A blog that attempts to provide you with useful examples and tips that could make a large positive ecological impact, although they are seemingly minor, quick and easy changes to your daily routine.

Tip #19: Composting on the (c)heap  

Budget: around $30
Time required: 1-3 hours
Estimated impact: Rich fertile compost for your garden, porch or patio, can’t beat that…

Tip: For some time we have had a very small temporary compost bin made from an old 10 gallon trash can. As you can image this filled up within a very short period of time. Outside being small it also did not really provide a good environment to compost, so I found myself scouring sites looking at compost tumblers mainly because a compost pile would not work in our yard.

After seeing many types ranging from $150 to upwards opf $300 I decided to look for “diy compost tumbler” and “diy compost bin” and came across allot of posts of people making composters from cheap materials and two specific site caught my attention: http://www.instructables.com/id/Compost-Tumbler/ and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn_5HRgiftg. One is a composter made from an old barrel the other how to make a rain barrel from an old cheap trash can.

So I decided to combine them and create a compost tumbler from a cheap $13 trash can, some pvc piping and a wood frame to hold the compost tumbler. I’ll post the pictures of the result on Twitter.

It works great for our needs and it only costs about $30 to make. Also I found this site later on of someone doing the same thing only without a frame. He just mixes the compost by rolling the trash can over the yard.

So if you would like to start composting, I suggest you google things like “diy compost tumbler” and “diy compost bin” or checkout any of the links above and start your own compost project. Happy composting.

2 Responses to “Tip #19: Composting on the (c)heap”

  1. Texas Green Blog says:

    This is a great post, my family recently decided to start composting as much of our household waste as possible and have noticed a significant reduction in the amount of trash we have to put out for collection.

    I would totally recommend starting a home composting system. I wrote a blog about ours, feel free to check out Our Home Compost Bin
    Thanks for the info :)
    Martin

  2. Thomas (Ecotipsforlife.com Admin) says:

    Dear Martin,

    Good to hear that composting is reducing your family’s household trash significantly.

    We have experienced the same thing when we started recycling and composting.

    Thanks for the comments and happy blogging,

    Best regards,

    Thomas

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