I've been wondering what other active gardeners use for compost collection. We've been doing two stages of collection for a long time.

1. Plastic dish on kitchen counter. This used to be 5/4 gallon ice cream containers. When they'd start to stink, buy another cheap neapolitan. They are now thinner and only a 1 gallon usually. Recently it has been actual old rubbermaid near 2 gallons but it needs replacement. I'd like to go with a lightweight ceramic to cut the odor collection but with a lid.

1a. Also I should add there is an old plastic folgers can, from still decent size, for coffee filters and grounds. That doesn't really get smelly as long as it stays just for coffee.

2. Outside on the carport it used to be a plastic diaper pail with an easy lid, but after that died it has been a tall 5 gal bucket. I don't care as much about that being uncovered but sometimes the dogs do raid it. This bucket gets emptied to the actual compost pile when it gets full.

Anyone care to share their expert system?

I retired my large Folgers coffee container due to a cracked lid. Now I use a couple of 64 oz plastic yogurt containers. Any container with a sealable lid, no ants allowed. One for kitchen waste and one for spent tea leaves which I use as-is. The kitchen waste gets dumped into a buried plastic trash can about once a week.

I've accumulated a number of plastic Folgers and Maxwell House containers over the years and I keep one next to the kitchen sink. When it gets full, I get another one and empty the full one into a 5 gallon bucket with a sealed lid set in a shady area by my shed. Rinsing out the used container with a little water and leaving it in the sun to dry seems to eliminate any odors. In the winter I just bring the 5 gallon containers into the garage until Spring rolls around.

I've tried pitching into various containers over the years but couldn't take the washing out. So I reuse my bread bags to collect the compost, at least once or sometimes more times per bag (I use a 7lb produce bag for the loaf I bake once a week). I do use an old mushroom container on the counter to collect my daily scraps then add them to the bag and rinse it out . The bag sits in a florist bucket, someone gave me a half dozen after a wedding and they seemed right for the job. I do have a lid for that but rarely any need to cover it. Everything goes in, coffee grounds, eggshells and vegetable scraps. Fish bones or shrimp shells too, but if I have any of those, it gets emptied sooner. When the bag is full I have to also collect a 5 gallon bucket full of weeds to cover the scraps in the compost pile. Good reason to do some weeding once or twice a week. If there's nothing to weed I'll do clippings of grass, oregano, tansy and other things taking over the yard.

Back when we used to compost we just used a small tub or if we were processing something that produced a lot it just went into another stainless bowl. Everything got emptied onto the pile same day or next.

most any container with a lid to keep odor in, and fruit flies out will do.
we use qt size yogurt containers, and dump them outside for the chickens.
doesn't take long to fill up, and nothing gets too stinky. old cool whip containers
or ice cream buckets will work, just dump them more often, and rinse out well to
get crud off the bottom. if a container gets too cruddy, throw it out, and start over.
we never have enough kitchen scraps to compost on account of the yard birds.



keith

I have a stainless steel kitchen compost bucket with lid containing a carbon filter to keep odor down. I line it with plastic produce bags. I'd estimate its capacity to be a bit more than a gallon. I keep it right on the countertop. When it gets full, it's emptied into a 5-gallon bucket w/lid which is kept in the garage. When the bucket gets full, or stinky, it goes to the actual outdoor compost pile. For things which are bound to get stinky, like fish scraps, I put those directly in the 5-gallon bucket. I'm not interested in testing the limits of the carbon filter in the kitchen!

Same as above. From Amazon

Sherry_AK wrote: ↑Sat Jun 24, 2023 7:59 pm I have a stainless steel kitchen compost bucket with lid containing a carbon filter to keep odor down. I line it with plastic produce bags. I'd estimate it's capacity to be a bit more than a gallon. I keep it right on the countertop. When it gets full, it's emptied into a 5-gallon bucket w/lid which is kept in the garage. When the bucket gets full, or stinky, it goes to the actual outdoor compost pile....

