coworkers are angry that we got rid of their smelly, fly-ridden compost bucket

by Alison Green on January 6, 2025

A reader writes:

We have about 25 employees, and prior to Covid, we had a somewhat-contentious compost bucket under the sink in our staff kitchen. It was always gross, full of flies and rotting food, and rarely emptied by the people who used it.

Recently, a colleague decided to reinstate the compost bucket and messaged the group chat to inform everyone that they would be emptying it at least twice a week. Of course, that didn’t happen, and it quickly got disgusting — several weeks’ worth of rotting, smelly food and hordes of fruit flies. After maybe two months of this, another coworker got fed up, made an executive decision, and tossed the bucket entirely.

And so “compost-gate” began. Some of us agree with removing the bucket; since it’s rarely maintained, it quickly becomes a health hazard in our shared kitchen. But the handful of people who do use it are upset, and telling the other colleague it wasn’t okay to get rid of it and it needed to be a group decision.

What do you think?

If the people who used the compost bucket wanted to keep it, they should have ensured it didn’t become a mess of smelly, rotting food and fruit flies.

They didn’t, so now there’s no compost bucket.

In theory, yes, the coworker who tossed the bucket could have given a warning that he was going to toss it unless someone started maintaining it (and if we had a time machine, that’s what I’d recommend) or could have appealed to someone with authority to manage the situation rather than just tossing the thing … but it’s not hard to understand people getting fed up with it and just removing it.

“Sorry, but having a bucket of rotting food and flies isn’t tenable in a shared workplace” is a reasonable stance to take.

If the rest of you are in the mood to compromise, you could agree that the bucket can come back as long as there’s an understanding that it will be tossed again if it’s not maintained … but frankly if I were the decision-maker here, I’d write it off as a project that has already proved impractical and not invite it back in.

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{ 310 comments }

{ 310 comments… read them below or add one }

  1. Pool Noodle Barnacle Pen0s*

    (Lack of) actions, meet consequences. Working adults should have learned this lesson long ago, but I suppose the second best time is now.

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      1. duinath*

        Agreed. Frankly the reaction would make me *less* inclined to reinstate it, not more. Doesn’t seem to indicate any level of growth or sense of responsibility.

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        1. Jellyfish Catcher*

          Yikes! Decaying, smelly compost bins inside an office? I’m surprised someone didn’t anonymously call county health.
          They had 2 chances. I’d have a brief, kind but clear meeting with the protestors that they had 2 chances, both failed, so the decision was made and the discussion is closed.

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    2. A Story From Years Ago*

      As a new, young lass at my place of employ, I threw away magazine that were (at the time) 9 years old on a shelf in the communal breakroom.

      I was chastised by a co-worker who had work there for longer than 9 years. He said “There could be people on staff who have not read those yet. They could be entertained while using the microwave. You should not have thrown them away.” He was also thought to be a hoarder by other staff members. The condition of his office seemed to support this belief.

      I pointed out the magazines were (at the time) 9 years old and the information in them were outdated. He stood firm that I was wrong.

      To this day, I still wonder AITA?

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      3. Lex Talionis*

        Funny the ending you choose. I must spend too much time on that site as I often what to end my online comments, in a variety of places, with “AITA”

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      4. Resentful Oreos*

        If I were standing at the microwave long enough to want to read 9 year old magazines, I could be at my desk doing something else, or on my phone, or staring out the window. Besides, I picture those magazines as being old enough to have accumulated a sticky film of kitchen detritus over the NINE WHOLE YEARS they sat there. Nine years worth of microwave popcorn and leftover fish.

        I’m glad you threw them out. Old magazines can attract roaches and silverfish even if they aren’t coated with a layer of kitchen grime (something about the glue or paper, forget which). If someone is going to microwave a whole TV dinner for 6 minutes or so, they can bring their own reading material.

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        1. Texan In Exile*

          Oh man you have just given me flashbacks to cleaning out Mr T’s parents’ house (they both died within six weeks of each other). They had put a bunch of allegedly decorative crap on top of the kitchen cabinets (cabinets should go to the ceiling so you have space to store stuff but whatever) and it was so, so nasty – dusty and greasy at the same time. It was one of the rare times when Mr T and I agreed completely that everything should just go in the trash.

