meaning. It is resilience. It is independence. It is the decision to take responsibility for waste and turn it into fertility. It is a belief that the most valuable things are not always the loudest things, and that real progress is often invisible until it suddenly isn’t.

And that is why this project stayed alive in me long enough for three years to pass.

“The gross national product… measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.” ~Robert F. Kennedy, University of Kansas (March 18, 1968).

Does building 12 Biocomposters at DITO’S GARDEN contribute to the GDP of Mauritius?

Yes. It does. Selling compost, buying materials, paying wages etc. adds to the GDP in different sectors like manufacturing, retail, logistics, and services. GDP doesn’t really ask whether the activity is “good” or “bad”, it mostly records that money moved. The activity creates a business chain of events that stimulates local activity like transport, packaging, suppliers, and everything in between.

But here’s something important: GDP is not a double-entry accounting balance sheet with debits and credits that cancel each other out. GDP is not trying to “balance the books” of Mauritius. It doesn’t ask: who lost, who gained, what was the net result? It simply counts the value of final goods and services produced and sold in the country during a period of time.

With the advent of Bitcoin which has a limited supply compared to fiat currency, which can be created out of thin air, let’s ask another question that’s worth asking: where is the money even coming from in the first place in the current system we are in? A lot of economic activity is not funded purely by “earned savings”, but by credit creation. When banks issue loans, they don’t always lend out existing money sitting somewhere in a vault, they often create new money as new deposits through lending. That new credit is essentially new debt, and when more of it enters circulation, GDP can go up simply because more spending is happening. At the same time, inflation can also rise because more money is chasing the same real goods and services, so the GDP number might look bigger, while its real meaning and purchasing power can be totally different. This is where the idea of a Bitcoin standard becomes interesting, because in theory it could reduce this kind of monetary distortion by putting a harder limit on money creation, but that’s a whole discussion on its own. We won’t go deep into nominal vs real GDP in this article because it would become a whole topic by itself, but if you’re curious, it’s definitely worth looking up.

But even asking this question carries a bias.

And I mean by this the question of whether I’m contributing anything to Mauritius. I’ve picked GDP in this case because it’s a popular form of “value measurement”. So, which bias?

There is a measurement bias built into this type of thinking. If you account the project purely only as a business money-making activity, then you’re already choosing the GDP lens. And GDP is basically a transaction lens. It records the movement of money like a cash register: if there’s a purchase, a bill, an invoice, a salary, a sale, then it counts. If something creates value quietly without an obvious “transaction”, then it becomes almost invisible.

That lens misses the point of what compost actually is. It misses the importance of fertility. It misses the long-term benefits that don’t have a price tag attached. It would also miss the & my journey of Dito learning to build these biocomposters and make them work. And it would miss the slow, cumulative nature of the project, the way it compounds into something bigger than a simple “profit vs loss” calculation.

Now let’s look at a logic model where the GDP lens will not be able to record and account the value of future preventable problems:

Example:

DITO’S Garden makes compost → less landfill smell, fewer pests, healthier soil

This reduces costs, reduces spending, reduces “economic activity”.

But if the situation is bad (waste isn’t used to make compost etc.):

waste rots → people pay for clean-up, pest control, medical issues

Money moves → GDP goes up, because GDP mostly measures spending and transactions. So when problems appear, people spend money to deal with them: repairs, services, medicine, clean-up contracts, and emergency responses. All of that is “economic activity” on paper, even if it’s just society paying to return to baseline.

So GDP can unintentionally reward damage and repair more than prevention. Crazy huh! It counts the ambulance ride more easily than it counts the healthy lifestyle that avoided getting sick in the first place!

To make it even more granular and evident, let’s have a look at this:

GDP will ignore a lot of my outputs. For example, if I produce compost and use it in my raised beds to grow healthy vegetables, GDP will not properly measure that whole chain of benefit. If I harvest food that replaces imported food or reduces my household spending, GDP doesn’t celebrate that as “growth”, even though it is real wealth. So the compost we make is something GDP doesn’t measure well:

A) The work done on soil fertility and resilience which leads to:

• healthier soil structure

• better water retention

• better nutrient cycling

• more microbial life

This falls under long-term wealth, but GDP doesn’t measure soil becoming alive again. You can’t put “microbial diversity” on a receipt. You can’t easily invoice “a more resilient garden ecosystem”. Yet that’s the foundation of real productivity.

