living green tip of the day: compost in a can!

compost piles can be so unsightly! i compost all of our fruit and vegetable scraps, egg shells, coffee grinds and non-weed garden waste in a plastic trash can! the idea first came about when the sanitation engineers that pick up are trash on mondays knocked the wheels off of one of our large plastic trash cans. it seemed a waste to throw away such a big container, so i drilled holes all over it, found a bungy cord to secure the top and began to fill it with my debris. a few weeks later, i was making compost tea and side dressing my vegetables! the can i bought to replace the wheel-less one (now the compost bin) was also seperated from its base, so it also has been converted to a composter: now i have one "working" (not accepting more scraps) and one "filling" (accepting scraps). i freeze the compostable additives before putting them in the can: it seems to help break it down faster. after putting a week's worth of stuff into the can, i secure the lid and roll it around the yard, sometimes rotating it upside down a week at a time. it works great and eliminated about 50% of our trash headed to the landfill. give it a try!