How to Compost Bananas

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Overview

Most of your kitchen waste can be recycled directly into your compost bin. You may have concerns that fruit and its skins will make your compost too acidic and hinder its breakdown, but this is not accurate. As with all ingredients of your compost, simply make sure the fruit is in proportion with the other ingredients of your compost bin. Do not fill your compost with banana and banana peels. Rather, mix the banana and peels with other sources of carbon such as straw, shredded paper and dried leaves as well as sources of nitrogen such as coffee grounds, egg shells and vegetable waste.

Step 1

Break up into smaller pieces any uneaten banana, as well as the banana peel.

Step 2

Place and store your uneaten banana and banana peels in your compost pail, a tightly covered storage container or an outdoor container.

Step 3

Mix your banana pieces into your compost pile, bin or vermicomposter, spreading the pieces out for faster composting.

Tips and Warnings

Fruit flies are very attracted to bananas and the peels. Banana peels transport the eggs of the fruit fly. When you add banana peels to your compost, you may also be adding a population of fruit flies. For this reason, some people prefer not to add banana peels to indoor worm bins.

Things You'll Need

Compost pail
Compost bin

References

Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection: How to Control Fruit Flies & Fungus Gnats
Old House Web: Compost--Banana Peels
Composting 101: What to Compost

Keywords: composting banana, composting peels, compost ingredients

About this Author

Em Connell McCarty has been writing for 27 years. She studied writing at the University of Iowa and at Hollins University in Virginia. She writes fiction, creative non-fiction and essays. McCarty's work has been published in Hip Mama magazine.