Wherever you live — whether in a house or an apartment, whether you have outdoor access or not, whether you garden or not — you will get SOMETHING out of this episode. (WARNING: I get pretty excited about composting!) This episode covers EVERYTHING you need to know: what type of bin to use, where to place it, what to fill it with, what not to fill it with ? basically how to reduce the outrageous 40% of food we waste in our homes.
(Click here for composting tips and to enter a giveaway to win my favorite compost bin!)
Remarkably, we throw away up to 40% of the perfectly edible food we bring into our homes! According to the Environmental Protection Agency “wasted food is the single biggest occupant in American landfills.” Globally, food waste is responsible for an estimated 3.3 gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions.
And vegans aren’t off the hook either! Certainly, animal agriculture is the main contributor of greenhouse gas emissions, but even when we waste vegan food, we’re contributing to methane created in landfills. So, even though we may not be contributing to greenhouse gas emissions by the food we eat, we ARE contributing to it by the food we waste!
That’s were composting comes in! Wherever you live — whether in a house or an apartment, whether you have outdoor access or not, whether you garden or not…you can do it!
Here are some top tips for starting to compost at home. (But for LOTS more, listen to the related Food for Thought podcast episode below.)
Decide what type of compost bin is right for you. I’ve been using the Envirocycle Tumbler Composting Bin for 15 years and recommend it! It’s fully enclosed so it can put in a garden, on a patio, deck or a balcony; it comes in mini (17 gallons) or regular (35 gallons); and it’s super easy to use!
Decide where to place your compost bin. Keep it near the kitchen for easy access (or in the kitchen in the case of an indoor worm bin.)
Remember the basic principles of composting: food, oxygen, and moisture. The microorganisms (bacteria, fungi) and macroorganisms (worms) that break down organic matter need all of these to thrive and do their job. “Food” means nitrogen (green materials such as fruit and veggie scraps) and carbon (brown materials such as dry leaves, cardboard boxes, paper bags). “Oxygen” comes from stirring the pile or rotating your tumbler. “Moisture” comes from water or wet green materials.
Create a system for your veggie scraps. Whenever I’m prepping a meal and invariably have scraps, I throw all of those that can be made into a stock directly into a soup pot, and I throw the rest into my compost pail.
Learn what green and brown materials you can add to your compost bin.Green: fruit and veggie scraps, lawn and grass clippings, flower cuttings, nut shells, fruit pits, grains (including rice, pastas and breads), coffee grounds, and tea leaves. Brown: cardboard, brown paper bags, paper towels, newspapers, toilet paper rolls, bedding from hamster/gerbil/rabbit cages. (Supporters receive a beautiful graphic detailing everything that can go into a compost bin. Become a supporter today for perks like these!)
Chop green and brown materials into smaller pieces. The smaller the scraps, the faster composting takes place. It just means chopping the veggies smaller before putting them in your compost pail and using something like a microshredder to shred brown materials.
Keep a good balance of green to brown materials. As a rule, add 1/3 green to 2/3 brown materials.
Learn what NOT to add to your compost bin. Animal products, tea bags (many have plastic), glossy papers, bioplastic “biodegradable” cups/bags are just a few of the things you don’t want to add.
Donate your compost! If you don’t have a garden but are creating beautiful compost (as per all my suggestions in the podcast episode), donate it to community gardens, local garden centers, friends, or to the local park!
Give away your veggie scraps! If you just aren’t ready to compost on your own but still want to reduce your food waste, here is a handy guide to finding out how you can arrange to have your veggie scraps picked up and hauled away! Some cities offer green waste pick-up, and some innovative companies are picking up people’s veggie scraps for them!
I’ve had so many eye-opening moments since starting this Zero Waste journey — one of them having to do with food waste. It’s why I’ve devoted three podcast episodes to this topic, when I thought I’d just be doing a simple episode on how to compost.
Certainly it’s been revelatory to learn about the rampant (and preventable) food loss and food waste that takes place in the harvesting, production, processing, and transportation arms of the food sector — the animal livestock industry being the number one culprit. But it’s been the food waste that takes place in the consumer sector — in our own homes — that has left a deep impression on me.
As I explain in Food Waste Part 2: Food is Not Garbage, Americans throw away up to 40% of perfectly safe, perfectly edible food — all of which winds up in a landfill, sitting in a dump, creating methane and other greenhouse gases.