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          1. Bruce*

            Oh for a moment I thought you meant THE Mr T :-)
            Believe me, I have flashbacks to my parents’ house, rest their souls.

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          2. Elizabeth West*

            Back before internet was easily accessible, I was a bit of a magazine hoarder myself. Since I rarely was interested in the entire magazine, I compromised by ripping out the articles I wanted to keep and filing them in a desk drawer.

            After years of doing this, I started to notice that the articles would repeat with minor updates (new products for a beauty article, for example). One day, I opened the drawer and pitched the lot of them. The only exceptions were my dolls’ house magazines, which have instructions in them. One shelf–that’s it. I even sold almost all of my MAD magazine collection to a comic store. (I didn’t get much; I just wanted them out of the way before moving.)

            Now I’m a bookmark hoarder. Hey, they don’t take up any physical space. :)

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        2. Carol the happy*

          Butbutbut- you.could have MICROWAVED those 9-yr-old magazines to kill silverfish!

          I used to love going through my grandmother’s cedar chest, and reading old magazines was a treat. She even had ration booklets from WWII and a lot of old paperwork. No silverfish, just silverware and lace items and silks in blue (gray) paper.

          But office magazines? Where’s that vomit emoji when I need it?

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        3. Coverage Associate*

          People can be so weird about magazines.

          In high school, I spent a summer break cleaning a sister school that couldn’t afford janitors. Regular sweeping and such happened, but not the regular thorough cleanings our school got. One of the classrooms had stacks and stacks of National Geographics. I get that they were top of the line at that time, but they obviously didn’t have a curricular purpose. I got the dust off and sighed.

          Around the same time, I worked in a doctors’ office and started clearing out the magazines in the waiting room and exam rooms. It was women’s health, so I tried to put the bulk of the general interest magazines in the waiting room, where men might be waiting alone during partners’ appointments, but the doctor didn’t want the travel magazines out because they gave the patients the impression that the doctors were rich.

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          1. Lenora Rose*

            Not much info inside National Geographics fully expires, the way info in other magazines does.

            The Doctor’s office one is definitely overthinking it. I don’t think the readers of travel magazines are all rich travellers either.

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      5. LifebeforeCorona*

        I once threw out a stack of 20! year old magazines into the recycle bin. A week later they were all back.

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    3. Jaina Solo*

      So much this!

      At my first job, a fair bit of us were in our 20s, so some people were still growing up. One guy was on a health kick (which we all supported) but right before our annual Christmas leave (our company shut down for 2 weeks to save overhead) he left fruit/veggie peels in his trash can and didn’t empty it in the large trash container maintenance had left in the hall for any last trash. (And we had been told multiple times where to empty our trash before leaving and when maintenance would take it away so it was not a surprise.) One of the other ladies we worked with discovered his trash can and cleaned it out. I took it and then put it somewhere other than at his desk.

      When we all got back, he realized and thought I was pranking him but I was dead serious when I explained that he’d been irresponsible with it so I removed it. He was welcome to walk down the hallway to the break room trash. (We eventually gave him his trash can back, but I’ll never forget the change on his face from smiling at the “prank” to realizing he’d screwed up. There were a number of “you’re an adult now” lessons our group had to teach him that I guess no one else had before. And yes, it was mostly the women in the office doing the teaching.)

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      1. nonprofit llama groomer*

        That reminds me of when I had an office in a small office complex next to a criminal and personal injury law firm outpost that attorneys used for meeting people that lived too far from their main office and so that they could be on the court appointed list for the county it was in. It was rarely used.

        A youngish (early 30-something dude) lawyer used it for a client meeting. About a week later my adjoining office started to reek. The landlord searched for rodent infestation, etc., for about a week to see what was causing the problem. I asked her to search the law outpost office. Sure enough the douchebro law guy (he was known for wearing a bow tie to court thinking it made him stand out) had left the remains of a sub sandwich in the trash thinking the clean up fairies would clean up after him.

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        1. Texan In Exile*

          I couldn’t figure out why my dorm room smelled so bad by November of my freshman year.

          I started following my nose and it led me to my roommate’s bed and her sheets – which she had apparently not washed yet. (This was in very sweaty Houston.)

          When she returned to the room, I very casually asked if she might have accidentally left an apple or something under her bed because I had noticed a slight smell and then I left the room.

