This post is part of a series of post that I am doing to bring awareness to reducing waste and sending less to the landfill sponsered by Foodbuzz Tastemakers and GLAD products. Although I am being compensated for this project, it in no way effects my thoughts or opinions.
One of the major things that can be done to reduce landfill ridden waste that I was not previously doing is composting. Composting is kind of a scary thing to me for some reason. I don’t want my kitchen/house/yard smelling like rotting food, I don’t want to attract (any more) wild animals into my yard, and I don’t want it to be a lot of work to set up. These are the reasons why I have not been composting. But this is about to change.
I found an easy tutorial of how to make your own compost bin on Young House Love (here) and decided to make myself a compost bin. It seemed easy enough, and not too much upkeep. Essentially you take a large plastic bin, poke some holes in it for drainage, fill with some base dirt and leaves, and then you are ready to compost!
My bin cost somewhere around $15 from Target. I probably could have gotten it cheaper at Home Depot, but I didn’t feel like battling the crowds that seemed to be everywhere Labor Day weekend. It was not hard at all to make though.
Now that I have a bin outside, and a handy compost bin inside, I’m going to try harder to make sure compostable items get put in the correct bin! Also, since my inside bin has handy compostable bags, I’m hoping this will reduce the smelliness of the actual bin AND be easier for me to get used to emptying and taking outside on a regular basis.
Next step: Find out what all can be composted!
I honestly do not have much of an idea of what is compost worthy waste. I know that things like apple cores and banana peels can be thrown in, and I think you are supposed to avoid animal product, but other than that I’m sure that there is lots that I am missing. I found this really great website called (of course) compostguide.com which has tons of information about how to compost, what to compost, and other things relating to composting. From that site, I learned about a few other things that can be composted:
- tea bags
- egg shells – although they decompose slowly so they should be crushed first
- garden refuse
- sawdust
- peanut shells
- coffee
The only things it said to really avoid were, as I suspected, animal products. And really that is only because they will attract unwanted friends (i.e. bugs and wild animals) otherwise they will decompose eventually…it just takes a lot longer.
I’m sure there are a million other everyday things that can be composted as well, feel free to share if you know of any!
Question that just popped into my head:
Can you still compost in Winter? What do you do when the compost bin is covered in a foot of snow?? Will I even WANT/be able to trek across my yard to the get to the compost bin in Winter? We’ll see what happens I suppose.
Other thoughts:
- My kitchen has NOT gotten smelly from the countertop compster yet. Yay!
- The compostable bags that GLAD sent me to use in the composter are a very cool idea, but SUPER frustrating to open. Since they have to be super thin to compost easily it definitely takes patience to find the right edge and get them open.
- Laura said in the comments of my last post that she was afraid her dogs would get into a compost if she had one. This is definitely a legitimate concern if you had a compost pile, but since my outdoor compost is all enclosed in a bin, I’m hoping this won’t be an issue. I’m sure animals will be attracted to it because of the smells, but I don’t think anything could actually get into it. Luckily, it is far away from where Olive goes outside, so I shouldn’t have a problem with her getting into it. Time will only tell is other animals will be able to get into it or not.
This was a great resource of info! Thank you for sharing and getting the wheels in my head moving.
I still am afraid my dogs will get into the bin (they are both 50 pounds and trouble makers). But, I’ll have to discuss with matt and see what he thinks!
So this may be a dumb question (haha I typed dump) – but do you ever have to do anything for the compost bin? like add more dirt or clean it out occasionally or anything like that?
Totally not a dumb question. (or dump question 😉 ) From what I’ve read, you don’t really have to do much. Every time you add new things to it you are supposed to mix it up to cover the food items in dirt to keep animals away and to help it decompose more quickly.
Supposedly once it has decomposed in like 3-4 months, you can use it as fertilizer for gardens!
Oh, and if Olive was any larger I definitely would be afraid that she would get into it as well. I’m hoping that no animals will get in mine, but I’m also kind of just waiting for the day that I go down there and the cover is opened and it is all dug out by a raccoon or chipmunks or something.