meganursula | green movements

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environment

green movements

Seattle is moving towards a waste free society.

Seriously, its an initiative. Recycling is availabe for most recyclable products, and yard waste bins are available not only for yard waste, but also for kitchen scraps and food soiled bio-degradeables.

I think this is a great idea, and i have been trying to be conscientious about recycling what can be. Josh doesn't seem to be so enthusiastic, and is drawn to the waste basket for most things. And i must admit my own laziness on occasion.

One thing that seems to stand in our way is that the compost bin and recycling bin reside in our driveway, outside, and on the other side of a fence. Technically we have a recycling bin on our back porch, but its awkward, gets filled up, and not emptied. Food is the worst - since its not nice to stand in the driveway while peeling carrots, perfectly good food scraps get put in our trash. Stupid, i know, but i'm a big believer in making things as convenient as possible, because that is how you make them a part of your daily life going forward.

In that vein, which do you like better:
http://www.mastergardening.com/too-1006.html
or
http://www.gardeners.com/Country-Compost-Crock/default/StandardCatalog.20707.36-480.cpd?SC=XNET8035

Have any other comments for me to fascilitate kitchen composting?

I still need to work out a better recycling situation. My ideal world would have us having four bins in our kitchen - garbage, recycling, glass, and compost. But we don't have that kind of space. I may get away with the compost bin on the counter, but not a recycling bag, and our new cabinets certainly won't accomodate both a recycling bin and a garbage bin.

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I keep a container for food waste under the sink. Small stuff goes in there, and I take it out to my yard waste bin periodically. If you collect food waste in a paper bag or paper milk carton, you can just drop the whole thing in the bin. Keep in mind that napkins and paper towels can also go in yard waste now.

My indoor recycling bins get taken out every other week when I take out the trash, or less often if they're not very full. (Er, trash is picked up every week; recycling is picked up every other week.) It's just part of the routine of putting the trash cans out for pickup.

Our recycling bins (both glass and other) came with our house, and are less than ideal. I wonder if i'd do better if i just replaced those bins, and kept them where they are (on the back porch)? mmm...

Definitey get yourself some bins that are easy to use and easy to empty. I use a plastic wastebasket for plastic recyclables, and a paper grocery bag for paper. The bag is nice because I don't have to empty it; just recycle the whole bag when it gets full. Obviously you couldn't keep a paper bag outside, though. :)

Most towns have recycling classes where they teach you composting tricks for an hour and hand you a good bin for a steeply discounted price.

We just made our own by buying the cheapest yard trash bin we could find at Home Despot ($10) and drilling holes in it ($fun). Works like a charm except for being a pain to empty.

In winter, our indoor compost bin (just a standard trash can; put a bit of paper waste in the bottom so it all comes out easily, and make sure it has some kind of lid) can build up a week without issue. In summer, we empty it daily and once a month bleach it clean to kill bug eggs.

good suggestions, thanks!

I have an outdoors composting bin, actually. But we don't use it much anymore, because Seattle is cool and collects compost to compost centrally. This is more space efficient for us, and still allows all the compostables to be composted appropriately, and then sold back for use. In fact, its better, because the scale of the composting means they compost things like empty pizza boxes!

My big problem, specifically, is that the yard-waste bin is one of those huge out-side gabarge pails, so i'm looking for something that i can peel onions over, or put an egg shell in. Thus the kitchen counter model that i'm considering.

The recycling bin from the city is the same way, except we also need to maintain a milk-crate for glass (i checked, it has to be this crate), and i still have a problem with intermediate collection. Single items (a juice bottle, say) don't get brought all the way out to the bin right away, so they either get thrown out (cardboard cereal boxes), or left on the counter until the stack gets too big.

But i think for that i may need to re-org my back porch and make an intermediate bin more accessible that way. I don't think it will fit in our kitchen. =(

Actually, do you even have room for a kitchen garbage with the new dishwasher? I never did look at the layout you came up with...

The plastic bucket has the advantage of price, the ceramic one is prettier and has odor filters, which might be a good thing... though if you only let the compost build up for a day, it shouldn't matter. Fortunately, they are both green. :)

What about putting new bins just inside the garage door? Yes, you still have to walk outside, but then you'd just have to open the door and drop things off, instead of around the gate.

*grin* for that matter, what about only having the recycling container inside, and having to make the special trips out for the garbage?

