Due to a new state law here in California, I will have new trash bins starting next week. Instead of 2 bins, I will now have 3 bins. This means I need to rethink how I dispose of my trash.
Has anyone else had to deal with this and if so, how did you break your old habits and create new ones? Currently, I mostly throw everything into the same inside can and then drop the bag in the trash bin. I use the recycled bin for cardboard and a little bit of yard debris.
My new bins are 1) Trash; 2) Food Waste; 3) Recycle.
I’ve been giving some thought to composting since I started a small garden last year, so I thought this might be a good time to think about doing that too.
So I’m looking for ideas and how to’s. The composting is small scale and I’ve never done it, so I need a lot of information.
We used to have two seperate bins for trash and recycling. We were provided a list of what was permissible in the recycling bin. It was very straightforward: trash went in the trash bin and recycling went in the recycling bin. Both were set out at the curb for pickup, which frankly was the worst part: the trash can was a traditional trash can with wheels that we could roll down to the curb but the recycling bin was the size and shape of a laundry basket and hauling it to the street was a PITA because we had to make two trips – we had a very long driveway.
We never had food waste bins but other than necessitating yet another trip to the curb (which now in this house wouldn’t be so onerous) I see no real difference. A lot of food waste (vegetable peeling and trimmings, coffe geounds, tea leaves, etc) can be used for compost so we really dont have much to throw in the trash other than unused leftovers and the like. We have a garbage disposer for little stuff rinsed off of plates.
Edit: actually, the worst part was finding space for the two bins. We had a little cement pad next to the carport designed specifically for the trash bin to sit on. We didn’t however have have a convenient place for the very wide and short recycling bin so it just sort of sat in the corner of the garage which drove my OCD brain nuts.
Inb4 this gets Cafe Society’d with the rest of the gardening threads?
I recommend getting a couple of smallish composting bins of whatever size and type you will find useful and usable. The worst type of compost bin is the one that you just never bother using. That said, I like my compost tumbler.
Start out filling one bin (I think there are compost tumblers that you can get interchangeable drums for? maybe?), and when it gets full, leave it to continue breaking down for a few months while you’re filling the other bin. Put the mature compost on your garden and swap in the newly emptied bin for the most recently filled one, and just keep cycling like that.
Main tip for healthy and enjoyable compost is mix regularly (why I like the tumbler), and keep your browns up. Compost is supposed to be about half “green” (fresh rottable stuff like lettuce leaves, eggshells, peelings, grass clippings, etc.) and half “brown” (withered foliage like dead leaves, dried stalks, pine needles, old newspapers, etc.). If your composting bin is getting gooey and smelling literally like shit or with some other foul odor, you need to increase your browns.
Oh, and as for how to break habits: Keep separate indoor containers for different kinds of waste, and get in the habit of using them correctly. It’s second nature for me now when, say, I bake a batch of cookies, to shove the empty cardboard butter box into the recycle container, the plastic wrapper from the butter stick into the trash, and the cookie crumbs from the baking tray into the compost bin.
In the New York city and its suburbs, the rules, and the bins, have changed repeatedly and often.
I remember a time when a single recycling bin received the metal cans and glass and plastic of all sorts and then cardboard and paper went out separately, and garbage in a third can. Actually, we’re back to that, except with a lot of restrictions now on which number in the triangle on the plastic can be recycled.
Then there was the place and time where the glass and plastic went into one container and the metal into a different recycling bin.
And the era when all recycling went together, paper and metal and cardboard and glass and plastic.
Visiting elsewhere, I remember having to separate the steel cans that have the seam down one side from the aluminum cans.
Since we moved to a house, most of what goes in the composting bin (a rolling bin like the others) is green waste from the yard. But we also have kitchen scraps, used tissues and paper towels, and stuff like that. When we moved here I found a handy plastic 3-gallon composting bin for the kitchen that fits in a cupboard. When we open the cupboard door the bin comes out on the door without the cover; when the cupboard door is closed, the lid settles down on the bin to contain the smells. We use the compostable green 3-gallon bags, which work pretty well. The bin bucket pops out when we want to empty it, so we’re not carrying a fragile compostable bag full of food scraps downstairs to where the bin is.
I found something very much like what we have, I highly recommend it for an out-of-the-way place for kitchen scraps, if you don’t mind giving up the under-counter storage.
