Composting is easy and has great benefits for you and your community. First of all, by composting, I have almost no trash each week. I've switched down to a tiny trash bin which saves me upwards of a $120/yr, reduces the amount of waste pick up and transfer and lightens the load on our landfill.
I've been composting at home for a couple of years now but it wasn't til last year that I got a proper two cone setup to make it easier and more productive.
I used to use a stainless steel bin in the kitchen pictured at right, but it turned out to be easier just dropping my food waste into a plastic bag which I keep in the freezer. The freezer bag solution is waste free, has no smell and less mess.
Seattle has a great composting program. They will sell you inexpensive green bins and offer a composting guide for download. When one cone is 2/3 full, you switch to the other while the first one gradually turns into soil I can use in my organic garden. I use the larger bin pictured for yard waste.
I've had no problems at all with outdoor smell or pests. That may be because I'm a vegetarian. If you have meat scraps in your compost, you may need to secure your compost bins from rodents and raccoons.
Everyone in the world with a yard or shared yard space should be composting. For apartment dwellers, there are even small indoor compost systems that work even more quickly. Read about Darren Barefoot's experience with his apartment composter. The Nature Mill Pro XE composter costs 50 cents in electricity monthly and generates new compost soil every two weeks.
I forgot to mention that composting is fun! It's great to finish cooking a great meal and then recycle all my scraps right into the compost bins, and eventually back into the garden.
