Last weekend was Father’s Day and I felt the pressure to do something special for my father. Now, my Dad is totally into gardening so I thought, what better present than supplying him with an easy way to help his garden grow? I bought him a kitchen compost pail—a small version of an outdoor compost—so that he could throw our kitchen scraps into it (more specifically, the egg shells from his spinach and feta omelet, bits of burnt toast compliments of me neglecting to check the toaster, and some stalks of gooey celery that I found rotting in the back of my fridge).  In a couple weeks the scraps will decay and turn into beautiful compost, high in nutrients, that my father will be able to add it to his garden.
It’s really simple, and there are so many ways to go about countertop composting.  There are stainless steel compost pails and some with filters to minimize odors and they can get costly.  But you should  buy a container that fits the size of your cooking needs–big families that eat a lot of fresh fruits and veggies will find the counter top compost pails too small–they’d fill up every day.
At ReUse HQ, Michael uses a 5 gallon plastic rubbermaid bin with a lid (it cost $5 at “Tarzjay”)Not because he cooks or eats a lot, but because he doesn’t have time to run back and forth to the compost pile every day–actually he doesn’t even have much time to eat!  The tub is about a foot deep and it’s kept under the sink next to his garbage can.  We cleaned out the office fridge and disposed of some pretty scary stuff–including what might have been sweet & sour soup!  Composting is so easy–everyone should do it.

In my last entry about ReUse’s community compost pile, I outlined how we went about it—we threw some stakes in the ground and surrounded it with chicken wire. It took less than an hour and it will provide us with compost for our upcoming garden projects. If you’re interested in composting, you can buy an outdoor compost bin or just construct something like we did. The outdoor compost bins range anywhere from $30-$200. The material quality of the bin goes up with the price, however, in my opinion it’s really unnecessary to purchase an expensive bin. As long as you have somewhere to put your organic waste, you don’t need the fancy turning bins or the weather resistant cedar bin.

If you are planning on constructing your own bin choose materials you’re familiar with. If you are good at constructing elaborate wood structures, then a three system bin is super efficient because they have three different sections which contain materials at different stages of decomposition. The materials you throw in the bins will decompose at a faster rate. If you don’t have much experience with wood structures, there’s always the easy wire design that ReUse did, or you could try your hand at a more permanent brick structure which would work better to keep out rodents. It’s really your decision. For my family, we decided to go with buying a cheap compost bin. Actually, we had a compost bin that we bought maybe fifteen years ago that has been gathering dust in our basement–we are just starting to add organic waste to it this summer.  The more I research it, the more I’m convinced that everyone should try it!