And there are all sorts of ways and levels of detail you can go from there; but, as long as you’re not putting anything really noncompostable in, they mostly provide different results in the sense of taking longer or shorter periods of time and in whether they might smell or look ugly (to your and if applicable your neighbors’ noses and eyes) in the meantime. If all you do is make two open chicken wire pens and toss compost in one till it’s full and then let it sit till the other one’s full – you’ll get something that according to the USDA isn’t compost, and which may still have visible chunks of eggshells and so on, but which is fine to till into your garden beds for most purposes. If you want something you can add to your potting soil and start small seeds in, you need it to break down better than that. If you want to use it in a hurry, you need it to break down faster than that. ETA: if you need to keep the neighbors happy, you may need closed containers; there are a lot of different versions on the market.
Don’t put any animal waste, other than eggshells, in unless you’re really going to do it seriously right – you do need the right conditions to break animal parts down properly, and they’re liable to attract coyote, or stray dogs, or whatever carnivore’s loose in your area (and there probably are some.) If you don’t want visible large chunks for quite a while, some things will need to be chopped. If you want the pile to get properly hot for relatively fast composting and to kill most pathogens, you need to balance the carbon/nitrogen ratio (which is what the greens/browns business is about); and you also need to turn the pile properly, and keep it within the right moisture range. If you’ve got disease problems in something you’re growing, either make really sure that pile’s getting hot, and/or don’t put compost made from those plants and their relatives where you’re expecting them to grow; put it on something unrelated instead.
And don’t put raw potato parts – including peels – in your compost unless you’re absolutely sure it’s either getting hot enough or freezing hard enough; you can spread late blight for miles around you. Cooked potato remains are fine, late blight won’t survive the cooking.
Hey thanks everyone! As always, you guys do not disappoint. What great information.
I had no idea a tumbler even existed and Roderick, that’s a very cool under cabinet storage. I need to see if I can rearrange some things to accommodate such a container.
Thanks again everyone. I may have more questions as I go.
One option to consider is a worm farm, something that is pretty trivial to construct, but should be commercially available too.
It is basically a compact, multilayer compost heap, and the worms do a lot of the composting, converting organic matter. It produces what is known as “worm tea”, which is a potent fertiliser - you are recommended to water it down. And the left over organic matter after the worms have eaten their fill is great for improving soil quality. Plus you will introduce worms into your garden, which is also great for the soil.
We’re subject to the same CA law and the transition has been easy. Our city already provides three curbside wheeled bins: trash, recycling, and green waste. The green waste bin had previously been exclusively for yard waste, like leaves, branches, grass clippings, etc., but now we also toss-in the compostables. The only habit change for us is putting a small collecting bin on our kitchen counter for cooking and food scraps. We dont have a garden and home composting is difficult here, so we are glad to just have compostables taken away.
Under the kitchen sink. Ours has a filter, to reduce the odors that get out. We line it with produce bags from the grocery store, and when it’s full, my husband takes it out to the “mulch pile” which is mostly full of dead leaves, since i created it as a place to put leaves when i rake them in the fall. But if we had a designated municipal composting bucket, we could empty it into that.
If you do have municipal composting, you can include stuff that isn’t suitable for home composting, like meat scraps and bones.
Our county started a composting-material pickup service last year. Gave us a new green bin for outside and a smaller countertop bin to use inside. They are very specific about what types of bags are acceptable, as they have to be able to break down. I’ve found most compostable bags to be a little bit too easy to break down. Doubling up is usually a good idea.
We don’t put the bag in the mulch pile, and wouldn’t put it in the municipal bin. It’s just so we don’t have to clean the small bin under the sink. We dump the compost from the bag and put the bag in the trash. It was going to be thrown away anyway, we get far more produce bags than we have any use for.
A strong second for the container with a charcoal filter in the lid. We use compostable liner bags. Pizza boxes and contaminated paper bags go in the compost.
We had three bins in Oregon. Inside the house, we kept a compost bin near the sink for food scraps. A round tin, with a lid that accepts a carbon filter for odor control, and we used the compostable bags that they sell in Costco. When the bin is full, tote it out to the larger bin. We also kept a large paper or plastic bag for recycle material: paper, acceptable plastic, newspaper, etc. You local waste people can tell you what can go in there, but it’s usually paper, cardboard, plastic containers with a neck (like oil bottles) and glass. Most don’t accept plastic bags or plastic clamshells. You just need to train yourself.
Whoops, I was sleepy. This is true, but it also applies to tomatoes, not just potatoes.
The species of worms which are generally used in worm farms may not be species that will survive in your area in the garden. I don’t know whether that’s an issue in your part of California.
