As composting increases in popularity, more and more people are joining the fun. You could buy a ready-made compost bin or tumbler, but if you’re sustainably minded, you may prefer to make your own. Making a DIY compost bin for your compost pile is far from difficult, and might take as little as an afternoon.
Before figuring out how to build a DIY compost bin, it’s worth looking at what composting is and what factors might affect choosing and looking after your compost bins.
What Is Composting?
Composting is recycling natural materials from around your home to be used as a soil amendment. Food scraps and similar composting materials can be placed into compost bins to be broken down and turned into a nutrient-rich material that can be used in agriculture and lawn care. While many people are familiar with the basic practice, you may not know that there are four types of composting.
Cold composting is the easiest and involves simply layering your compostable materials into your bin as you generate them, but it does get wet and smelly. This way also takes a considerable amount of time to create finished compost.
Hot composting, on the other hand, needs a more hands-on approach, as materials need to be turned frequently inside the bin to ensure everything decomposes the right way. This turning also prevents some of the unpleasant odor associated with cold composting. While this involves more effort, it’s the fastest way to make compost.
Then there’s vermicomposting, which needs a worm compost bin, thanks to the introduction of worms to the process. A worm bin can be a fun and interesting way to bring small kids into the composting process, even in the classroom!
Last is bokashi composting, an ancient Asian method of composting that adds fermented bokashi bran to the mix instead of worms.
You can use these last two options inside your home if you don’t have outside space.
Compost is rich in multiple nutrients and micronutrients, the application of which results in a fertile, rich soil:
- Nitrogen
- Potassium
- Phosphorus
- Manganese
- Sulfur
- Zinc
- Carbon
- Iodine
- Magnezium
- Iron
- Calcium
- Copper
- Boron
Which micronutrients—and how much of them turn up in the finished compost—depends on what’s added to your composting bin.
What Is It Used For?
Applying compost can improve your soil and plants in many ways:
- As a mulch alternative—Using compost instead of mulch helps flower beds and similar areas blossom faster and more effectively. Like mulch, it helps soil retain moisture and promotes growth.
- To improve lawn quality—Soil degrades over time, so your garden looks worse the longer you have it. Compost brings life back to soil, enriching it as it adds nutrients and microorganisms. Flowers and plants grow better because of this, improving your overall lawn quality. The compost improves the lushness, color, and overall look associated with a garden, making everything grow and look nicer. Farmers use it in their crop fields for the same reason.
- To help spring bulbs and perennials—Perennials and spring bulbs are known for their short bloom time, but compost extends the life of your flowers and keeps them in bloom for longer.
- As a fertilizer alternative—With the nutritional benefits that compost has on soil, it’s an organic alternative to fertilizers, which typically contain chemicals that can be harmful to the environment.
Why Compost?
Sure, compost can help your garden. But it can also be a lot of work. So why else should you compost? Well, it turns out there are a lot of convincing reasons everyone should be composting their fruit and vegetable scraps and yard waste.
Reduce waste
Food waste is a problem worldwide and accounts for 28% of what ends up in the trash can every week, which averages to about 400 pounds of food scraps being thrown out every year per person. That not only affects the environment, as outlined below, it also has a financial cost. In addition to the money spent on food that’s inevitably thrown out, it costs the United States $55 to process every tonne of organic matter thrown out. With the country throwing out 267 million tonnes of organic materials every year, the math adds up quickly.
Cut methane emissions
Food waste, grass clippings, and similar organic material all decompose eventually. When this happens in nature, it’s typically harmless, but it becomes an issue when they end up in a landfill. There, waste materials don’t have the necessary oxygen to decompose naturally, and end up releasing biogas instead. Since biogas contains methane and carbon dioxide—both of which contribute to climate change—this process harms the environment. So choosing to compost these organic materials is a more environmentally friendly way of dealing with these scraps.
Improve your garden
Adding compost helps you take much better care of your garden, thanks to the various nutrients that it adds to the soil. Once you harvest usable compost, mixing it in with your topsoil results in your lawn, flowers, and other plants growing lusher and blooming for longer. The garden will also need less maintenance, as the increased water retention means it shouldn’t need to be watered as much as with a standard fertilizer.
