Backyard Composters - No Snow on Top.
To reduce our kitchen waste, and to take the City of Waterloo up on it’s offer of free stuff, we installed two backyard composters. We put almost all food and yard waste in these. The only exception is meat and bones. We throw in egg shells, moldy bread, carrot peels, apple cores, leftover pureed baby food — the works.
Yes this sits on our counter ALL the time. It doesn't smell.
We have a stainless steel bin on our kitchen counter that is exactly the right size. If it’s full then it’s time to take it out (you can see the foot trail through the snow in the first picture). Taking it out 4-5 times a week means it doesn’t get a chance to smell. It takes about a day or two to fill up in our household.
When we installed them we put down a layer of fine mesh first. The holes are just big enough to let the worms in but small enough to keep the mice and other small rodents out. On very rare occasions we leave the lid off just enough that raccoons or other big animals find their way in, but this hasn’t been a problem really. They don’t make a mess, just grab a treat and head back into the forest behind our house.
The total effort was less than an hour and that involved a trip to the dump to pick up the bins in the first place.
The best part? AWESOME vegetable soil in the summer and things for our dog to bark at. Well the first part is awesome at least.