          When I returned an hour later, she had stripped the bed and was downstairs in the laundry room.

          (But seriously how do you get to 18 years old and not know that sheets need to be washed more than once every four months?)

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          1. nonprofit llama groomer*

            Ewww! I’ll tell you how! I ran into a VIP dad in our tiny small town at walmart the summer before my youngest daughter and his youngest son started college. My kiddo, who’s been doing her own laundry since middle school, accidentally washed a pair of white jeans she got at a thrift store with something blue and I was looking for any kind of product that might mitigate the damage. I told VIP dad the story. He was shocked that my kiddo knew how to do laundry because his wife (the ultimate SAHM mom of 2 boys) always does their laundry for them. I felt like he was proud of the fact that neither he nor his young adult sons knew how to do laundry!

            Reply ↓
            1. goddessoftransitory*

              Can’t wait for said sons to either destroy all their clothing and the dorm washing machine or haul it home for their mom to wash every weekend!

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            3. Clisby*

              Especially since teaching a kid how to do laundry takes what? 15-20 minutes? Unless that’s some awfully bougie stuff you’re washing. Certainly nothing a college kid needs.

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          3. Jaid*

            My dorm mate was making quick pickles in our shared tiny fridge, but forgot about it. A month later she took the jar out and was very apologetic about the smell.

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        2. New Jack Karyn*

          Maybe I’m not getting the layout, but I can see someone thinking that the office he used would have regular janitorial services.

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          1. Nebula*

            Yeah, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for someone to assume that they don’t have to empty the bins in a workplace office. The guy may have been annoying for other reasons, but I don’t think ‘putting rubbish in the bin and assuming the building has cleaners who empty the bins’ is an outrageous thing to do.

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          2. Gray Lady*

            But it says they were told where to empty their trash before leaving. I wouldn’t blame someone for thinking they didn’t have to empty it, if they hadn’t been told to, but in this case it was a stated part of the routine.

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            1. WorkerBee*

              The comment you replied to was in response to the story of the dudebro lawyer guy, not the one who had been told about emptying the trash before leaving.

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    4. EA*

      Honestly reminds me of dealing with my toddler… “You can play with that toy if you don’t hit your sister with it.” (Hits sister with the toy, I take the toy away) My toddler: “This is so unfair!”

      Pretty much the same thing, just with stinky trash and adults.

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    5. Pennyworth*

      I would have sent out an email saying that if the compost bucket was not emptied and clean at 5.00pm each Wednesday and Friday it would be thrown away and not reinstated.

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        2. Carol the happy*

          My friend is a Master Gardener at their botanical gardens- they have 3 trash cans, plus one for compostables. When they have lunch meetings, the paper and food waste go straight out to the compost bin to be dug in and covered with coffee grounds and strong herbs grown to disguise food smells.

          BTW- Starbucks often has 5-lb bags of spent coffee grounds free for gardeners. There’s a basket with the bags near the door where I shop.

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  2. a bright young reporter with a point of view*

    If you really want to have a working compost system in an office, you should get those compostable bags and keep them in the freezer. People can put their scraps in the bags and leave it frozen. No rot, no stink, no flies. Then take the bags to your local industrial composter regularly.

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    1. Feral Humanist*

      This is the way if it’s really that important to folks. I cannot imagine how any other composting system would work in the average office that isn’t directly connected to a community garden program or something similar. Communal kitchens cause enough problems without adding a compost bucket to them.

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        1. Menace to Sobriety*

          Meh. Virtue signalers gonna virtue signal. “But .. the environment! Think of all the good my rotting banana peels will do for the ….dirt.” Whatever. Ugh.

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          1. Babbalou*

            It is entirely possible to bring your rotting banana peel or whatever back home to your compost bin in your own kitchen.

            We have one. It really needs to be emptied every day.

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            1. amylynn*

              This is my solution (but no banana peels, I don’t like bananas). I do have to store it up and take it to a community garden.

              And yes, your rotting banana peels are good for the soil, and keeping them out of a landfill is good for the environment. However, subjecting your office environment to a plague of fruit flies is not fair.

              It’s worth looking to check to see if there is a composting service in your area. The one in my area is fairly inexpensive.

