i think if you dilute the heck out of it it would be ok... i try and recycle everything, in fact if im buying certain things that will likely break or deteriorate before i die, i think about how am i going to dispose of it. it saves me money. my patio table/chairs was bought becuase its aluminum(if it breaks i can still recoup a few bucks) lately my thing has been pallets. last weekend i brought 3 home from work, and built a crate (for 2 SWCs i built from neighbors cat litter buckets, wife wasnt thrilled about the sight of cat litter buckets in the yard, dont blame her) a build as you grow potato bin, birdhouse(funny story, that was a bet that i could build a birdhouse in 30 minutes, i took me 45, but still) and a nice toasty fire outside while i admired my creations. i love pallets check out global buckets.org? just google global buckets. great stuff. google "self watering container plastic tote" at my thrift stores theres ALWAYS(unless im looking for them) plastic totes. you can make a seed starting heat mat out of xmas lights, cardboard and an old cookie sheet(items usually at the thrift store) i save water bottles(we dont use alot) for mini drip irrigation waterers. poke 3-5 holes in the bottom and one in the cap. fill from rain barrel, sit down at base of tomato. 1 liter of water in the soil. less disease. less water wasted. i can go on for days. i likely will.

Mt micro drawer solved my layout issues, so I would never give that up. I have a trash pullout on my island and love it, but my main trash and recycling are under my cleanup sink turned sideways so that I have dish soap and DW detergent between them for everyday access and other cleaning supplies and extra trash bags behind them. Disposal and instant hot tank fit in there too, so I could live without the trash pullout. I have also seen sink cabinets modified to have one or both door pullout. We thought about doing that but the depth of our sink would have meant a short trash container and we went for taller.

The large bucket of used potting soil (potting mix) on my back patio is sheltered from anything severe like wind or snow - it's under the overhang created by the balcony above me and in the corner formed by two walls. At the end of the growing season, I dumped out my outdoor container plants into the bucket (the pots were mostly very full of roots), sprinkled in some water, and added some of my overflow kitchen scraps and a very small quantity of red wigglers from my basement worm bin - probably no more than 50 worms total, in about 10 gallons of material (the bucket is a 13 gallon container, but it is not full all the way.) It has not been a very cold winter so far, with plenty of days above freezing, but some stretches where it hasn't gotten above the 20s for several days in a row. Right now it's in the 40s and raining. From time to time (when it's not so cold), I've looked into the bucket and dug around a bit, and I always spot at least a few pink wiggly worms in there. I think it would have to be a whole lot colder for a lot longer at a time for the bucket contents to freeze solid all the way through, and that's unlikely to happen here, so the worms probably just huddle at the center and nap when it gets well below freezing out. The potting mix in the bucket is lightly damp but not soggy. My plan is to check again when it's getting close to outdoor planting time, and if there is still unprocessed material in with the potting mix, I'm going to mix it up and add a few more worms for the last few weeks. I have a compost sieve I can use if there's still anything left like large twigs. I didn't want to add a full load of worms as I would with a regular worm bin, since they have all winter to work on the small amount of food that's in there, and I also don't want to have to pick out tons of worms before I re-use the potting mix.

I am intrigued by the fact that many of you have mentioned composting. I have been composting here where I live for almost 30 years, in my backyard. Up until this last summer I have never had a problem. Suddenly, I had some rats set up home around my house and one even got caught in the garage. I think I have conquered the rat problem now and I now have compost in a galvanized garbage can with holes in it. Those little suckers chewed through the resin cans. And, they burrowed into the receptacle where I was composting yard clippings and were nesting in there. I thought that I had posted this comment yesterday and offer my apologies if it appears elsewhere. Compost can become quite smelly is it goes anaerobic. It takes some effort to keep it in balance. I have never found that the compost that results to be of any real noticeable benefit to anything, but I do it to keep it out of the mainstream trash. It is really amazing how so much vegetable matter can compost into a small heap. I even compost natural fibers from sewing and knitting, paper napkins and some other paper products. Right now I have a tomato plant growing directly in one of the bins that I decommissioned last season. I did mix in some soil with the compost. It was full of compost, but I can't say that tomato plant is thriving. Compost is not the organic gold that many claim it to be. I just can't stand to put all of the easily compostable organic matter into the garbage stream and that is the main objective for me-- to deal with it at the source. I keep two small galvanized buckets in the kitchen. One is for garbage and one is for compost. We don't generate very much garbage. The small compost, of course, gets emptied into the large can. We were in Italy last year and I saw that they have kitchen waste composting pick up. My apologies if I posted these comments twice.