Best Compost Tumblers

Composting is a great way to reduce the amount of waste your household generates, plus there’s the added benefit of free fertilizer for your yard or garden. There are some nifty options for indoor composting on the market, but to do it on a larger scale you need to move outdoors. Here are four of the best compost tumblers available, each of which will help keep your backyard composting as easy and tidy as possible.

Tumbleweed Compost Tumbler

Tumbleweed Compost Tumbler

The Tumbleweed composter is a barrel-style container mounted on a galvanized steel frame, which allows rotation to turn the contents. A steel rod inside the barrel helps break up and aerate the contents during rotation. The barrel has a 58-gallon capacity, and can be filled or emptied from either end using the animal-resistant vented lids. The manufacturer promises complete composting in as little as three weeks, under ideal conditions.

The Tumbleweed Composter is available from Amazon in green or black for $179.99.

Envirocycle Compost Tumbler

Envirocycle Compost Tumbler

The Envirocycle composting drum sits on a stand, where rollers allow the drum to be rotated. Small vents in the 7 cubic-foot drum allow airflow, and the access panel locks shut to help prevent critter problems. The base collects “compost tea” drainage, and when composting is complete, the bin can be removed from the stand and rolled to your garden. Plus, as a bonus, the bin is constructed of 50% recycled plastic

The Envirocycle Compost Tumbler sells for $124.95 at Amazon.

Urban Compost Tumbler

Urban Compost Tumbler

The upright barrel-shaped design of the Urban Compost Tumbler makes the most of a cramped yard or garden space. The heavy-duty UV-resistant plastic bin has a 55-gallon capacity, and features an aeration bar inside to help agitate the contents during tumbling. The screw-down lid and screened ventilation help prevent any animals from entering the container.

You can find the Urban Compost Tumbler at Amazon for $260.65.

ComposTumbler Compact Compost Tumbler

ComposTumbler Compact Compost Tumbler

The ComposTumbler is the Cadillac of composters. The 90-gallon barrel uses internal fins to help circulate and break up the material inside. Its frame keeps it a foot off the ground to help avoid animal problems, and the hand crank makes rotating the bin easy. There are aeration/drainage ports on the door, and ventilation cutouts on the sides are screened to keep the contents inside and critters outside.

The ComposTumbler Compact Compost Tumbler is available for $349.00 at Amazon.

Naturemill Pro

Nobody’s going to put up with a compost heap in a closet.  But what if you could quickly compost your organic waste with no odors or bugs, indoors or outside, with a device small enough to fit in a kitchen cabinet?  Naturemill promises that its Pro Edition automatic composter will do just that, producing hassle-free compost while using just a trickle of electricity.

According to the manufacturer, the Naturemill Pro composter can handle up to 120 pounds of waste per month.  The upper chamber provides the ideal heat, moisture and airflow conditions for breaking down waste, which automatically drops down into a pull-out tray when composting is complete.  A carbon filtered fan system eliminates trash odors, and the unit can also be used outdoors or in a garage.

Indoor Composter

Naturemill states that its composter can handle a wide range of waste materials, including dairy, meat, and pet waste.  Items can be added continuously during the composting cycle, and waste volume is reduced 70% during the process, which takes about two weeks.

The company estimates that over the life of the product, a single unit can process up to two tons of waste that could have otherwise ended up in a landfill.  And although the Naturemill Pro is powered by electricity, the manufacturer states that average power consumption is just 5 kw/h per month, or about $.50 on your energy bill.

This seems like quite an innovative product to improve household efficiency and reduce waste volume.  If you’ve tried it, let us know – leave a comment below.

For more information, visit the Naturemill website.

Available on Amazon.

The sewer systems we use today are entirely ineffectual and unnecessary. The primary flaw in our design is that we use fresh water to dispose of feces. This is perhaps the most ineffectual thing to do with human manure — it pollutes fresh water, and it requires municipalities to maintain extremely costly sewage treatment infrastructures. Even after treatment, sewage can still wreck havoc on rivers and groundwater.

The most effective and straightforward thing to do with sewage is to compost it (or use it to produce fuel). It’s a valuable resource.

The C. K. Choi Building is a 30,000-square-foot building that is part of the University of British Columbia. The building has no connection to the sewage system. Instead it has composting toilets and waterless urinals installed.