B) Reduced dependence on imports

If you replace imported fertilisers, potting mixes, chemicals, or substrates with local biological fertility…

GDP may even “lose” value because fewer imports are purchased and less money is spent. And GDP tends to interpret reduced spending as reduced activity, even if the reality is the opposite: the system became more efficient, more local, more resilient, and less dependent.

But Mauritius becomes stronger and more self-sufficient.

This is a classic GDP blind spot:

The system is made healthier by spending less!

DITO’S GARDEN Filling our Biocomposters with our Compost “Lasagna” mix in Mauritius | Video 1

Lessons From My Biocomposters: What Composting Taught Me About Patience, Systems, and Real Value

In this blog article I will also showcase photos of the widely distributed black compost bin made of plastic in Mauritius, and how you can tweak it and use it differently to actually get it to make compost. It’s been probably a decade ago when this bin was being handed out for free by the government at Social Centres. Definitely a good initiative, with one exception that… it doesn’t work, and to make it work, it requires a bit of training. If you have one of these bins at home, you’re not alone, and you’re not doing something “wrong”. It just needs a small adjustment. I’ll also include a video tour of what my current biocomposter setup is like. That same small composter bin can be replicated to do the same. There are many ways to get compost once you know that it might need a bit of mixing, turning, and access to air.

Before I started to make compost, I was using the compost bin to dump my kitchen waste in there. I would occasionally add layers of leaves (browns) and the years would go by… and whenever I would open the closure that is on the side of the bin, I would see that there was… no compost at all! It simply didn’t break down. But since I wasn’t into gardening and was working mostly on the computer, I just brushed it away as something that just needs its time. Without much attention, 3 years went by like this, and I was surprised at some stage that I still didn’t get any compost out of this bin!

Fast forward into the future, I started to try other methods to make compost and stopped using the bin. I would just make layers of everything I had, like kitchen waste, browns from the garden, and regularly mix it. It would hot compost, and I would see how it breaks down and within months turn into beautiful compost. It was fun.

When touring the garden and showing the biocomposters, I would often hear from people who have the black plastic bin composter that they all have the same problem. They’ve been dumping organic materials in there just like I used to do, and they never really got any compost out of it. So, that was a signal to me that many people would love to compost their kitchen waste, but aren’t getting results. While it’s not so complicated, it’s sometimes not so obvious how to “fix” this. The idea of making compost then quickly fades into a backlog of “hopefully it works out someday”… or it ends there, and the organic waste ends up back in the landfill.

There isn’t only one way how you can get your organic waste to turn into compost. I’ll share the method I’m using, and this is not limiting you from the many other ways you can become creative about it. 🙂

Why 12 Biocomposters?

Let’s look at what one biocomposter is in size. The height is basically the height of the wire mesh fencing material that we buy in rolls and then cut. I use school maths to figure out how much fencing I have to cut. If I want 1m diameter, I take that and multiply by PI (22/7), and cut the fence around the 314 to 315 cm mark.

Biocomposter (cylinder)
• Height: 150-155 cm
• Diameter: 100 cm
• Radius: 50 cm
• Top opening: 100 cm diameter

• Circumference: ≈ 314 cm (useful for the geotextile wrap. I usually cut the geotextile slightly larger, around 330 cm, so there is enough overlap inside the biocomposter.) Take 100 cm, multiply by pi. Using PI 22/7 learned from mathematics class has actually become useful in the garden!

Central air tube
• Diameter: 25 cm
• Height: 150-155 cm

Volume
• Geometric volume: ≈ 1,178 L
• Minus air tube: ≈ 1,104 L
• Typical working figure with a little headspace and settling: about 1,000 L per unit.

I can fill up a biocomposter with around 1,400 L of a mixed mulch mix ratio (which I will share more details of below), which is a great way to process all the organic material we have in the garden, such as the large amount of mango leaves that fall from the trees daily. It compresses down a lot once watered and settles over time. A biocomposter is a great way to process large amounts of organic waste, and very useful for a garden where such waste is present in abundance.

This is our filling ratio. We build a lasagna with this ratio.

Per layer set (“lasagna”) This would be layer 1 which is a ratio of: 1:4:0.5:1
• 1 bin greens
• 4 bins browns (dry mango leaves, shredded paper in bulk, torn cardboard)
• 0.5 wheelbarrow cow manure
• 1 bag horse manure with wood chips

Light watering to settle the layer. Then start a new layer until you sense the quantity is enough to fill one biocomposter. I have set a standard of x4, but quite often I also have found myself doing x5.