I've finally convinced Fred to stop using paper plates, at least for the summer... he keeps saying that running the dishwasher is more wasteful, but the amount of garbage we have going out each week has dropped drastically.

We moved the dog toys to a better spot (next to his crate), and we'll still have room for the trash can under the sink, but, because of the garbage disposal, there is really only room for one trash can. (For a while we had a brown grocery bag under there, but, i can't get Josh on board with that, and it was crowded anyway.) Thus, the compost issue.

I like the ceramic thing, and i can leave it on the counter. I don't really mind emptying something like that often (i take out recycling almost every day after the mail comes anyway), but it would be nice to have a place to put things until i'm ready to go out. Otherwise it gets thrown out.

Of course, nothing can be left at dog/baby eating level unless there is a closeable door in front of it.

When we re-do our kitchen i plan on making a pantry, that will have room for all the appropriate bins, in a convenient useful location. It really seems like we should be able to have enough room given the square footage of our kitchen, if we can figure out good organization.

i think the ceramic one is pretty.

Will and I have two tupperwares that are old ice cream gallon containers. We have one specifically for coffee grounds (whcih we periodically feed to the plants) that gets emptied about twice a week. We have another one that we put food scraps into. We pretty much empty it once a day, which is good cuz it keeps from stinking too much and has a sealed lid.

For recycling we keep a brown paper bag in the kitchen next to the trash. When it fills we put it in the big city bin that each residence gets. the paper bags are recyclable.

You might be a better person than i am. =)
the gallon containers are a good suggestion, too. Maybe especially mixed with Benoit's hints.

when I lived in Harrington full time, I tried to compost most vegetable matter from the house. It was quite convenient there with the amount of yard waste and clippings we had. Now that I am in town mostly, it is not nearly as convenient. However we have never had much highly processed food things so I have had little packaging waste (this is the worst offender from most purchases.)

BTW sorry that Bill was not able to make it to Seattle, my mother ended up in hospital one of the days (she's home now) and I had to teach a fabric dyeing classs another so couldn't watch Lincoln.

Hope you are feeling fine and everything is going well

I'm really a fan of Seattle's yard waste collection. It makes composting in the city much easier and useful.

I'm pretty proud of us for how well we're doing eating healthy non-prepackaged foods. On the other hand, our total packaging is out of hand. (I blame a certain someone's game buying habits for the bulk of it, but, we're also bigger consumers than we probably should be in general.)

I'm sorry about your mom. I hope she is feeling much better now. But its ok about Bill - would have been a lot of driving anyway. I'm going to try and bring him out here in the fall for a visit instead.

Even though the ceramic pot is prettier and claims to be dishwasher safe, I think it looks like a much bigger pain to clean than the bucket. It would come down to whether you are more worried about the appearance of it in your kitchen or the convenience. Me, I'd go for the latter. Anything with a rounded body and a lip like the ceramic one requires digging around to really clean it properly.

I confess I don't compost: I don't have anywhere to do it. Food waste goes down my disposal except on the rare occasion it's too big, in which case it goes in the Dumpster. But I do recycle aluminum, plastic, paper, and glass religiously. Like Katy, I put paper in a paper grocery bag and plastic in a plastic grocery bag; I put the bottles and cans in a paper bag that I empty into the recycling container and then drop in the paper recycling. With so little space I tend to do a trash run once a day.

BTW, have you looked into the small stacking bins like these?
http://www.stacksandstacks.com/html/11491_covered-recycle-bins-small-stackable-frosted-plastic-bins-rsb-20.htm
You could probably find something at that storage store in Bellevue that fits the size of your under-counter space better and allows for sorting trash vertically.

And while at Target I saw this, which looks easier to clean than the bucket but slightly more stylish: http://www.target.com/gp/detail.html/ref=br_1_8/601-6269431-0627325?ie=UTF8&frombrowse=1&asin=B000075MI0

That composter looks like what Heidi has. hmmm...
The bins look like a good idea. I suppose i should wait until our plumbing is hooked up so that i can determine how much space we ACTUALLY have under our sink.

http://www.containerstore.com/find/store.jhtml?state=WA&store=BEL&_requestid=111775 <- this is the store I was thinking about. Their web site has several stacking recycling bin configurations listed.

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green movements

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composting

Re: composting

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