I had one of these for a long time sans the produce bag liner. The carbon filter did keep odor down but the danged fruit flies would set up housekeeping in the filters and lay eggs there. We changed to a gallon sized plastic container with a snap on lid (the flour part of an old canister set) and it sits on the counter next to the sink. Since we cook from scratch here, it fills up about every 2 days or so (daily during canning season), gets dumped on the compost pile and then rinsed out at the hose bib by the back door before bringing it back into the house. Works great! And no more fruit flies.

The town provides compost buckets, probably 2-3 qt. capacity, with a good lid. I empty it into my compost bin (and cover it with yard trimmings) every couple days, year-round. I rinse the bucket outdoors and let it sit in the sun to dry. The toilet paper I buy comes individually wrapped in tissue paper instead of plastic, and I use one of those wrappers to line the compost bucket. We're a vegan household (the humans, anyway) so nothing gets stinky in a couple days.

For organics that I don't want to put in my compost bin, such as citrus or baking parchment or banana peels (they attract too many fruit flies), I have a paper bag on the counter and take it out to the yard-waste city bin every couple days.

I also have compost bins at my community garden plot for garden waste. Sometimes I bring extra garden trimmings home if I need them for the bins at home.

By the way, I've been composting for more than a couple decades and fondly remember the Soil, Compost, and Mulch forum on GardenWeb with its occasional Garden Haiku and "what did you compost today?" (the weirder the better) threads.

I went to a "composting clinic" a month back. Kinda neat, like an hour long primer on composting, but very basic and one of those things where you know way more than the teacher, and have to try to keep quiet. I'm trying to recall if those compost buckets with a carbon filter were mentioned. I seem to think one of the audience members mentioned them, and I couldn't picture it.

It was during the dry spell and there was a compost bin there that was not working at all, I kinda felt bad because I could have brought a couple buckets from a working pile along, plus some worms, for people to inoculate their own piles at home.

I'd like to find an old crock of a decent size with a lid that I could leave on the floor or under the sink. A rope handle tightened up under the rim to carry for emptying, maybe. It is an old kitchen with little counter space. A pedal flip lid basket would be great but would get yucky in no time. They usually have a plastic basket.

Would some type of sealer (krylon for plastic spray paint or ? some other sealer? ) work on a plastic bucket to seal out odors? I just despise odor collection of plastic. I can hose them out in the summer, I guess, if I turn the hose on. In the winter, hoses are turned off but cooking is still full throttle.

habitat-gardener wrote: ↑Sun Jun 25, 2023 7:01 pm The town provides compost buckets, probably 2-3 qt. capacity, with a good lid. I empty it into my compost bin (and cover it with yard trimmings) every couple days, year-round. I rinse the bucket outdoors and let it sit in the sun to dry. The toilet paper I buy comes individually wrapped in tissue paper instead of plastic, and I use one of those wrappers to line the compost bucket. We're a vegan household (the humans, anyway) so nothing gets stinky in a couple days.

For organics that I don't want to put in my compost bin, such as citrus or baking parchment or banana peels (they attract too many fruit flies), I have a paper bag on the counter and take it out to the yard-waste city bin every couple days.

I also have compost bins at my community garden plot for garden waste. Sometimes I bring extra garden trimmings home if I need them for the bins at home.

By the way, I've been composting for more than a couple decades and fondly remember the Soil, Compost, and Mulch forum on GardenWeb with its occasional Garden Haiku and "what did you compost today?" (the weirder the better) threads.

Sounds like a good thread...started.

I have two composts going; one uninsulated for garden and an insulated compost bin for kitchen waste. I have a about 1,5 gal metal bucket on the counter next to the sink. That thing has text "KOMPOSTI" on it and It used to have plastic liner inside, but it broke. The lid does not fit anymore with the liner missing, but I did not use it anyways, because I try to empty it every night, except during winter, if there is a lot of snow on my path behind garage, where the compost bin is. I rinse or wash the bucket after every emptying, so there is no problem with it smelling.