Per full biocomposter (repeat the set above 4 times) So in total summary:

• 4 bins greens
• 16 bins browns
• 2 wheelbarrows cow manure
• 4 bags horse manure with wood chips

Load in repeating layers, keep the central air tube capped (ideally with a bucket) while filling, and water as needed. This is basically the formula.

Why 12 of these? Would one have been enough?

Across cultures, 12 is a special number. For me, my approach was with the idea to have one monthly compost harvest. That was the idea when I began. It then became a fixated goal and objective to stick to building 12 units. I wasn’t producing any vermicompost then when I started off with the first builds.

I had no intention of changing this goal. When you plan something in your head, especially for garden projects, the ideas and visions flash around like it’s peanuts to achieve. Once you get out to work, it takes calories of energy, and surprise, it will all take so much longer.

Now I do have the 12 biocomposters all full, up and running, making compost. But I do not harvest one every month. I harvest them at different rhythms. Sometimes I also harvest 3 at one go, and then we make a huge lasagna and refill 3 at one go as well.

I think it’s doable, that you can have one harvest of compost per month. I just don’t find myself needing it on that basis. We stock up harvested compost and it lasts for a while. When I see that it’s about to finish, and/or I also see that we have accumulated a lot of browns, this then is like a signal that we should harvest and launch a new composting batch. Flexible. It’s less about following a calendar, and more about responding to what the garden is giving us.

So, 12 biocomposters just felt right, and it looks cool in the garden. 12 towers in the front part of the garden, it’s fun to walk past them and peek into them. 🙂

The compost to expect from one unit is: for about 1,000L volume of mulch mix material that is composting, we will get around 300L volume of finished compost. Therefore for our needs in the garden, like for our raised beds, the 12 units are sufficient and will produce surplus.

I would say, if I wouldn’t have been able to build 12, around 3 units might have been great too. Some of our compost surplus also goes to our worm bins now.

Upgrading and Modding the Black Plastic Compost Bin in Mauritius: A Photo Guide of Tweaks that Make It Work

This is not exactly a tutorial

This article isn’t exactly a tutorial, it’s more a talk to myself, an introspection, to find closure, relief, boundary, debriefing, satisfaction, letting go before the next adventure, and to have a good exhale. By reviewing something that often felt like a tough goal to attain, a tough challenge, particularly testing my patience, and coming to terms with my human limitations and the pace of progress. At the same time, this is going to leave you with a few nuggets of information along the line that you can use to build such units yourself, or reconsider if that makes any sense, and read on just for the fun of what words can transmit of a journey that took years. Surely, the adventure also offers other insights on human behaviour, ambition, and the life cycle of a project.

What was particularly tough was looking forward through negativity bias: Progress myopia! You see what you have accomplished and realise how much there is still left to go. It often felt like the planning fallacy: the day when all 12 units are up, in the same format, with the same base of bricks, all properly fitted with geotextile, and all filled with mulch composting material… I could see we are going to get there, but not precisely when. And the amount of work ahead to get there would often create a sense of exasperation. The mountain is bigger from the bottom (perception bias). Why isn’t today the day where it’s all completed? That was this little voice in my head…

Finally that day came. And it didn’t feel special or particular. It took me weeks to accept and confirm to myself: hey, the project is done. It’s completed! And that’s also why I’m blogging this experience right now, after shooting the YouTube video tour. The video cannot nail down these details within 3 minutes. A more detailed text does. So here you are!

It’s an element of sequences in my world that took some fruit. Since it’s not in your world and not part of it, it might not matter much to you either. Still, we are going to look at some fun heuristics and biases in a moment that do add up well to some of the sentiments and reflections I had during this long-haul journey.

I’ll also say that since the journey of getting there was so tough, I’m writing this article in a form of appreciation and might I say: gratitude. To confirm to myself, deep breathe in, exhale… now, it’s done. It’s completed. I may relax now 😀

Now that it’s built, I can finally tell the story properly.

May the journey begin!

DITO’S GARDEN Harvesting our Bio Composters in Mauritius Simple and Efficient System | Video 2

The effort heuristic

The effort heuristic says we often use signs of effort to judge value, yet we systematically miss most of the effort in other people’s projects because it is off stage. Results look simple when you were not there for the trial runs, the rework, the inventory lists, the transport and storage, the calibration of tools, the checklists that keep things moving, and the habit of returning tomorrow after a tiring day. To counter this bias as a viewer, assume there is triple the effort you can see and ask curious process questions. As a maker, show a few behind-the-scenes details such as your prep area, a page from your logbook, a snapshot of your moisture or temperature checks, or a simple timeline of one batch from start to finish. Sharing the scaffolding helps others set realistic expectations, and it also reminds you that steady, repeatable routines are the real engine behind visible results.

