Composting your food scraps begins before you even begin your meal prep. It's important to have a system in place that makes saving your food waste easy, convenient, and mindless. If the infrastructure isn't there, you'll find your food going right in the garbage.
Buying exactly what you need and dutifully using and eating the entire portion is ideal! But if things don't turn out like you planned, keep the following in mind when setting up your kitchen prep.
Ideal: Keep a lidded countertop bin on or beneath the area where food is prepared. Scrape any food waste from meal prep into the container and replace lid. Empty daily into your outdoor food waste bucket. Be sure the screw-on lid is fully tightened to prevent bugs or critters from accessing your scraps - and to prevent odors from escaping.
Also good: Keep a medium sized lidded container (like a tupperware container) in your refrigerator. The fridge will keep the scraps cold enough to delay decomposing for a few days and you will not need to worry about flies. Empty the refrigerated waste into your food waste bucket daily or whenever it becomes full.
Also good: Do you have a shelf in your freezer that isn't used? Keep a food scrap container there! Dump your food waste into the container and it will keep indefinitely until you get around to putting it in your outdoor bucket.
Also good: Keep your composting bucket directly outside the kitchen door. After meal prep, open the door and dump food waste directly into the bucket.
Once you're in the habit of collecting your waste in a separate container, you'll find it's difficult to return to throwing food scraps away! And with collection every two weeks, you'll love the convenience of food waste pick-up and leaving the composting to others.
Happy composting!