Trash Talking

Here's the nasty little aspect of cooking - call it green waste or garbage, there's no escaping the seamy side of food prep. It reminds me of a song I learned from Mad magazine years ago, sung to the Marine hymn,

"Egg shells and coffee grounds, grease from the pan..." I can't remember the rest and, for once, Wikipedia has let me down, but you get the idea. 

We recently began composting our kitchen waste, not in our garden (that didn't work well here: the skunks loved our leftovers and made frequent, smelly visits - and Cora can't seem to resist trying to chase them) but in our green bin that the trash company takes away and makes into magical compost for our garden. Composting our yard waste with our kitchen waste entitles us to several buckets full of good new soil for the garden annually. Win-win.

Outside, we now have three big bins, brown for trash, green for green waste and garbage, and blue for recyclables. We have been amazed at how little actual trash we have, now that the recyclables and the garbage have been separated from the rest. We could often wait two weeks for trash pickup now, where before we desperately needed it weekly.

Are you composting?  At home, or does your trash company do it for you? Have you found the perfect composting bucket to keep in the kitchen? We like ours - the lid closes firmly, it's large enough to last for several meals, and the carrying handle at the back makes it easy to dump without dumping the contents all over oneself.  But, we are open to suggestion if you have the perfect answer.

Or, does all this trash talking just make you Mad?