Black Gold (no, not the dino kind)

Happy New Year, Mother Earth! This year, you'll notice we've taken a few more steps to make you a better place. We're composting!

Okay, so not entirely. We live in an apartment complex that barely manages a recycling program in a city that doesn't have community compost. Until the community garden opens up, I can't offer my compostables to them for their gardens. But until then, we're doing our part to minimize the amount of biodegradable waste that ends up trapped in an everlasting plastic cocoon.

I went out and got a groovy little MaxAir BioBag Composter. It's vented, so it stays nice and dry and keeps away the critters. We just plop a 100% compostable/biodegradable BioBag in it and then toss it out when it's time for the trash to go out.

The bag holds three gallons, and I've already been amazed by how much it's reduced our trash output. Dirty paper towels, waxed paper, the paper between slices of deli cheese, "refrigerator experiments", fruit and veggie peels, the crumbs at the bottom of the toaster, kleenex - all of it is compostable. Our kitchen trash doesn't fill up nearly as fast anymore. It's amazing. All of the stuff we threw into plastic bags, never to break down, could have at least been in a biodegradable bag so the landfill flora could reclaim them.

We've done the same in the bathroom, where all the trash is compostable. TP tubes (not accepted by some recycling centers), kleenex, cat litter, paper towels, q-tips, cotton balls - again, all are compostable. And so we have BioBags lining the bathroom trash to help cut down on the waste.

Now, if we could just find a place to take this stuff and make it compost, I'd be really happy. Until then, at least I know that it won't sit in a landfill forever - just until the bugs and birds and bacteria get to it. And that's one step closer to not being in the landfill at all.