Shoutout to hitting 500 pounds of food scraps composted

I started keeping track back in January just to see how bad my household waste was. Yesterday I weighed my bucket and realized I've hit exactly 501 pounds of kitchen scraps diverted from the landfill. Has anyone else tried measuring their food waste and gotten surprised by the numbers?

3 comments

3 Comments

karen36126d ago

That "two person household hits about 75 pounds a month" really got me thinking. Are you separating out things like coffee grounds and eggshells in that count, or is it everything including stuff like citrus peels and onion skins? I ask because I started tracking and found my biggest waste category by far was spoiled produce I just forgot about in the fridge, not the scraps from cooking. Did you see any specific food types that made up the bulk of your weight, or did it end up being pretty evenly split between cooking prep waste and stuff that went bad before you could eat it?

diana61726d ago

ruby_henderson36 mentioned 75 pounds a month and honestly that blew my mind a little. But here's something nobody's talking about - the weight of your scraps changes a lot depending on moisture. Like, a bucket of coffee grounds and watermelon rinds weighs way more than the same bucket of dry eggshells and onion skins. I actually weighed my bucket fresh one day then let it sit out for a week and it lost almost 3 pounds just from water evaporation. So if you're tracking weight, you're really tracking water content more than waste reduction, lol. Might be worth checking if your numbers shift based on what you're composting that week.

ruby_henderson3627d ago

Throw the bucket on a scale once a month and you'll really see it add up. I did that and found out my two person household hits about 75 pounds a month without even trying. Biggest thing that helped me was keeping a small countertop bin so I don't skip tossing scraps just because it's inconvenient. It's wild how fast it stacks up when you actually measure instead of guessing.