Quick & Easy Home Composting
Watching West Coast cities push ahead with curbside food composting, I’ve been almost green with envy. Perhaps most highly publicized is San Francisco’s program, which began last year as part of the city’s ambitious goal to achieve net zero waste by 2020. Then there’s Seattle’s program, which has been running since 2005! And now Portland, OR has joined in with trial program that began last week.
Meanwhile, here in my home town of Newton, MA we are still struggling to adjust to single stream curbside recycling–as we continue to consign our apple cores, cucumber peels, egg shells and coffee grounds to the garbage disposal or trash bin. Which, by the way, accounts for a heck of a lot of trash: nationwide almost 30% of municipal solid waste nationwide is organic, compostable matter. And this figure doesn’t even take into account the amount of food we’re washing down the drain.
So what are those of us who aren’t blessed with curbside composting programs to do (besides agitating for them)? Well, we can start by setting up a home composting system.
My family has been composting now for almost three years and it’s really a lot easier to set up and maintain than people often think. We have a ceramic composting pail from Gardener’s Supply on our kitchen counter where we collect vegetarian food scraps (no dairy or meat).
When the ceramic pail is full we dump it into a large, heavy-gauge, covered, black plastic bin in our back yard, into which we also add a good bit of grass clippings, leaves and even shredded paper. We probably turn the pile a couple of times during the summer with a pitchfork, and we harvest the finished compost once a season from the bottom of the bin via a sliding door. That’s it.
Well, sort of. There are a variety of compost systems and a variety of ways to manage your pile, depending on your priorities. Here are some tips to get you started:
- If you are concerned about rodents or other animals, use a covered bin (like ours).
- The more you turn your pile the quicker you will get finished compost. If you want to make compost quickly, go with a rotating system like the Bio-Orb from New England Rain Barrel:
- For higher quality compost strive for a 30/70 ratio between “green” and “brown” matter. Green, or nitrogen rich, materials include food scraps and lawn clippings. Brown, or carbon rich, materials include dried leaves, hay, and shredded paper.
- If you live in a cold and snowy climate, make sure your bin is easily accessible in the winter or you won’t use it.
- For easier harvesting, get a bin with an access door. You can harvest finished compost from the bottom while adding fresh compostables to the top.
Of course curbside would be great–for one thing, the industrial composting facilities that process municipal composting accept all food matter including meat and dairy, which are not advisable in a home composting system. But we don’t need to wait for curbside. We can make black gold right in our own back yards. And divert 30% of our household waste from the trash.
If you’re ready to get started, you might also want to check out Earth Easy’s Guide to Home Composting and/or Mother Earth New’s article “Compost Made Easy” a comprehensive overview.
Happy composting!
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I’m jealous too that we don’t have food composting but I made space in my yard to dump my food waste and boy is there a lot of it!
Comment by Risa Edelstein — April 26, 2010 @ 7:00 pm
Many compost advisers discuss the proper ratio of green to brown matter. However, I doubt that most people can figure out this ratio. Personally, I stuff my compost bins with leaves (brown matter) in the fall, and add food waste (green matter) to it throughout the year. What’s my ratio? I haven’t a clue. But I do know that it all breaks down into compost eventually, and it works very well in my garden.
Comment by Dan Ruben — April 29, 2010 @ 9:36 am
I even live just outside Portland proper and am jealous of their curbside composting. I hope it goes well and continues to spread. For now we make do with backyard composting and get the added benefit of enriching our garden’s soil!
Comment by Brenna @ Almost All The Truth — August 12, 2011 @ 2:17 am