Set up your space.
Food is going to rot, no matter what. All you have to do is help. “You don’t need a lot of technology,“ Hoover says. “You just want to make the food break down in a way that’s compatible with your life.” If you have room in your yard and the temperature where you live is even somewhat moderate, you can fence off an area (3 x 3 x 3 feet is considered ideal) and start your scrap pile directly on the ground. For a tidier arrangement, buy or make bins to contain your organic waste or drums that tumble and aerate it, which helps to convert it to compost even faster. See more details on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s website. Even apartment dwellers can get in on the action: Indoor bins stocked with red worms, critters you can order online, process food scraps in a smaller space. (This NRDC Tumblr post tells you how to get started.)
Master the mix.
A pile of decomposing food might sound like the last thing you want in your backyard or under your sink. But if you do it right, you’ll hardly notice it’s there. “If you create the proper balance of materials, you’ll have aerobic conditions, and the microorganisms that thrive there break down scraps with little to no odor,” Hoover says. There’s an easy, color-coded formula to make sure this happens. Add two or three parts carbon-heavy “browns” for every one part nitrogen-centric “greens.“ The “browns” include shredded newspaper and other paper, dead leaves, and food-soiled paper napkins. (Just don’t use any coated, shiny paper, including milk cartons—they won’t break down sufficiently—or any treated or painted wood.) For “greens,“ toss in fruit and vegetable bits (scrape off any plastic stickers first), breads and grains, coffee grounds and filters, and grass clippings. To stash your scraps until you’re ready to haul them out to the yard, you may find it convenient to designate a pail under the sink or a bag in the freezer.
Be selective with your scraps.
There are a few food scraps that should still go out with the trash (or into your curbside “green“ bin, if you’re lucky enough to live in a city that accepts food scraps for centralized composting). Meat, bones, and dairy products don’t belong in the typical household compost pile. “You can’t guarantee that the internal heat generated by your compost will reach the temperatures required to kill pathogens that might be there,” Hoover says. Plus, they lure pests. “Meat scraps and bones will attract cats or skunks from a long distance, as will oils like olive oil,” says Bill Hlubik, a professor of agriculture and plant science at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. When adding food scraps like bread products to your pile, it’s best to add in moderation and bury them in your heap to help reduce unwanted attention from pests. And before you get started on your composting, make sure you’ve followed our helpful tips to reduce the amount of food that gets wasted.