The effort heuristic semantic is inspired by this research paper.

The Biocomposter Iceberg: The Hidden Work Behind Twelve Cylinders

The biocomposter project is a good example of the Iceberg Illusion. Visitors see the tip above the waterline, which is twelve neat cylinders, paths that make sense, and dark crumbly compost. The part below the surface is what made that tip possible. It is the repeated work of collecting dry mango leaves and fresh prunings, bringing in cow manure and horse manure with woodchips, and adding bulk shredded paper and torn cardboard to keep structure and airflow. It is small engineering choices, like a central air tube and an internal geotextile lining that survives dogs and weather. It is learning to raise the bins on bricks, to keep oxygen moving, and to keep the system truly aerobic so there is no turning. It is the long days building the lasagna on the ground, then the steady rhythm of loading, watering, and waiting for 3 to 6 months. It is accepting that a full unit of about 1,000 litres settles into roughly 300 litres of finished compost, and planning the next cycle while this one matures. It is help from a community, ideas from ROC and a better sketch from Ravi, and the humility to change what does not work. Seen this way, the tip is just a signal that the base was built well. If you want results you can touch, build the base you cannot see.

This semantic is inspired by The Iceberg Illusion: The hidden logic of success.

Survivorship bias

Survivorship bias showed up all through this project. Visitors see twelve finished cylinders at DITO’S GARDEN and assume the method is universally robust, when in fact they are seeing the survivors of many drafts.

Like Alex Webster from Cannibal Corpse says about modern metal music, it couldn’t just came to exist on it’s own out of a vacuum, it builds up on something else.

Like a supply chain of events, it came to the biocomposters from a series of events as well and I improved on this.

Our early raised bins with soil skirts invited the dogs to dig and shred the outer geotextile; tropical wind and hard rain exposed where liners sagged and bricks shifted; first mixes went too wet in summer or too dry in the trade winds without geotextile; a few air tubes clogged when I didn’t cover them with a bucket when filling up; some bases settled unevenly. Copying that final picture without the context can mislead. To keep decisions honest, we log base rates and failure modes: which fabrics fatigue and when, how long a lining lasts, what wind lifts lids, how often bricks creep, the labour hours to collect browns and greens in peak season, and when we paused a fill to rethink the plan. After each cycle we write a short post-mortem and keep a page called “What we would not do again,” which includes external geotextile, soil berms, uncapped tubes while filling the biocomposter, and leaving headspace that let rain pool. Making the missteps visible keeps risk real and guides the next iteration.

Connecting the dots

When I started growing vegetables, I tried to make compost, but not with much intent. I didn’t really know how, and I kept hoping it might work out. I’m trying to recall what really got the train started for me to purposefully seek into making compost properly. There were these little aha moments, from chats and seeing others make compost, which contributed to ideas on how to improve what I was doing.

At some stage, the adventure of making vermicompost came into the picture, and while I went looking for worms, visiting the ROC Community farm gave me my first insights into biocomposters. I found that these were not only really interesting for producing compost, but they also looked cool, design wise.

From exchanges at the beach with a buddy who told me how simple it is to just use fencing to turn it into a cylinder, I tried it out, and indeed, it was doable. I made my first setups, and the next improvements came along when I met Ravi from Farmbasket at our first Food Heros meetup at the Just Natural Farm in Bois Rouge. He drew me a sketch on how to raise the biocomposter, and to include heaps of soil on the sides for earthworms to migrate into the biocomposter from the ground.

I then applied these design suggestions. What also reinforced and increased my motivation was when we got a composting session with Ravi at his farm, where we also did a compost mix and then together filled a biocomposter. These lessons helped improve my builds and the whole activity.

I also tried to follow certain rigid guidelines, like regularly watering the compost, but due to having a lot more on my plate to handle, I quite often couldn’t be consistent with the watering part. Over time, I observed that this is alright. It doesn’t need to be so fixated and precise. I’ve got biocomposters that I have only watered at rare intervals, and yet they still produce compost.

What changed my design builds over time were the challenges they started to be exposed to. Particularly, my dogs… they became destroyers. It became a fun game for them to destroy my setups. It could also be that they were chasing rodents. I tried various techniques to deter them from messing with my builds, and nothing worked.

