How to Compost at Home

Spending more time at home often means cooking more meals—and that can lead to extra kitchen waste. Instead of tossing banana peels, vegetable scraps, or eggshells into the trash, you can turn them into something useful: compost.

Composting is an easy way to reduce food waste while helping the environment. Whether you live in a spacious house or a small apartment, you can start your own compost with just a few basic steps.

1. Pick Your Food Scraps

Start collecting items that naturally break down, like fruit and vegetable peels, coffee grounds, tea bags, eggshells, and even old flowers. You can also compost human hair and yard trimmings.

Some packaging may say “compostable,” but most of those products are designed for large-scale composting facilities—not home setups—so it’s best to skip them.

2. Store Kitchen Waste

Instead of adding scraps to your compost one by one, store them first. Keeping a small container in your kitchen, a sealed bag in the fridge, or a freezer container helps prevent odors and keeps insects away. Once you’ve collected enough, you can add them to your compost pile or bin all at once.

3. Decide Where to Compost

If you have a backyard, you can create a simple outdoor compost pile or use a composting bin. Living in an apartment? No problem. Many neighborhoods have community compost drop-off sites or gardens that accept food scraps.

For indoor composting, consider the Bokashi method, a process that uses special bran and a sealed container to ferment scraps before they fully decompose.

4. Layer “Greens” and “Browns”

Successful composting is all about balance.

• Greens: Fresh scraps like veggie peels, fruit leftovers, coffee grounds, and grass clippings. These provide nitrogen for the microbes that break everything down.

• Browns: Dry materials like shredded newspaper, cardboard, dead leaves, or straw. These add carbon, which keeps the compost from getting too wet.

Think of building your compost like starting a campfire: you need to create layers with space for air to circulate. Place dry browns on the bottom and greens on top, then keep layering as you add more scraps.

5. Turn, Wait, and Use

Composting isn’t instant—it can take a couple of months in warm weather or up to a year in cooler conditions. To speed things up, mix or turn your compost regularly. It should stay moist (but not soggy) and airy so the microbes can do their job.

Once your compost is dark, crumbly, and smells earthy, it’s ready to use. Mix it into your garden soil, add it to potted plants, or share it with a local community garden.

At The Ecofairy, we believe small steps like home composting make a big difference for the planet.