Last week, we complained about the smells emanating from our food scrap recycling pail, which we keep under our kitchen sink.
A lot of readers weighed in with comments; but, just in case you don't read the comments here as obsessively as we do, we wanted to share one particularly helpful tip from Francesca.
Keep the food scraps in the freezer!
Upon reading Francesca's comment, we vaguely remembered hearing somewhere about keeping food scraps in the freezer -- but, we thought the concept was a little out there, so it slipped our minds.
Keeping food scraps in the freezer (as a storage solution before tossing them in the compost or handing them off to your municipal food scrap recycling program) is a great idea for a number of reason:
1) No stink
2) No fruit flys
3) And no mysterious goo
You don't even need a fancy pail to get started, just a bowl or a big Ziploc bag. We've switched to this method and we couldn't be happier.
image via blakeemerys; flickr.com
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Another bonus is that the fuller your freezer is, the less air the freezer has to cool and thus the more energy efficient it runs. I wish I could remember where I heard that but it makes sense to me.
Does anyone know whether the energy savings from keeping your freezer full would balance out the energy used to freeze the scraps in the first place?
I'm not sure about the energy savings vs. power, but for my freezer it would make sense since there isn't much in there and you can't turn off just the freezer part of the unit.
i've had worm compost bins for about three years. we've since expanded to 4 10-gallon bins. what seems to attract fruit flies in the first place is a warm, wet bin. keeping your compost bin dry in the first place (moisture level should feel like a damp sponge when you squeeze the compost) will keep flies away. this is moist enough for the worms but apparently not enough for the flies. for a long time, i did the recommended newspaper scraps in the bin, to balance carbon and also add some bedding. i still do that, but also sprinkle a little untreated wood sawdust on about half of the top. it does wonders for absorbing excess moisture, and contributes to a really wonderful consistency when sifting for use on plants.