I’ve had a stainless steel can like @zendog used a Click Clack like @TNHunter and now have a compost container from Brabantia and we line it with degradeable bags. We empty when it gets full, which is probably every three days. If I have something that molds or smells bad, it goes out faster. From there, in summer I bring directly to my tumbler, in winter I add to my kitty litter bucket stack by the trash cans. It stays frozen for quite awhile, then it all goes in together when I can. The kitty litter buckets have attached lids, and are free.
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I have a 14 inch space between my exit door and storm door that I use as a foyer to get to my big compost bucket without stepping a foot on ground
The foyer The 5 gallon bucket hanging on the wall
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Trader Joe’s provides compostable produce bags which is where I shop the most. The bags are pretty stretchy and do compost down in the pile in a few weeks. I usually have coffee grounds and citrus peels everyday in my compost bag. The bag never stinks on my kitchen compost and I have left the bag there for days when it rained for days last December!
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We put our food scraps in old ice cream buckets in the freezer. Once a week we empty them into a double paper bag with a compostable liner and take them to our local organics recycling. The new house had a mouse problem when we moved in so I’m wary about backyard composting.
For tea leaves and coffee grounds I’ll probably start a vermicomposting bin at some point.
A while back I read the Humanure Handbook. It addressed the concern about potential smell. Basically, that system relied on using sawdust to bury the poo. I think sawdust or any other finely textured dry organic material added to cover your food scraps would work in the same way.
In my home system I use containers with tight fitting lids and empty them once or twice a week and combine with leaves from my yard I rake up in the fall.
The reason the sawdust works is that the high amount of usable carbon in the sawdust traps nitrogen, which is one of the things that makes poop stink, and is what we all look for in fertilizer.
Joel Salatin uses a compost bedding pack for cattle, in which he used high amounts of sawdust, wood chips and straw to sequester the nitrogen.
I used the same basic concept with my small herd of beef cattle. When I cleaned out the barn, there was much less smell and the poo was partially composted. Once on the field, the nitrogen would leech down into the soil to be used by the grass, and the sawdust decomposed and added organic material back to the soil.
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We use a ceramic composting croc in our kitchen. It’s small and is a bit more decorative than most containers for this purpose. There’s a carbon filter pad that fits in the top. It is small which forces me to empty it in the outside compost bin more frequently:
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We have a full size kitchen trash can, lined with biodegradable bag and stored in a cabinet out of sight. If the fruit flies get bad we just add another bag on top, trapping any larvae below.
We used to have a smaller bin but we generate a lot of compost and it was too many trips with that one.
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