Little Brown Bucket

Every home in our city - and limited surrounding areas - received a special gift from the county recycling center  - our Little Brown Composting Bucket.

Our city is big on "green living".

Now, I'm not opposed to learning more how to compost, and recycle, and return plastic bottles and pop cans.  These have been a practice of living in this beautiful Pacific NW State.

It's just interesting how we are expected to comply.

Before our Little Brown Composting Bucket arrived, we faithfully rolled to the curb our green garbage bin .... long gone are those days when we knew the name of our garbage hauler, when he came to our gate, dumped our garbage in his bigger container - we were neighbors!

We also have the large blue bin for all our recycle stuff.

And, what's the difference between recycle and garbage, you might wonder?

Let me explain -

Recycle is the stuff you don't throw in the garbage -----
Milk jugs
Cardboard boxes
Paper
Tin foil
Cans
Some plastics

But NOT plastic bags, paper plates and cups, pizza boxes, or the little plastic caps off bottles and jugs, paint cans - just to name a few items.

And, glass - well, glass goes in another yellow bucket....

Are you still with me?

We also have another larger green bin that holds the yard debris.

Up until now - every week would be the garbage and recycle pickup.....every two weeks we would roll out the yard debris bin.

So, Little Brown Compost Bucket shows up on our curb last week.  (One friend at first thought it was a child's portable toilet!)  Instructions are included: all scrap foods, napkins, coffee grounds and filters are welcome in this little bucket.  Be sure to line it with newspaper, paper bag, or specially approved compost bags.  Wash after every use, and then empty into the large green yard debris bin - which includes those pizza boxes, along with our leaves and grass.

So, beginning this week we are now sorting our garbage for compost.  The switch is the weekly pickup of our yard debris/compost bin and recycle bins.  Our little garbage bin will now be picked up every two weeks.

It's funny - here in this beautiful green State - we have become accustomed to the bottle returns for many years.  It was odd to cross borders and see pop cans in the garbage.  Then, we grew accustomed to recycling our tin cans and milk jugs - only to cringe when our neighbor States also threw these into their garbage containers.  I think we're going to become even more smug as we reduce our food waste to compost - and find our garbage bins are rarely needed - all because of our Little Brown Compost Bucket.

Interesting to note: people have already been doing this - for years - right in their own backyards - without a Little Brown Compost Bucket.