The lightbulb that went off for me is simply this: food doesn’t belong in the garbage. I know that may sound ridiculously obvious, but I think because it’s so ridiculous obviously that it doesn’t even penetrate our skulls. We can’t see the forest for the trees.
When I started on this journey and began making changes in my life and in our home, one of the dilemmas I was faced with was what kind of garbage bags would I be able to find that fit our existing cans (below) and that are biodegradable. I started researching and googling and stressing until I realized…we don’t need ANY garbage bags at all — because there’s nothing stinking up our garbage!
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The only reason we line our garbage bins with plastic bags is because of all the wet food we throw away that becomes stinky and smelly. Once we put those stinky garbage bags into our outdoor garbage cans, hungry, opportunistic critters (or “pests” as many people consider them) find these food-filled cans and create the human / animal conflicts that lead to their demise. The raccoons, skunks, opossums, crows, foxes, even bears who topple our garbage cans and make a mess are simply being resourceful enough to want to eat the food we considered waste and discarded.
Animals are the ultimate zero-wasters!
But, no food breaking down in our garbage…no smell. No smell…no “pests.” No “pests”…no conflicts or fear of disease-transmission. No conflicts…harmony. (And if you’re worried that urban and suburban wildlife would starve if we stopped throwing food away, my recommendation would be to focus on creating a wildlife-friendly habitat.)
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Same goes for dumps.
The only reason dumps smell putrid is because of all the food we throw away that becomes stinky and smelly. If organic matter weren’t putrefying (especially because it can’t properly break down without the oxygen and soil and microbes it needs to do so), dumps wouldn’t smell. They also wouldn’t create greenhouse gases or attract “pests” that also create conflicts and a certain bad reputation and sometimes death for them. (Listen to the podcast for more about the negative effects of food in dumps.)
So instead of buying biodegradable garbage bags (which, by the way, can’t biodegrade without the right conditions, and there are no right conditions in a dump), we simply put our garbage and recycling into their respective receptacles — sans plastic bags.
Despite the goal being zero waste, we do still create waste in our home, mostly from products we still had and are using up before starting this journey and packaging from online orders (for the garbage) and aluminum cans from the cats’ food and the beer bottles David occasionally buys (for the recycling). All of the garbage items are dry, so there’s no issue there, and as for the recyclable items, we simply rinse out the cat cans and beer bottles before putting them in the garbage bin. The rest is any mail I can’t compost (yes, I’ll be discussing the challenge of reducing unwanted mail!) No need for a liner.
On garbage days, we bring take the receptacles directly to the city cans in our garage, dump in the contents, and rinse out our cans before returning them to the kitchen. Easy. Peasy.
As for what we do with food scraps, you’ll want to listen to the Food Waste Part 2 podcast episode for the gazillion ideas I provide for reducing food waste in the first place — and composting is the final (not first) suggestion. That’s right…the other massive revelation that guides my actions every day: ZERO WASTE ISN’T ABOUT WASTE DIVERSION. IT’S ABOUT WASTE PREVENTION.
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Yes, I compost all the food scraps that remain (more to come on that topic), but I’m now focused more on eliminating food scraps in the first place, including when I eat out or at other people’s homes. (And for years we used compostable bags to line our compost pail on our countertop to make it “more convenient” for us to bring it down to the city’s green bin in our garage, but we stopped buying those, too, because it’s only a little less convenient to bring the actual pail down to the green bin, dump it, and bring it back to the kitchen. Big. Friggin. Deal.)
I’m reluctant to even recommend biodegradable garbage bags, because of all the reasons I gave above, but I realize there are municipalities around the world who don’t offer green bins for homeowners or apartment dwellers and many people don’t have compost bins (or know what to do with them if they did), however, please do me a favor and first:
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to line our compost pail on our countertop to make it “more convenient” for us to bring it down to the city’s green bin in our garage, but we stopped buying those, too, because it’s only a little less convenient to bring the actual pail down to the green bin, dump it, and bring it back to the kitchen. Big. Friggin. Deal.) 
, because of all the reasons I gave above, but I realize there are municipalities around the world who don’t offer green bins for homeowners or apartment dwellers and many people don’t have compost bins (or know what to do with them if they did), however, please do me a favor and first: