Enough to make this bunch drool. ^_^

about half. it would be extremely rich compost, more than any manure.

A lot would depend on the makeup of the initial food waste...especially how much water makes up the waste.

A ton of celery or lettuce (95% water) would make less compost than a ton of potatoes or bananas (75-80% water), for instance. Many fruits and veggies are around 85-95% water.

The remaining finished compost will contain water..usually around 60-70% in an ideal situation...plus the living/dead products of microbes (especially bacteria) and fungi that broke down all that stuff (which can be quite high and far from insignificant as far as the compost's makeup).

Basically, most finished composts shrink to 2/3rd the initial weight...though on the scale of a ton you would notice more or less shrinkage depending on the products you put into it to begin with. As far as actual physical size, it can shrink up to 1/2...or more if the source was a high water containing vegetable/plant.

This post was edited by nc-crn on Wed, Oct 16, 13 at 0:59

Thanks to all. This information has been very helpful!

Another variable might be the type of food waste. Around here most food waste is from peelings, cores, and rinds or what I call kitchen scraps. Those alone don't IMO make compost but need to be mixed with 'browns'. The type of browns one uses can vary in weight - i.e. sawdust might weigh differently from dried leaves or shredded paper. IDK how much difference that would make to the weight of the finished product.

I think a ton of food waste without being mixed with 'browns' would be one huge stinking mess for awhile.

Do you in reality have a ton of food waste? If so I'm sure we'd all love to see pics! :)

I've been witnessing this first hand for about 15 years where I work. We compost about a ton of food waste per year consisting of mostly coffee grounds plus peelings and cores,etc. from lunches. We layer each days' addition with wood chips, sawdust/shavings, leaves, etc. whatever is available. Twice a year we turn the bins into an open finishing bin and bag up the previous batch.

Typically we get about the equivalent of 10-15 bags about the size of the bagged compost you can buy, every six months. So maybe 25 bags per year. At 40 lb per bag that would be 1000 lb of compost.

We don't keep track of the weight of the browns we add, but you have to use them since you would not want to try composting food waste by itself. It would be a stinky mess.

As others have noted, a lot of variables - too many too accurately generalize.

Cornell's On-Farm Composting Handbook, and some other sources and studies, show that mixed municipal food waste is a fairly high N material (C:N ratio ~15), and for treatment via composting needs to be blended with a balancing high C material (e.g., wood chips). That increases the total initial mass (and volume) makeup.

Using some rough approximations and assuming the use of mixed wood chips for the C source, a ton of generic municipal mixed food waste (~2.5 cubic yards) would need about 1/3rd of a ton of mixed wood chips (~1.4 cubic yards), and would be expected to yield about 1700-1800 lbs of finished compost (~1.9 cubic yards) at 40-50% moisture.