The toilets on each of the three floors connect via stainless steel chutes to five Clivus Multrum composting systems in the building’s basement. The toilets emit no odors, because all the waste is collected in the basement and fans ensure that no odor escapes the composting containers.

The system is maintained and emptied by the Clivus Multrum company through a service contract. Every day the university maintenance staff wipes down the toilets and adds a can of wood chips or bark mulch to each toilet. Every six months, the compost (which no longer resembles feces) is removed from the system and used as a fertilizer.

Because of this system, the C. K. Choi building uses just 500 liters of water per day (132 gallons), a similarly-sized conventional building uses an average of 7,000 liters of water a day (1850 gallons) or fourteen times as much water.

But about the water from sinks and other systems? This graywater is filtered and pumped into a 300-foot-long outdoor planter bed with lilies. The final discharge is used to irrigate plants. A test by the city of Vancouver of the fecal coliform counts of the discharged water showed that it contained less than 10 CFU per 100 milliliters (by comparison swimming is permitted in water with up to 200 CFU per 100 milliliters).

The building also captures rainwater: the rain is in a 7,000-gallon tank below a staircase. It is used to irrigate the landscape, which is bordered by thirsty ginkgo trees.

What this example clearly shows is that modern buildings can do quite well without a connection to a municipal sewage system. The maintaining the building’s composting system is probably less overall than a building with flushing toilets.

More information on this topic (including many other case studies) can be found in the excellent Composting Toilet System Book by David Del Porto and Carol Steinfeld.

This Brabantia Twin Bin is divided into two compartments, one for regular trash, one for compostable matter can be kept separate from all other waste.

Eliteness doesn’t come cheap — it’s available for $166 here.

Now if it really glowed like that…

Via: Kitchen Contraptions

From what we’ve seen, this is the most affordable composting container for kitchen scraps available.

We choose this ceramic container because the interior absorbs odors and resists stains, and is more attractive than a plastic bin on your kitchen counter. The crock holds a gallon of scraps and has a lid with an activiated carbon filter to trap odor than allow air to circulate.

Please let us know if you know of a less expensive or more efficient container. Available from Amazon for about $25.

This may be one of the most efficient things we’ve featured.

“Effective Microorganisms” or EM is a formula of specially selected microbes which can be used for many applications. For example, they are a metaefficient compost additive. If you add a mixture of them to your kitchen compost and it will decompose more quickly and with less odor.

EM is a microbial consortium (aggregate of more than one type of microbe) that was developed by Dr. Teruo Higa, a Japanese horticulture professor.

Similar to the wine-making process, this system relies on fermentation rather than putrefaction. The ME mixture, called “Bokashi”, is made by mixing sawdust and bran that has been inoculated with the microorganisms. It takes about ten days to do its work, and in the end you are left with nutrient-rich liquid compost. The system will also allow you to compost meat and diary products. A step-by-step guide can be seen here and here. The EM system is very popular with apartment dwellers in Japan and Korea. Real Goods sells a bokashi system. EMTrading has a lot of Effective Microorganism information. Whole Foods will soon be selling EM too.

There are many other uses for EM. The exact microbes in the microbial consortium may vary somewhat over time, but there are certain principles which guide which beneficial microorganisms are included and how they are combined with the other microbes in the formula. It is likely safe to say that the single largest area of EM utility is in farming (agriculture), and even moreso within the realms of organic farming, sustainable farming, or “super-organic” farming. However, EM has also found applications in waste treatment, waste water treatment, toxic waste remediation, remediation of polluted waterways, human and animal health, protecting building materials (architects call EM “building friendly”), and in many other diverse areas as well. See more information here.

BioBags are the first 100% bio­degradable alternative to plastic bags. They are made from cornstarch, vegetable oil and other renewable resources.

BioBags makes kitchen “compost bags” to store foods scraps before composting. They can also can be used to store food in the refrigerator. The advantage over plastic, is that these bags will “breath” without leaking. This allows heat and moisture to evaporate, which keeps food fresh longer. Also, unlike plastic bags, there is no risk of Biobags leaching unhealthy residues into your food.

They also make biodegradable “doggy waste” bags (which is actually a great application of bioplastic), and “lawn and left” bags.

For the garden, there is Garden Bio-Film, which is designed to protect your plantings from weeds and stimulate warmth for uniform growth, then return itself to the earth after the plantings reach maturation. The film also serves as a plant protector during frost and wind warnings.