On a daily basis I would fix my setups, and the next morning it became a kind of anxiety to see which one was next in their turn that they messed up. It would either be digging the soil, ripping apart the geotextile, and in some cases even pulling down the whole biocomposter. It’s impressive how much strength dogs can summon in their jaws. I keep telling myself, when I get to caress my calm relaxed dog, he is giving me the special kind version of himself. But in every dog lies a beast that can summon energy that can turn their jaws into machines.

A long time went by, and I concluded from observation that the geotextile needs to go inside the biocomposter and not outside, so the dogs can’t bite and pull on it. Then the base where I originally had heaps of soil was changed into a base made out of bricks, and inside that base I would have the soil. This way, it’s way harder for the dogs to access the soil and dig.

By adding another layer of bricks on this structure, it’s possible to additionally reinforce it. If you’ve got a massive strong dog who is smart, and who in a frenzy can push aside bricks and figure it out, he could still work his way into destroying part of the base. But so far, this base structure has been dissuasive enough for the dogs to not try anything more. With this new design, the dogs stopped messing with the biocomposters.

Every system gets tested. And the test is what forces the design to evolve.

Bricks are heavy

Depending on how I make the base with bricks, I need to account for around 20 bricks per biocomposter. There is one build where I placed 3 biocomposters on one row of bricks, all using the same air canal. This type of build requires a bit less bricks. So, in theory, for 12 biocomposters it would have required 240 bricks, but I’m sure I used a bit less.

I tried to make the base even and used a bubble level. I don’t have a stone mason background and learnt what I do by practising. I surely lack a few standard skills, so I did what I managed to figure out over trial and error. Definitely there is no need to reinvent the wheel here, a stonemason would know best how to make it. However, it’s fun to do this on your own, with your own hands.

The best is to use the flat side of the brick to place it on the ground so it has more contact surface. Something I wasn’t doing previously, and I kept noticing that my bricks would go out of shape in a short period of time. I used rock sand to level the ground, and add and/or remove it under the brick to get it even with the cornerstone.

Making the base gave me an interesting insight on the importance of the cornerstone, because it sets the first level that you will stick to. So it’s best to observe the ground and decide where you want to start. And depending on the ground shape, it might imply that for the other bricks you will have to dig a bit, or add rock sand.

It actually doesn’t have to be perfectly even. If you just place the bricks next to each other to create a base, you will be done quite quickly. But for my personal taste, it looks more beautiful when it’s aligned. I find everything about the whole setup has geometry, shapes, and design to it, which makes it a pleasure to look at when it’s completed.

Since I’m not used to working with bricks, I did find them heavy and my progress was rather slow. After completion of the whole project I did have a bit of joint aches.

I progressed at around a pace of 2 days for building the bases. It takes longer when your ground is uneven. I also filled the empty spaces with rock sand. An additional half day would be required to build a biocomposter, that is cutting the galvanised wire mesh from the roll, preparing the geotextile, and attaching it.

To think that stonemasons in Mauritius work a full day laying such heavy bricks day in, day out… Respect!

When do I conclude that the goal has been achieved?

I buy my materials in bulk. I’ll do a rough estimate for 1 biocomposter.

Block 6” Rs.36.70 × 20 = Rs.734
Wiremesh Galva 5ft high with 2 inch × 2 inch squares (4m cut out) = Rs.1100
Geotextile (the thicker one with higher microns) at 4m = Rs.900
Zip ties = Rs.400
Transport = Rs.2000
Labour = Rs.5000 (2 persons)

You can say the total costs amount to roughly Rs.10,000 per biocomposter. So, 12 biocomposters would account to around Rs.120,000 in theory, which would be approximately $2666 and €2307 (as of 15.01.2026).

The project is more valuable than these arbitrary figures! 🙂

Way more time went into building it. Trial and error, modifications, learning along the way, it was an adventure journey out of which great experience was gained… and real compost is produced.

This is one of those projects where the real profit isn’t only the compost, it’s the system that now exists.

Is it worth it? Will I ever make my money back that I invested? Am I in a forest where I don’t see the trees anymore?

That’s pretty easy to say, isn’t it? To say that it’s not worth it. How many projects might we have thought about and concluded, for some reason or another, that it isn’t worth it… and then left it in idea stage. If the reason is valid enough for yourself, then granted, you don’t have to work on a project you don’t deem worthy.