Conserve water
Agriculture is one of the primary users of water worldwide. The United States, for example, uses 80% of its water on farming. The reasons agriculture uses so much water are complicated but include soil degradation from monoculture and similar practices, which cause the soil to retain less and less moisture, nutrients, and microorganisms over time.
Increasing organic material in the soil by adding compost results in less water needs. In fact, with just a 1% increase in this material, one acre of soil could retain 20,000 more gallons of water!
How to Make a DIY Compost Bin: A Step-by-Step Guide
Making your own cheap compost bin isn’t difficult. As a matter of fact, the most difficult part of starting a compost pile might be choosing which kind of DIY compost container to use. From trench composting to wine barrels, you can make a compost bin out of almost anything, such as a plastic container or a cardboard box composter. A plastic bin is of course not the most sustainable choice, so my guide will focus on a more sustainable option that may also help you save money on your project.
But first you need to figure out a compost bin place, which will help you decide what kind to make, as you’ll need to know roughly how much space you have for at least one bin of a decent size. You can pick an indoor space or outdoor one, although you’ll need to ensure there’s enough space for not only the bin, but also for you to access and use it when you’re making the compost.
The instructions below mostly apply to outdoor hot composting. For hot composting, it’s important to find a perfect location for your DIY compost bin, outside in full sun, as far from the house as possible because of smell and potential pests.
You’re encouraging organic matter to break down, after all, and your bin mightn’t be completely sealed. Outdoor spaces ensure you don’t need to put up with this. If you’re composting indoors, pick a well-ventilated area.
1. Acquire the materials
Getting your materials together is the natural first step for building your compost bin. The most sustainable way to build a compost bin is to use recycled wood pallets, which are easy to come by. Use your local neighborhood social media to locate free resources before purchasing, with untreated wood pallets being ideal.
Look for an IPPC stamp depicting an “HT” for “heat-treated,” which means no chemicals were used to treat it. You want to avoid pallets treated with methyl bromide, which will be marked with “MB.”
You’ll need about six pallets of the same size, which you’ll use to build the frame of your compost bin. This results in a large compost bin of about 48” by 40” on all sides, the standard size of a pallet.
If you want a smaller bin you can collect fewer pallets and take them apart to build a smaller frame, but using the pallets as they come for a large compost bin is easiest.
In addition to wood pallets, collect the following tools and materials:
- Wood screws (metal can leach into the compost)
- Drill and drill bits
- Screwdriver
- Staple gun
- Measuring tape
- Pencil
- Tight chicken wire
- Weed barrier paper
- Utility scissors
2. Add chicken wire to your side pallets
You can skip the chicken wire if you’re okay with a more rugged composter, but adding a tight chicken wire or strong wire mesh to the inside of each pallet will keep your compost contained and well aerated. Using your measuring tape and utility scissors, cut four pieces of chicken wire mesh equal to the length and width of your pallets. Using your staple gun, be sure that the mesh reaches across the entirety of each side you’ve constructed and securely attach a piece of mesh to each of your pallets. Construct it so that your mesh is on the inside of the structure, not the outside.
3. Add chicken wire and weed barrier to your bottom pallet
Using your measuring tape and utility scissors, cut equal-sized pieces of chicken wire and weed barrier to cover the entirety of the pallet you’ll be using as the bottom of your compost bin. Adding both the mesh and the weed barrier will prevent leakage from your materials into the ground beneath your compost, which could prove messy. If you’re particularly concerned about leakage, you could even insert a plastic sheet in the bottom of your unit. Secure these materials to the pallet with your staple gun.
4. Connect the four sides to the bottom
Using your tools, connect your four sides to the bottom and at the corners, while making sure each of your screws are the same distance from the corners as the others.
5. Add the top and finish
Secure wire mesh to your sixth pallet before adding hinges to one side, which makes it easier to lift the door to add materials and mix them. You can get an appropriate hinge at almost any hardware store or garden center, which you can then screw or drill in place.
As an optional step, add a rod for propping up the lid for when you’re adding and mixing materials.
If you live in a wet climate, you might consider adding a metal piece to the top to keep out rain.
Well done! Now that you’ve built your own compost bin, you’re ready to start collecting waste.