              Finally, if you don’t go the composting service route I recommend keeping any buckets as small as necessary. With an over-large bucket it is tempting to wait until it is full and then you are stuck with a gross, heavy mess to deal with. If you are just talking about coffee grounds and a few apple cores for a small office, I’d recommend a system of two buckets, one or two gallons max. Leave one bucket and take the other one, regardless of whether it is full. And when you empty it, clean it or at lease rinse it out. The bucket shouldn’t stay more than a day or two and never over the weekend, unless your co-workers will let you put it in the freezer.

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            2. cold compost*

              We keep ours in the fridge and it’s fine for a week or more. I can understand how that would not be practical or desirable in every home or office, though–especially if fridge space is at a premium.

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          2. JB (not in Houston)*

            I’m not sure I understand the point of your “virtue signalers” comment. You have no idea what these people’s motivation is–lots of people make efforts to lessen their envinronmental impact because they care, and these people’s failures to follow through doesn’t mean they weren’t doing it out of true concern. And in any case, guessing their motivations doesn’t help the OP here.

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            1. Radioactive Cyborg Llama*

              +1. I’m tired of people thinking that other people trying to do things according to liberal values –however imperfectly those imperfect people are doing it–are “virtue signaling.” That phrase is never used for people who are trying to, say, proselytize their co-workers.

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              2. Johnny Slick*

                Or people who insist on doing Christmas donation and giving drives to certain not particularly well maintained charities who also happen to be affiliated with a certain popular religion…

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            2. Kella*

              So, let’s say some folks genuinely wanted to reduce the amount of food waste piling up in trash landfills, so they started the compost bucket. They completed the actions of acquiring a bucket and making it known to the office that it was intended for specific types of food waste. It sounds like, at that point, the food waste was never or rarely actually used for compost and was in reality an extra smelly, fly-ridden trash can. So it’s not that the original goal is being completed imperfectly, it’s not being completed at all.

              Notice that the people who wanted the compost bucket were not upset that the bucket was not fulfilling its intended purpose. Surely, that’s the biggest problem, right? If the outcome is the most important thing to you, you want to do something when your strategy is not achieving that outcome.

              No, they were upset when someone said, “Hey, this system isn’t working and it’s actively causing everyone problems, so I’m getting rid of it.” When the bucket was there, they could say that this was evidence that they cared about putting their food waste in to reduce trash going to the landfill (even though that wasn’t happening). When the food bucket was gone, an equal amount of food waste was going to the landfill but they couldn’t make themselves feel better about that by putting it in a designated bucket. That’s why it’s virtue signaling.

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        2. Galadriel's Garden*

          “I dislike food waste, and I want to Do Something About It, but that’s a lot of effort, so if I throw things into a bucket instead of the trash, now it’s Fixed and I can wash my hands of my guilt” would be my guess.

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      2. JustaTech*

        We have compost in our kitchen areas at work, but Very Importantly, our city handles compost like it handles garbage and recycle: there are specific dumpsters for buildings and the city picks up regularly. So the compost gets taken out every night just like the trash and recycle, by our night janitorial crew.

        Without a system like that it is pretty much guaranteed to be a mess.

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        1. Coverage Associate*

          I guess all of California now requires that every business and residence have a composting program? We have had one at work for more than 10 years. Then they tried to roll it out in our apartment complex, but I already had trash and recycle bins and wasn’t losing more kitchen space. Composting is available, though. Now they have rolled it out at church, and I just hate the conversations about whether the disposable cutlery is the recycling kind or the compost kind, and they can’t recycle shiny paper, but they can compost waxed paper plates? I just don’t throw away anything at church anymore.

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          1. A perfectly normal-size space bird*

            The city I used to live in had three bins: trash, recycling, and organics. They were all the same size and all picked up weekly on the same day. It was a fantastic service and if you signed up for free compost and recycling service then your trash fees were waived. It was made a whole lot better by giving residents detailed but clear and easy to follow guides about what does and does not go in each bin, complete with pictures. We were given printed copies but the guide was also on the city website in a clear link on the first page.

            And I think something like that is important when implementing a program like that. There’s tons of people who will ignore the rules out of laziness or spite but making things clear to everyone else will cut way down on the confusion.