Separate bio waste collection in cities here is becoming mandatory next year. We could have a waste bin, which has a separate compartment for bio waste and the garbage trucks keeps those separate when emptying the bin. They make bio gas of the collected waste and for example some of the city buses run on that gas. I have had the insulated compost for many years and after I registered with the city as year around composter, we are exempt of the bio waste collection. There are requirements which kind that kitchen waste compost can be, because it has to be rodent proof and insulated, if it used also during winter. Price of those bins has now increased and most places are out of stock, so I am glad we got ours when there was not such demand for them. Sometimes the thing freezes during winter, if we have really cold for longer period and I do not have enough new stuff in there to keep the process going. Bokashi could be an option for winter, because it can be kept indoors.

Bio waste collection...I'm glad there is an exemption system. The guy giving that compost clinic last month stated that 85-90% of the waste stream going to landfills is food waste. That is an extraordinary number to me...certainly not what we put out. We put out maybe 5%? Less? Chicken bones. Pork chop bones. Most everything else is eaten by persons, dogs, or compost pile. I usually don't put out the trash except for every third week. Really annoying to see that quarterly bill at the same rate as some of the neighbors.

85-90% is food waste? I don't believe that for a minute. Is he assuming that everything else is being recycled? Just think of your own trash. Most of it is packaging (which is waaaay over done) and various containers. Our county had a drop off for recyclables but shut it down for financial reasons. In 2021 we fired Waste Management due to poor service and now take our bags to the county landfill every two or three weeks. That's $5 a trip for under 100 lbs versus $73/quarter.

Food waste is the largest single component of non-recycled municipal solid waste in the US, but it's nowhere near 85-90% of the total. According to the US EPA's 2018 Municipal Solid Waste report (Advancing Sustainable Materials Management: Facts and Figures), here are the percentages of waste types going to US landfills in 2018 (the last year this report was produced):

Food Waste 24.1%
Plastics 18.5%
Paper & Paperboard 11.8%
Metals 9.5%
Wood 8.3%
Textiles 7.7%
Yard Waste 7.2%
Glass 5.2%
Rubber & Leather 3.4%
Miscellaneous/Other 4.2%

Municipal solid waste includes waste generated by residences, restaurants, office buildings, etc. but not industrial production facilities/factories and not construction/demolition waste.

Food waste was 21% of municipal solid waste generated in 2018 but 24.1% of waste sent to landfills (23.7% of waste landfilled or incinerated). The food waste portion of MSW streams was 63.13 million tons. Paper/paperboard is the largest component of MSW generated at 67.39 million tons, which is 23% of the MSW stream generated but only 11.8% of MSW sent to landfills, due to high recycling rates.

It sounded WAY off to me, but again, I felt like a calc student taking algebra1. There was no compost! He definitely did not say 25-30%.

It was put on a by a non-profit group. I figured the numbers wouldn't really add up... I WAS expecting them to sell some earth machines or such, which work pretty well. My first EM was acquired from a lady that took a $50 composting course and the EM was included in the deal. But instead it was a free clinic with no come ons.

One of the big deals was to compost food waste instead of landfill the food waste because it the food waste can't break down properly in the landfill. And that causes a huge methane release. But the pic in the original flyer showed a "compost pile" full of some perfectly good food with dirt and leaves on it. I saw it and said, don't compost that, eat it, make apple sauce.

He might had said that 85% of prepared food is thrown away instead of being eaten? Instead of 85% of waste is food.

Have been very happy rotating 2 Lee Valley stainless steel compost pails. Must be 25-30 years old. Once one gets full, it goes out to the compost, eventually making its way back inside and washed out while the other is on duty. (No plastic bags, no filters).

2 pails!? Genius!

Yeah, I think they guy said 85% of food goes to waste stream, not 85% of waste stream is food. But I still say, no way! 5% is wasted in this house. And the other 95% is waisted.

JRinPA wrote: ↑Mon Jul 03, 2023 2:08 am 2 pails!? Genius!

Yeah, I think they guy said 85% of food goes to waste stream, not 85% of waste stream is food. But I still say, no way! 5% is wasted in this house. And the other 95% is waisted.

One other possibility: could he have meant that 85% of household unconsumed food goes to waste/landfill, and only 15% of it is composted or otherwise beneficially used? That's the way it makes the most sense to me.