Rachael Ray didn't invent it, but she did give a memorable name and widespread popularity to one of the kitchen tools I can't cook without: the garbage bowl. Let's take a moment to appreciate this humble workhorse of the kitchen.

Bokashi is a method of composting developed in Japan that uses microbes to decompose food, effectively fermenting it so that it doesn't smell as it is breaking down. Besides lack of smell, another advantage with bokashi is that all food, including meat, fish and dairy, can be composed with this system. Bokashi has gotten a lot of attention in large-scale commercial uses, but what about at home? More

Composting kitchen scraps is a great way to reduce waste and produce nutritious food for your plants in the process. Even without outdoor space, you can still compost using an indoor system, or through compost pick-up services available in certain cities. Check out our favorite composting buckets and bins, along with a few tips for making the most of your composter. More

Composting kitchen scraps reduces material waste, but this way of collecting the scraps also reduces time and energy waste. With a built-in receptacle flush with the countertop, it's so easy to just sweep kitchen scraps right in. More

Those of you living in Austin, Texas, have one more reason to love your city. Green Bucket Composting is a local service that will pick up your compost and put it to good use on a nearby family farm.

What a perfect and convivial solution for us yard-less and garden-less apartment dwellers, don't you think? More

Even though I hate it, the truth is I throw food away. Usually it's something that has gone bad in my fridge or is suspect enough that I don't feel comfortable eating it. My city collects food scraps for compost now, so there's a small bit of relief that the food is going towards something good, but really, if I were to take that up in anyway as a justification, I would be fooling myself. More

Do you use a compost crock or slop pail in the kitchen? We love our stainless steel compost pail. We fill it up every week with vegetable trimmings before dumping a full load on the compost heap. It's green and convenient too (love it when it works out like that). But what if you want something warmer than stainless steel? Well, we just noticed this handsome bamboo compost pail. More

We have been composting kitchen scraps and garden clippings for awhile now, but Planet Green's recent list of "75 Things You Can Compost, But Thought You Couldn't," opened our eyes to a whole new world of compost possibilities ... More

We generate a lot of vegetable scraps and trimmings every week. They all end up the compost pile, eventually, but sometimes we don't have enough to go and dump them right away, and so they sit in an open bowl on the countertop. We got tired of this grimy plastic bowl full of peels, coffee grounds, and bread scraps sitting out in the open, so we went looking for a covered pail. More

We have this pretty great arrangement whereby I keep a canister for kitchen scraps on my counter, and our neighbor, who has a small garden and compost bin behind her apartment, takes the scraps down each week. I use an old flour canister, which works but can be a little stinky and doesn't quite hold enough to get me through the week. Our neighbor is using this beauty from Williams-Sonoma, which holds a gallon of food scraps and has a filter neatly fitted into the lid. It's the Cadillac of composters.

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