Cheap compost bins in Seattle

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Cheap compost bins in Seattle

Small, blurry photo of a food composter to just barely give you a sense of what they're like. Seattle Public Utilities

Seattle Public Utilities is offering Seattle residents big discounts on food and yard waste compost bins. The bins keep rodents out and help the grass clippings and potato peels rot into soil that can be recycled back into your yard or veggie garden. Composting cuts down on the waste shipped to landfills.

A group of West Seattle restaurants, bars and coffee shops have gotten in on this too through a pilot program that's collecting food waste. "Green up the Junction" is a partnership between the city, West Seattle Junction Association, and Cedar Grove Composting.

According to a press release from Colehour + Cohen Public Relations:

As of May 13th nearly 38 tons of compostable waste have been diverted from the landfill with 30 businesses taking part in the program.

To recycle your own refuse, you can buy a:

Green Cone Food Composting Bins -- Two for $40, one for $25, limit two per household (value of $100 each)

Yard Waste Compost Bins -- $25 each, limit one per household ($70 value)

Buy 'em online at seattle.gov/binsandbarrels or call 206-684-0190. They'll deliver them for a small charge, or pick up the bins at the Seattle Conservation Corps office at Sand Point/Magnuson Park, Monday to Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

Unlike deliberate, thoughtful composting where you mix the right amount of green stuff and dry stuff, I think you can cram random, biodegradable waste into these things, not look at it and you get soil if you wait long enough and the worms find it. At least that's my theory.

Posted by at May 15, 2008 2:59 p.m.
Categories: Consumers and the environment, Garbage, Organic food

Comments

#129316

Posted by Grnlake at 5/15/08 4:32 p.m.

Hopefully they don't keep rodents out as ineffectively as the brown trash cans the city distributed a while back-- nearly every third one decorated with rat chew holes.

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#129319

Posted by alwaysanopinion at 5/15/08 4:46 p.m.

Rats tunnelled into mine from over a foot away after I blocked their first entrance with bricks. I blocked that hole in and I don't think they've been back. One time I opened it and surprised a very fat, very happy rat. I still knock on the top and yell, "Anybody home?" before opening. My big gripe is with the Bins & Barrels people. I paid for two Green Cones and was delivered one and a half...no bottom basket for the second cone. Repeated emails got absolutely no response.

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#129395

Posted by unregistered user at 5/15/08 10:33 p.m.

Yeah...I noticed the same lack of customer responsiveness. I emailed them right after buying a bin in March but I still yet to receive a reply from them.

Also, would it be impossible to have a weekend day for bin pick up? It's not a good idea to try to pick the bins up before work because buses sometimes run late.

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