But does everything we do have to be measured with a lens of profitability? If we did, we (small-scale permaculture farmers etc.) wouldn’t grow healthy organic veggies that taste good and are rich in nutrients. It’s valuable, but might not necessarily yield high, or generate sufficient profit from sales. I want to eat such a rucola leaf, the nutritious one ofcourse!

There are fresh students out there who can lecture you on the importance of sustainability and post content on LinkedIn saying that if your farm is not making profit, then it’s a hobby… Risk taking does involve a high probability of not making any returns at the end of the day, and farming is high risk. It is very likely that many projects around farming might not turn out profitable.

From my perspective looking at the biocomposter journey, the work it involves, and the way I run it, it might very well not generate much revenue, and I might not cover my investment. Does it have its merit and place at DITO’S GARDEN? Definitely. Here is why I see it as very beneficial to have.

It’s a super tool to manage and put to great use our garden waste, particularly the mango leaves that fall on the ground in the fruit orchard. The compost that we get from the biocomposters gives us two use cases. One is that we can partially feed some to the worms to give the worm bins a bit of diversity. The other use is that it makes a great topping that we can add after we have used vermicompost. I don’t see the compost we make with the biocomposters as something we can package and sell. For this, we have our main product, which is DITO’S Vermicompost.

The workloads differ when comparing worm bins and biocomposters. Once the heavy work of making the lasagna and loading it into the biocomposter is done, it’s more a set-and-forget kind of thing that just needs watering. The workload with the worm bins is different. It can be less heavy duty, but it is more regular, if not daily. Feeding a big worm bin with new material is work intensive, and then the regular few minutes of watering once a day is less intensive. Just as an example.

While DITO’S Vermicompost has proven itself to generate a bit of sales, I am yet to see under the same lens if I will ever make my money back from what I have invested overall. Yes, there have been worm sales, vermicompost sales, and worm bin sales. I need another year to tell you more clearly how it went. There is also a large amount of vermicompost that needs to be harvested, and hopefully it does sell.

Are the profit margins on vermicompost high? Not really. It’s actually a competitive segment, and it’s competing against a market where some buyers might favour cheaper chemical options. I don’t know yet if the small home garden owners market is a niche big enough to sell a good amount of vermicompost to. It’s not really the black gold as it is called when it comes to the money-making side of things in my current environment.

It’s quite possible that selling vermicompost can become unsustainable if the market is not willing to pay the price it has to be valued at. Meaning: costs of making it + markup = selling price. Simple math. But the market doesn’t always care about your math.

And what if I end up sitting on a big pile of vermicompost that I can’t sell? I guess I’ll shed some tears and move on from that… and say the fresh students leaving university with their agricultural degrees were right: if it doesn’t make profit, it’s just a hobby!

The Cognitive Dissonance Part (and the Unexpected Feedback)

Cognitive dissonance is that uncomfortable inner tension when two parts of you disagree. One part of you believes in what you’re doing, and another part questions it. It’s the mental friction between conviction and doubt. In my case, it showed up as the thought loop of: is this worth it? am I doing the right thing? am I wasting my time? and sometimes even the heavier version: am I wasting my life?

Cognitive dissonance can actually be a motor. When the gap between what you believe and what you see in reality becomes uncomfortable enough, it creates pressure to act, and that’s often the moment you stop overthinking and start building.

What made it interesting is that this project isn’t hidden in some backyard corner. My biocomposter setup is literally visible from the main street. Every day, hundreds of people pass by on the bus, vans and lorries. They either see me working on it, or they see what’s inside the units. So in a strange way, this became a public project without me ever intending it to be.

And over time, small moments started happening that gave me a different kind of feedback. Not online likes, not a business report, not a number on a spreadsheet, but real-world recognition from people who simply noticed.

I remember once walking into an organic food supplements shop in Grand Baie. After chatting with the sales lady, she asked me where I stay. I told her, and she immediately said something like: “Ahh you must be the guy who makes compost from leaves.” She told me she notices it from the bus on her daily commute, and she finds it great, she called it farming the traditional way. I found that feedback surprisingly meaningful, because it reminded me that the work is visible, and people do pick up on it.

Another day, a mother was walking past with her young child while I was filling one of the biocomposters. She pointed and told her child, “They’re making compost.” Again, such a small moment, but it hit me. People understand what they’re seeing. They recognise the process. And yes, it’s a welcome form of validation too.

