I have composted on and off over the years but never found a method I cared to stick with. I tried a worm bin and various DIY bins but they all had their downsides. I was looking into prebuilt tumblers, which are still quite expensive, and realized I’d need either multiple tumblers or multi-compartment tumblers, and decided to forget about harvestable compost and just focus on composting to reduce garbage waste. I started a pile in the forest where I’d already been dumping a lot of leaves and dead annuals. I just put a cardboard box out there and started filling it with leaves and raw stuff, so far just things like fruit/vegetable peels and tea bags. I want to see if animals disturb it before I introduce other types of kitchen waste.
As for the recycling we’ve always recycled but I feel like I’ve been a bit lax lately, especially regarding paper. So I decided to do better and revisited the county’s recycling policy. For plastic they only handle 1 and 2 containers/bottles, so a lot of fruit containers have to be tossed, but it sounds like no one is really able to recycle 1 PET Thermoform.
I feel like the recycling narrative tends to be framed around what consumers should do to counterbalance their consumption, when in reality the vast amount of waste and emissions are produced by a certain number of companies. In other words, the home recycling push is partly a diversionary tactic. That being said, trying to reduce the household trash ends up becoming just another fun puzzle for me, and throwing away peels and things like that has always bugged me on principle.