I keep being tempted to buy one of those counter top compost bins, but I don't really want to look at it. The holes in the counter kind can work, if they're designed well (some of our members have done it), but I know I'd be constantly fishing out my paring knife!

What works for me, though has absolutely no glamour, is to peel into my prep sink, then pick up the peelings and put them in the compost bowl/bag. The cuttings go straight in. If your peels are going all over the place it's either that you need a vessel (can be a shallow bowl, sink, tray, or anything you can aim at). If that's not the issue, there might be something in the way you're peeling, or you need a sharper blade. If you're peeling onto your cutting board, and it's only afterwards, when you're trying to move them, that the peels go all over the place, try pushing all the peels to the center of the cutting board, then dumping them into a bin with a large opening, like a storage box or Florantha's drawer. The bigger the opening, the easier it is to get the peels from the board to the bin without having them go all over.

I put a trash pullout on the end of the island where we have a butcher block. I keep a trash bag in the front trash can, and I can just scrape peelings, etc, right into this trash can. Very handy. That trash can gets emptied often. I'm not into composting...maybe some day when I have more time. But it would have to be something with a lid. I had such a problem with fruit flies, or whatever they're called, this past summer. Took me forever to get rid of them. So I'm very conscientious about food, especially fruit and vegetables, being left out.

I think I like to push stuff off the counter, either frontwards off the front edge or backwards into a slot or hole at the back against the wall. A hole in the middle of the counter would be too invasive. We thought long and hard and decided not to put a hole in the countertop. We wanted a garbage chute.

Now I pull open the top drawer a few inches, slide stuff off the counter and watch it drop into the bin. Since the drawer only has to open a few inches, I can be in front of the drawer. I don't have to stand to the side of the drawer.

We wanted organics to be thrown out fast, so we put the organic waste bin in the front.

In out 90% finished kitchen we have small waste bins and we have to take out the garbage often. Small bags. It's a tradeoff we were willing to make. No point hanging on to garbage for longer than necessary. Small waste bins also helped to make our drawers more user-friendly. Our waste bins are 5" by 7" and 6" by 6".

jamies, there is a compost pail to the left off the area shown in the image you're referring to. It's under the prep sink on the peninsula. (There's another compost bin under the sink on the other side of our G-shaped kitchen also.)

After a few years you turn over the pull-out board and use the back side. Then you get a new one after 15-20 yrs.

The virtue of our long, thin temp receiver bin is that it runs along the whole left side of our pull-out worksurface. Unlike others who pull their vegetative scraps forward, this allows me to continue sitting or standing. Generally, I push the scraps to abt 10:30 position on the cutting board, then pull out the temp bin drawer and just push the stuff over the brink. When it's full at that spot, pull out the drawer some more. It's wonderful for slooshing tomato liquid, etc. too. With our old cutting board in old kitchen, we put a plastic dishpan or other pot onto a stool and positioned it to the left of our cutting board to receive compost & slop. That's why we decided we needed something less tentative.

OUr temp receiving pan is a shallow food service container. We try to keep it emptied and rinsed out. The balance of the drawer holds peelers, small choppers, pizza cutter, other prep-area related stuff. Knives are in a slit on right of the chopping station--easy to grab the right one.

I'm able to make daily trips to the compost bin. I keep a decorative bowl on the counter close to the sink for produce peelings, coffee grounds, etc. No way would I want a drawer or hole in my counter to accommodate that stuff.

I have a countertop compost container. I just keep it under my sink so I don't have to look at it. And I, too, when needed, just go out and dump the compost. SOmetimes I'm lazy and just wait until it's full.

We collect any compostable material from the kitchen in a covered casserole or the compost bucket.

During the day the stray banana peel, cracker that falls to the floor or used tea bag is stowed in the covered casserole - it's easy to just lift the cover and plop it in. The casserole lives permanently on the counter.

The compost bucket lives on the floor and is used during meal prep or food preservation binges. It is emptied every night and cleaned last thing and left upside down to dry in the sink.

As far as the time it takes to actually make compost, well that's even easier. You can start your pile in any convenient place. You can put your kitchen waste in a hole, but the easier way is just to dump it on the ground and cover it with some leaves, grass clipping or hay to make it look tidy. You can just leave it to pile up or if you want to speed it up, then you can take a fork and turn it upside down a couple of times during the growing season. When it looks dark and crumbly brown it's compost and ready for use.

Now there are refinements: you can add water if it's dry; add some manure, some chipped branches. You could add a vented pipe in the center to speed up aeration. You can take some saplings and lay them up in log cabin type frame to make the pile higher.

HTH

L.