One of the best ways to save money and save the environment is to start composting. Composting allows you to reduce your food waste in a significant way by breaking it down into something you can use in your garden, or sell / give to your community and neighbors.
1. Composting Tumbler
Using a composting tumbler is one of the quickest ways to start composting. The reason for putting this at the top of the list is because these tumblers will speed up your composting process (as fast as 2 weeks). This particular composting tumbler can hold up to 5 cubic feet, so it should have plenty of space for all your food waste. Even better would be to buy 2 so you can let one batch of compost finish while you fill up the other. At the time of writing, the price should be around $80-$85 on Amazon.
2. Garden Tower 2
Vertical gardens have become all the rage with many people trying to garden off of a small balcony or patio. Garden Tower 2 by the Garden Tower Project has been designed to both be a vertical garden AND a composter. By dropping your food wastes in the center of the tower, the worms and microbes inside the tower will work on breaking down the food waste and providing nutrients to your plants. If you are limited on space and want something that will just work, you should totally look into getting the Garden Tower 2. At the time of writing, the Garden Tower 2 was priced at $399.
3. Getting a high tech composting gadget
In this realm, there are various players on the market. See our breakdown here (We Researched All The Food Waste Gadgets). But out of those, here’s our favorite one:
The Lomi. 2 to be exact.
Currently $399, and within hours, it will churn, chop, and turn your food waste into dry garden ready “compost”. Note, the compost is in quotes because it is not technically fully composted, but it is broken down in a way that will easily break down further in your garden or soil.
Buy Here (Link)
4. A spot in your back yard
This could be as simple as a hole in the ground, container with the bottom cut out, or personally, one of my most favorite simple setups is the 3 pile system using (parted out) pallets.
Assuming you can get pallets for free, you can use pallets with a few screws and scrap wood, and put together a 3 pile system using the following design. The pallets can be cut smaller as needed to fit the size of the pile you can manage in your backyard.
(Image here)
Once built, just dump all your food waste in one pile for a month, then switch to the next pile for the next month. In the meantime, wet, flip, and mix your other piles to aid in breakdown of materials. After 3 months, your first pile should be ready for use.
