My neighbor's compost critique made me ditch the bins entirely

I was doing the whole countertop bin thing with charcoal filters, but this guy down the hall in my building in Chicago said it looked like I was growing mold in a bread box. He told me to freeze my scraps in a paper bag before adding them to the bin, and I shrugged it off at first. Three weeks into it, the smell went from sour to pretty much nothing, and the freezer bag adds zero mess on pickup day. Has anyone else tried the freeze-first method, or am I just the last one to hear about that trick?

1 comments

1 Comment

andrew77814d ago

Oh boy, this brings back a memory. My buddy Dave used to keep his compost bin on his balcony in Queens and the whole hallway smelled like rotten fruit every summer. His landlord finally threatened to evict him over it. Someone at his community garden told him to freeze the scraps first and he thought they were nuts, but he tried it anyway. He started keeping a big zip bag in his freezer and just tossed veggie peels and coffee grounds in there until pickup day. He said the difference was night and day, no more smell and no more bug problems. He still does it to this day and swears he will never go back to the old way. So yeah, you are definitely not the last to figure this out, my friend.