Ottawa, Ontario, Canada has a green bin program for composting.
Kitchen scraps, tissue paper, yard waste, meat, dairy and
other permitted materials go in the bin. Every week
or two weeks in the winter (see the pick-up schedule
here) you put your bin out at the curb beside your
recycling bins and garbage for pick-up. The waste gets composted
and sold to farmers as fertilizer for their crops.
I do worm composting in the summer
but when the temperatures get below freezing I switch to using the
green bin for the winter.
My green bin beside the building's black (paper) and blue
(plastics) recycling bins.
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Interior of bin with nothing in it yet.
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You can put a liner of some sort in the bin to keep the waste from
coming into contact with the bin and for soaking up moisture. This
is so that the bin itself doesn't start to smell and so that nothing
sticks to the bin in winter. Paper bag liners
are available for purchase but their use seems ridiculous to me,
given that we're doing this to benefit the environment. Even though
the bags are made of recycled material and get composted, recycling
is just one step better than garbage and there are better options.
After all, the bags do have to go through the recycling, manufacturing
and distribution processes.
I take newspapers or advertising flyers from other people's recycling
bins and make my own liner as shown below. The liner gets taken away
along with the waste material. If you don't put a liner you can just
occasionally clean your bin with a hose.
I first place a few-sheet thick layer of paper on the bottom...
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... and then add more for the sides. Done! If I reach the top
of the liner then I add more paper to make it higher.
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Another approach instead of using a liner is to accumulate your waste
in old newspaper in the kitchen until it's time to put it in the bin.
At that time the waste is already in a liner, the paper it's wrapped in,
so no additional liner is needed.
Some waste in the bin.
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Even though the bin has a locking cover to close it tightly, I still
put something over the waste to hold in any odors. When I put more
waste in, I just lift some of the cover material and drop the waste
underneath.
One option for the cover material is strips of newspaper
advertising flyers. It takes only a minute to tear up enough.
This is the same thing I use for the
bedding for my worm bin.
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Another option is to use dried leaves.
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