            It’s a markedly different experience where I live now. The curbside recycling is every other week with an eight gallon box and they won’t take glass or cardboard so we have to drive it to the recycling dropoff. Finding info on what is and isn’t allowed is infuriatingly complex, as the website and printed brochures say one thing and the people in charge say another. Is pasteboard allowed? When does the annual tin can pickup day happen? The answer to the second question is usually uncovered the day after it already happened.

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          2. JustaTech*

            I’m not in CA, but that’s our system here.
            And yes, the endless conversations about “are these plates compostable?” are annoying, but they’ve gotten to the point of basically being an alternative to talking about the weather.
            (We’ve had the bins for years and years, you’d think by now we would know what goes where, but no! And I don’t exempt myself, I’m sure I get things wrong too.)

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        2. allathian*

          Yes, I’m in Finland and the city requires homeowners to keep several bins. We have three, one for biodegradables, one for plastic, and one for burnable trash that goes to the city incinerator. There are municipal collection stations for paper, cardboard, glass, and metal. There are also separate collection stations for cumbersome items and hazardous waste that are staffed to ensure that the waste’s handled appropriately.

          There’s a nationwide program to eliminate landfills completely by 2050.

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        3. Elizabeth West*

          That is how my auntie’s town does it (she lives in Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey). She has a little compost bin on her counter and empties it into a bin for pickup regularly. I was helping her with the washing-up and she instructed me thoroughly how to separate compostable items, because they are very strict about how the trash and recyclables are separated and people can get fined if they don’t do it right. I remember when I lived in California we had to separate recyclables too. The pickup was on a day separate from the trash.

          Anyplace where it’s voluntary, they usually have to pay extra for those pickups — I looked into it at OldExjob since they had so much paper waste. Of course they didn’t want to pay for recycling pickup, so I just did my best to recycle packing materials and use less paper when I could. There was nothing I could do about kitchen trash.

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    2. I should really pick a name*

      Then take the bags to your local industrial composter regularly

      For the employees described in the letter, I doubt this part would happen.

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      1. MassMatt*

        Right, we would get a letter several months down the road saying “our freezer is stuffed so full of rotting food scraps it’s unusable”.

        Some employees seem to like the IDEA of composting, but don’t want to make any effort nor take responsibility for actually doing it.

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        1. Sunflower*

          That’s what I was thinking. Some people want to “do good” to feel good but won’t actually do the real work. Dumping garbage in a bucket is easy so they think they’re being virtuous but it’s a disgusting health hazard when they don’t actually take care of it.

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        2. Ostrich Herder*

          This is so rampant in offices – let’s have a committee for that! Let’s schedule followup meetings! Let’s start a new initiative! Let’s do an employee survey! And then it never happens.

          But if the group responsible for the employee survey fails to do the employee survey, nothing rots under the sink. This is way worse.

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        4. Resentful Oreos*

          That is exactly what would happen. Everyone would be “yay composting!” But nobody would be shlepping the scraps to the dump. Or they would assume the admin or office manager if there was one would be the designated composter.

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        5. Starbuck*

          “Some employees seem to like the IDEA of composting, but don’t want to make any effort nor take responsibility for actually doing it.”

          I’d counter that they should really pre pressuring the company to invest in a system that would actually work. Really it’s the community. Composting is actually pretty important, but just like trash and recycling it’s a really hard thing for most individuals to manage themselves when the system isn’t set up for it. Framing everything as in issue of individual responsibility isn’t super productive.

          It seems like in this case there isn’t a municipal compost system that they could empty the kitchen container into and so the bin relied on one of the workers remembering to take it home from work in the evening or something like that. Sadly, this is doomed. Can you imagine how gross the office would get if everyone had to remember to take their own trash home?

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      2. goddessoftransitory*

        Yeah, I’m picturing regular dumpings of giant piles of frost bitten bags into the trash and bitter complaints from all factions.

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    3. GreenShoes*

      I’m not sure that’s a better option. The next issue will be someone can’t get their frozen dinner in the freezer because it’s filled with garbage. I mean with a smelly bucket of garbage you have half a chance to be reminded to do something with it as you battle your way through fruit flies to get to the coffee maker. No chance if it’s out of sight (and mind and smell) in the freezer.

