Green Cone
I was more burdened by wet garbage than I thought, and more relieved than I expected by a fiendishly simple device called the Green Cone.
Regular composters are notoriously picky: no bones, no meat, no oil, no avocado pits or shells, no citrus peels, no dairy products. The Green Cone happily devours all that stuff, which means that pretty much all your kitchen waste can go in it, right now. File and forget.
All you need is some yard and a spot that gets sunshine. The Cone's perforated plastic basket is sunk two feet into the ground. The Cone stands 28 inches above the ground, collecting sun warmth to encourage the bacteria down below who are chowing on the garbage and seeping the resultant nutrients into the soil. Thanks to the ground seal around the basket, there's no smell at all, except when you open the top of the Cone to add more yummy garbage for the microbes.
Garden wastes should not go in the Cone, because they would overwhelm it with volume. Nor should paper or plastic products, which is about all you'll have left in your now light and odorless kitchen trash bin.
-- Stewart Brand
Green Cone
$160
Available from SolarCone
Favorite (15)
Larry Green
It would be nice if someone would provide some scientific evidence for all the claims regarding the green cone. There is absolutely no evidence that this adequately aerobically oxidizes food waste and no scientific papers appear revealing any measurements of gases or pollutants going into the soil. I think this is ideally set up to breed E. coli and Salmonella that are carried to the cone in food waste that will inevitably end up in ground water contaminating lakes, rivers, and shore lines. It is essentially a hole in the ground where material will rot capped by the cone to minimize foul odors. We used to call these devices out houses.
Kevin Kelly
Yep, it is nothing more than a composter that keeps animals out. You could just compost the kitchen remains in your compost pile with the same effect, but some folks don't have or want a compost pile, or it is too far from the kitchen, or they want to keep the raccoons away. We have one for that last purpose and it has been working fine for three years now. Nutritionally, it is not better than composting; just more convenient for us.
thom
Larry: One of the best books that I have ever read about gardening farming is "Farmers of Forty Centuries" by F.H. King. I'm not going to spend the time finding a link for you. This man traveled to China, Japan, and Korea to document the farming system that had been in place for a thousand years before the "newfangled" agricultural techniques coming out of the U.S. destroyed it forever.
F.H.King was former chief of the Soil Division of the U.S. Department of Ag in the early 1900's, and writes specifically how, with earthen vessels buried with just the lid showing, human waste was aerobically prepared for field application.
No matter your opinion on any of this, it is a fact that China's farming community provided, without mechanical conveyance, pesticide or any "U.S. experts" a living for them and food for millions off of the same fields for thousands of years.
My opinion of the product: $15.00 worth of plastic, labor and freight is not worth $180.00; could be done with a five gallon bucket and items bought from the hardware store.