And more recently, I met a permaculture planter from Vale who is interested in my activities around vermicompost. He also mentioned that on our first call before meeting he said: “You must be the guy who makes compost from leaves.” I laughed, because at this point it feels like that’s how I’m being identified out there. The compost guy.

These moments might seem small, but they do something important: they soften the cognitive dissonance. They don’t “prove” anything in a formal way, but they add weight to the feeling that the project is real, that it has presence, and that the work is landing somewhere outside my own mind.

So while the compost system is transforming organic matter, these little encounters were transforming something else too: my relationship to doubt. Not by making it disappear, but by reminding me that real value isn’t always loud, and real progress isn’t always immediate. Sometimes it’s simply visible enough that strangers recognise it from a passing bus.

“It works, the learning curve, the experience curve, it works only when you have a common location… Learning is local.” by Morris Chang (TSMC) on the Learning Curve

What that means in my biocomposter project

The learning curve is simple: the more you repeat a real process, the more you improve it. And Chang’s deeper point is that learning accelerates when the work happens in one place, with continuous feedback from reality. That’s exactly what happened with my biocomposter project. Over time, the setup didn’t just produce compost, it produced experience. Each cycle made things clearer, more stable, and more repeatable. After three years, the biggest output isn’t only what comes out of the biocomposter, it’s the accumulated learning that makes the whole system stronger with time.

SURPRISE Sale!

While writing this article, over the weekend I received a compost purchase order, along my other main product lines which are vermicompost, biochar, and kombucha. I had to calculate a price for my compost that is aligned with what the market prices are, so for a fair comparison I picked supermarkets and hardware stores to compare what they charge for around a 20L volume. I came down to the price of Rs.400. At this price, I’m aligned and competitive enough, and a customer will not think twice or hesitate. But does it mean I’m profitable? Also, in this case, I wanted to secure the bulk order, and this moment proved to be an interesting case study, live in action.

The compost sold in those throwaway plastic bags in hardware stores is produced at large scale by well-established companies, some of which are decades old. They have a labour force, distribution networks, vehicles, machines, and the ability to reduce production costs at scale. This is what economics calls economies of scale.

With my 12 units, I have a small-format version of this. If I had 122 biocomposters and a mechanical way of building the lasagnas and loading these units, my operation costs would be different, and so would the output. But that is not my reality today, so let’s look at what the numbers look like on my current scale.

So, let’s look at my 12 units.

1 unit can produce roughly 300L volume of compost.
300L / 20L = 15 buckets
15 buckets × Rs.400 = Rs.6000

But output can also be less, so let’s say one biocomposter, when harvested, brings in around Rs.5000.

Now the question is: what is my cost factor to make those Rs.5000?
We will see in a moment if I am making any profit, a loss, or kind of net zero balancing out the costs. This is approximate.

We shall account for two labour work days, which implies: half a day for cutting and collecting fresh greens, half a day to collect browns, half a day to build the lasagna, and another half day to fill the biocomposter. We will consider this as a Rs.3000 cost factor.

Then we have to depreciate the investment cost of the unit and materials over time. For this we will account for Rs.1000 per harvest.

So total costs:
Rs.3000 (labour) + Rs.1000 (depreciation) = Rs.4000

If a harvest brings Rs.5000, then the profit is around:
Rs.1000 per biocomposter harvest if all compost is sold.

That is a thin margin.

And if we speak in percentage terms, Rs.1000 profit on Rs.5000 revenue is about 20% gross profit, but that number is fragile because it doesn’t include things like transport, selling time, bags/buckets, and the reality that not everything always sells instantly.

Now for 12 units, this would mean Rs.12,000 profit across those 12 harvests. But that profit is spread over the year because there is no way I can currently harvest all 12 at once and then fill them all up all at once. I don’t have this much browns and greens available at the same moment.

Would it be possible? Certainly, if I add sourcing and transportation from places with an abundance of browns and greens. But then costs increase again. It would also wear us out to do so much work at once. It would mean additional workers, and that has to be paid for too.

Even if we somehow managed 12 harvests, 4 times a year, that would be:
Rs.12,000 profit × 4 = Rs.48,000 per year

But the amount of physical labour required to produce this is not worth it for this level of return, especially when we add the reality layer: having this much compost does not mean you will sell all of it. There is no guarantee you will consistently make those Rs.48k every year. It would also require distribution, which brings along transport costs and time.

