Today KUT had an article about free composting classes around town, and the city’s continued offer to give a rebate on new compost bins, for 75% of the value of the bin, up to $75. If you want more info on composting and on my experience getting the rebate and using my bin, you can find a lot by clicking on the “composting” category tag to this post.  Here’s a short excerpt from the article:

Free composting classes sponsored by the City of Austin are scheduled through the summer. Solid Waste Services city planners are trying to encourage residents to compost at home by offering a rebate for compost bins. Residents can get up to 75 percent back on what they spent buying a bin.

The City of Austin has an ambitious goal of diverting 90 percent of waste from landfills by 2040. Already compostable paper, yard trimmings and food make up 47 percent of what is collected from Austin residents. By offering free classes and rebates, the city hopes it can encourage residents to compost to reach its zero waste goal.

“People are generating a lot of compostable food scraps that is a resource that shouldn’t go to waste,” said Woody Raine, Waste Diversion Planner with the City of Austin’s Solid Waste Services department.

I’m still regularly composting, and it’s going well.  The bin we bought has 2 compartments so you can work on 2 batches at a time.  I still keep a small metal canister with a lid under my kitchen sink where I collect scraps, and I empty it probably every 4 days – it doesn’t smell bad under there because it has a little filter built into the lid (I bought mine from Bed Bath and Beyond).  Because we compost and recycle so much, we only have to empty our kitchen trash can once a week (no need to take it out more often because (1) it’s not full and (2) because no scraps go into out kitchen trash can, it doesn’t make the kitchen smell bad).  Thus we’re saving on kitchen bags, which otherwise would be getting full/more importantly smelly in our kitchen, necessitating replacing the kitchen trash bag every 1-2 days. And we’re getting some compost for our garden and lawn out of it, although not as much compost as initially expected (we’ve gotten 3 batches in 14 months – things don’t break down as quickly as our composting bin advertised).  So it’s been a good experience and compared to constantly replacing the trash bag in the kitchen, it’s really not been an inconvenience at all to take the food scraps out to the compost bin every few days.