How to Compost
Once you’ve created your DIY compost bin, it’s time to start making your compost. While the composting process can depend somewhat on the type of compost bin you go with, the same basic principles apply across all methods.
1. Lay twigs or straw
While carbon and nitrogen are needed for the materials to start composting, they’ll also need oxygen. By laying twigs or straw at the bottom of your DIY compost bin before adding in the other materials, you can help encourage the flow of oxygen. Placing chunks from straw bales in the bottom also helps keep your materials dry as they’re decomposing.
2. Add materials in layers
Next is to add the materials to your DIY composter. Instead of simply tossing all of these in, however, you’ll need to layer them. Start with the wet materials and alternate to dry and back again, making sure that each layer is an inch or two thick.
Once you have the materials layered, you should add the worms or microorganisms if you’re using worm composting or bokashi composting. But with hot composting, you can just begin turning it every day or every few days as you continue to add your yard waste and kitchen scraps.
3. Cover and aerate
Once you’ve added your materials to your DIY compost bin, it’s time to let the composting process start. You’ll need to cover up or seal your compost bins during this time, with the only openings being the holes in the chicken wire or wire mesh you used to build it. These holes will let your compost bin aerate, which is a vital part of the process.
You will also need to aerate the compost pile yourself by turning the materials frequently, which involves taking a fork-like tool, or pitchfork, to the compost and mixing it like a salad. That adds more oxygen to the mix and encourages the organic waste to break down even further.
Over time, you’ll notice the materials in your composting bin break down more and more. You’ll know the process is done when the material looks more like rich soil than what you put into it.
Materials to Add to Your Compost Heap
When you’re putting together your DIY compost bin and getting started with your pile, you’ll need to decide which materials you’ll include in your pile. As mentioned above, you’ll need to layer your materials at first. This will make turning and mixing the materials in your DIY compost bin easier. Of course, if you decide to go with cold composting, which you could also use this DIY composter for, layering is even more important because you won’t be turning the materials frequently.
It’s important that you know the difference between green and brown materials in compost. Green materials are a nitrogen source and encourage the development of microorganisms in the compost bin. Browns, on the other hand, are carbon-rich materials and act as a food source for worms and similar critters. Browns can include cardboard and other paper materials but also dried yard waste, such as sticks and dried leaves. Both carbon and nitrogen are needed to encourage the decomposition process, and it’s important that you add equal amounts of brown and green so that your compost pile does not become too wet and smelly.
There are more than a few materials you can add to your bin:
- Cardboard, uncoated and cut up into small pieces
- Hair and fur
- Shredded newspaper
- Small dried sticks
- Dried grass clippings
- Coffee grounds and filters
- Egg shells
- Sawdust
- Wood chips
- Food scraps
- Green and dried leaves
- Kitchen scraps and food waste
- Fruit and vegetable scraps
- Tea bags
- Banana peels
- Shredded paper
- Fruit peels
Materials to avoid adding
Sticking with the above materials will make sure your DIY compost bin works the way it should. There are more than a few materials you shouldn’t add to your compost bins, however.
Pet waste is one of the more notable, as this could harbor parasites and harmful bacteria, which will then make its way into the compost.
Any diseased tree trimmings and plants also should be avoided for similar reasons.
Your bins should also be free of plastic trash, which can be full of chemicals and ingredients that you wouldn’t want spreading across your soil and won’t break down anyway.
While tree leaves and twigs can be added to your compost bin, you should refrain from including those from black walnut trees, as these are known to excrete toxins as they decompose. If added to your bins, it’ll end up affecting anywhere the compost is spread.
You should also avoid adding the following materials:
- Bread (attracts pests)
- Colored or glossy paper
- Acidic fruits and vegetables, such as citrus
- Coal or charcoal ash
- Rice (dried or cooked, can release toxins)
- Dairy, meat, or other animal products
- Cooking oils
How to Build a Compost Bin: Wrapping Up
Composting can reduce the amount of food scraps that make it to your trash can, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and improve soil quality.
Making a DIY compost bin can ultimately save you money on fertilizer and soil, and the process is pretty straightforward. You don’t even need to be particularly handy, since your compost bin won’t be graded on how pretty it is—or graded at all.
For composting tips, read my article all about composting. Follow my guides and you’re sure to love composting as much as I do.