That’s why, for us at DITO’S GARDEN, vermicompost remains the premium compost product par excellence, where the same applied workforce yields a better return. Even though vermicompost is called the black gold for soil, it is in no terms a high-margin product either. Here as well, we need to align with a market price mechanism to be competitive and attractive enough for the buyer to consider vermicompost worth it over chemical fertilisers and cheaper composts.

So we can conclude that running biocomposters as a business on its own is not viable on this scale, if the only goal is to sell compost as an end product. It would require tweaks, a different operational model, or a bigger scale if it was considered purely for sales.

But the most important part is this:

We don’t make compost with the biocomposters to have a compost end product to sell.

At DITO’S GARDEN the biocomposters serve many other purposes. They allow us to process and recycle our existing garden waste. They generate compost that we can use in our raised beds. And they create a steady flow of organic matter that can later feed into our worm systems. Every now and then, if we have surplus, and a vermicompost client needs a bit of additional compost for their project, we can consider that and fill up a bucket.

And maybe that’s the real conclusion of this whole article: value is not always the same thing as profit. Some systems don’t exist because they maximise money. They exist because they maximise resilience, reduce waste, build fertility, and create a regenerative loop that supports everything else. GDP might not measure that properly. A spreadsheet might not reward it. But the soil does. And over years, the soil always tells the truth.

But what if I’m wrong and it is viable for profit?

Paul Graham says in his essay “Do Things that Don’t Scale” (July 2013):

“One of the most common types of advice we give at Y Combinator is to do things that don’t scale.”

If you look at compost only as “a product in a bucket”, then yes, the maths can look underwhelming. Heavy labour, low price ceiling, competition from big established players, and the market doesn’t always reward the effort fairly. It can look like a grind for small returns.

But Paul Graham’s point is that in the early phases, the advantage is often exactly in the things that don’t scale. The things that feel too manual, too local, too slow, too hands-on… and therefore most people won’t do them. And compost is one of those things. While I was pondering over the project, I thought about how many calories of energy goes into every step of such a process. Apart from the composting which mother nature will take care of, everything else requires energy input. It’s physical. It’s messy. It takes patience. It takes space. It takes time. It’s not something like a digital product with a subscription service.

So maybe profit isn’t in “selling compost forever”. Maybe the profit is in what compost unlocks.

Compost can be the gateway product that creates trust. People don’t just buy the material, they buy the story, the method, the honesty, and the fact that this system exists in the real world. Compost becomes proof-of-work. It becomes a signal. It tells people: this guy isn’t just talking, he’s actually doing. And from there, higher value products and services make more sense: vermicompost, worm bins, training, garden consultations, soil building projects, maybe even partnerships with small farms and eco-hotels.

So maybe I’m not wrong and not right either. Maybe the biocomposters are not a standalone profit machine… but they are the infrastructure underneath a bigger ecosystem. The compost itself might be low-margin, but the trust it generates can be high-margin. And that’s the kind of value that doesn’t show up on a spreadsheet until much later, when the whole system starts to compound.

Sunk Cost Energy?

Cool if you read till here! As you can tell from the long scrolling, I applaud you for making it this far haha. Here comes the moment where, while I was rowing today and reflecting on all the bits and pieces I have crafted together, I asked myself something important:

Is my debriefing in this story a form of denial?

Is it self-justification?

Is it sunk cost fallacy? Or what I call sunk cost energy, because I invested so much time into it?

Was it finally insanity to do 12 units? Did I get stuck in a goal completion bias?

The truth is: I never felt during this journey that I had to complete the 12 biocomposters because of financial commitments in the form of materials I already bought. I didn’t feel burdened by the sunk cost fallacy definition. If anything, the money part was the least “sticky” part of the whole mission.

What kept empowering me was the vision. The image of 12 biocomposters standing there, in uniform, looking clean, solid, intentional. I would picture how they would look and what it would feel like once the system is complete, and that would give me a real sensation of satisfaction before it even existed. Almost like the future version of the garden was pulling me forward.

And if I could rewind time and know in advance that this will not be profitable financially, would I still build it? Definitely. Yes. As tough as the journey has been, it has also been loads of fun. It brought me experience, confidence, skills, and personal growth that is very valuable to me. It also gave DITO’S GARDEN a real system that can now run for years, quietly doing its job in the background.

So maybe this wasn’t sunk cost fallacy. Maybe it was long-term commitment under uncertainty. A project that doesn’t only produce compost, but also produces a certain kind of person.

The goal served its purpose: it got the system built.

Video Tour of the 12 Biocomposters at DITO’S GARDEN