Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Compost Bucket, and the Benefits of Backyard Composting

One of the easier and more satisfying ways to reduce the amount of trash you put out for pickup is to compost food scraps in the backyard. This bucket costs about $20, prevents any odors in the kitchen, and is still like new after 15 years of service. There are many other buckets to be easily found with a google search--plastic, vented, etc.--but I've been happy with this one.

Curbside pickup of kitchen scraps and other compostables is an important service to provide for those who can't compost in the backyard. It's upsides are that removing all of a community's compostables from the waste stream can reduce the amount of trash headed to the landfill by 30% or more, and meat scraps that can be problematic for backyard composting can be included in the curbside bin.

But even when such programs are offered, backyard composting remains the most ecological approach for those who can, because it removes the energy-intensive mechanized chain of transport/composting/redistribution that comes with curbside pickup. And there's all that rich compost ready for use at the bottom of the pile.

1 comment:

  1. I've been very happy with our decision to put our compost bin right outside our kitchen door. That way we don't even need to collect scraps in a bucket--we can just toss them straight out the door and into the bin each time we prepare a meal. You might expect odor to be a problem with the bin so close to the house, but in four years we've only had a noticeable odor once or twice, and all it took to fix it was a bit more "brown" material. (I toss in shredded paper if I have nothing else handy.)

    ReplyDelete