Recycle This!

A friend of mine just received a new toy, and as the old saying goes “boys love their toys”. This isn’t you average gadget though… it has a green aura around it that makes the tree huggers out there go giddy. My friend bought a composter.

He’s been bragging about this for weeks. His wife initially made him buy a cheaper brand (after all, it makes dirt) but he returned it before even opening it and bought the classy model. It has it all – an indoors, top loading and odor free composter than makes dirt in 14 days instead of months using nature. You can throw materials into it anytime and it apparently just sits there tumbling until dirt pops out the bottom into a box.

I refuse to buy it.

It’s not that I’m not “green” because I am. Like most American’s I recycle whatever they will pick up curbside - plastics and paper, but not glass which they’ll pick out and throw on your front lawn… I kid you not. I also give money to several “green” oriented efforts when they remember to contact me (they never forget after the first time you give them money) and even once went to help with cleaning up a forest.

I won’t buy it for one simple reason – I can’t compost my poop. Now hear me out; when I go green with something, I like to go 100% or not at all. For me if it’s worth doing, do it all way. And when I compost, I want all my organic waste to be recycled into dirt. That means those end stalks from celery that no one eats, the green top of carrots, leaves from my non-existent yard, and my poop.

My buddy’s composter does accept cat and dog poop, but not human poop. The lack of a seat to deposit the poop is a clear indication they don’t want to recycle it. What’s the point of composting if you can’t compost everything?

Think about it – you could get back nine square feet of space in your house if you didn't have to have a comode, not to mention the savings in water, if only they could design a composter that recycles everything. Without that feature, it’s just yet another gadget taking up space…