There seems to be a large following of people that enjoy throwing products that will decompose into bins or into large piles and watching the process. There is all sorts of advice on the internet on how you can get started in this and make things break down faster. With the EPA saying 27% of landfills are made up of food and grass clippings its a wonder why everyone does do this…. right?

The Wife was really behind the household getting a Compost Bin, and with city requirements that don’t allow open compost piles like I had as a kid, we have very few options other than getting something made for the purpose. Most of these containers consist of some sort of plastic bin that lets you rotate it and ends up costing you a lot more money and not working nearly as well as just throwing things onto the ground. After doing a lot of reading on the topic we ended up getting a composting bin that is basically a large plastic box with a lid so the neighbors can’t complain to the city about it.

After a year of owning our compost bin, The Wife is getting the first servings of dirt out of it and finding that a massive pile (or a huge number of boxes) would be needed to produce any amount of useable compost. This by itself seems to make it very hard to have a viable compost in any sort of urban area without slightly changing your life style to accommodate it. Any major amount of compost-ables  like leaves, grass clippings, or sticks still end up going to my local compost (Ramsey County’s sites are here).  But for home food items, the only real options seems to be (in an urban area) is to get a bin and start putting your scraps in it. Even though it doesn’t produce enough “dirt” to change or really benefit my garden, I still get the satisfaction of knowing the kitchen will start to stink if I don’t get those coffee grounds out to the compost bin.

Do you partake in composting? Why or Why not? Are you at all concerned about the large amount of things that are going into our landfills that ultimately turn into dirt or is it comforting knowing a lot of the stuff we throw away breaks down?