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      1. Antilles*

        Yep. What would actually going to happen is this:
        1.) Freezer slowly fills with bags of frozen composting material
        2.) Nobody empties it until the freezer is entirely unusable
        3.) A true American hero (possibly the same person who threw out the fly-ridden bucket) secretly tosses all those bags in the trash.
        4.) People come out of the woodwork to complain about the bags being dumpstered, come on, I was totally going to use that compost very soon. Sure they sat there for months untouched, but I was totally definitely going to empty it this weekend.

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      2. ubotie*

        That’s been my experience when people start putting garbage in the freezer.

        Composting is rarely worth it because this is usually what happens, especially in shared spaces like offices. The LW’s coworker was a hero and the naysayers are probably equally disgusting at home.

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    4. Juicebox Hero*

      I don’t think the business should have to go to the extra expense of buying special bags and trouble of taking them to a composting center. The compost crew have demonstrated twice that they’re not going to keep up with their idea so just ban composting in the office.

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      1. Starbuck*

        The business is exactly who should be doing this actually! I hope the coworkers band together and pressure them to put a system in place the same as they do for trash and recycling so that it’s not on individuals to remember to take the compost home.

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      1. RC*

        This is what I do—just take my stuff home, rather than hoping that the at-work waste streams are properly configured.

        At home I will admit we often have (probably too many) old yogurt containers full of vegetable scraps etc (i.e. pre-compost) in our fridge, waiting to be fed to my worms; there are no fruit flies and no smells but for the other reasons mentioned above in this thread I’m not suggesting the people in this situation follow my example there.

        In the interest of problem-solving and compromise… what was the intended destination for the food scraps? Depending on the situation, could an outdoor compost bin/collection work instead? Or is the problem that the “emptying” requires taking the whole mess to a third location instead of just municipal (or third-party?) food waste collection or an on-site compost patch? Could the latter be implemented instead? Was there ever a sign-up sheet for whose responsibility it explicitly is at a given time?

        But I think the bottom line is that none of this matters if (it sounds like) people aren’t sufficiently motivated to step up to make these things happen… and if they were willing to do that then it seems like this would have been tried already. (Saying this as someone who adores composting and waste diversion and is happy to live in California where legislation means that families/businesses are mandated to at least make the appearance of an effort to divert organic waste from the landfill!)

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      2. Sweet Fancy Pancakes*

        Exactly. Who was going to use the compost? I do compost at home, and so just take my banana peels or apple cores or whatever back home in my lunch bag, so I wondered what they really thought they were going to do with it- divvy it up?

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        1. Starbuck*

          This is why municipal compost systems are so necessary! It benefits everyone to deal with this waste and make it actually a resource instead of unnecessary garbage in the landfill.

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    6. Samwise*

      I’ll tell you what will happen. The office freezer will fill up with those g.d. bags because no one will take responsibility for toting them to the composter. Then everyone who needs the freezer for food or for ice packs for back injuries will be pissed off because there won’t be room. Someone will trash all the frozen compost = Compostgate: Part Two, The Ice Age.

      I compost. I take home from work my vegetal leftovers and add them to the kitchen compost bucket, which we empty every day. More in the summer.

      This isn’t about compost and saving our mother the earth. This is about lazy-ass adults who want the good feels that come with composting, without actually doing any of the work.

      (yes, yes, I will now step off my soap box)

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      2. a bright young reporter with a point of view*

        My thought here is that dealing with an open bucket of stinky compost three times a week is a much bigger burden than running a bag of non-stinky scraps to the center every two weeks.

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        1. judyjudyjudy*

          Yes, but WHO will do it? Emptying the bucket (…outside? We never did find out where the big compost heap a really is) sounds easier than going to a compost drop off every few weeks. The people really invested in composting don’t want to do more than throw their scraps in a stinking bucket.

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    7. Delta Delta*

      This is the way. I worked in recycling for a while and we were WAY into vermiculture. We had a strict “freezer first” rule so that our worm bins didn’t get filled with fruit flies. Worked really well. But everyone also bought into the goal and also bought into doing it without smells and fruit flies.

      We also had a weekly freezer clean out schedule so if we got too many scraps in the freezer they’d get binned once a week.

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  3. DEJ*

    The coworkers who compost can go in together on a several-hundred dollar electric composter if they really want to compost. That will contain the waste better vs just a bucket.

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    1. NotAnotherManager!*

      These are really just dehydrators, not composters, and they also use enough electricity that they’re not really saving anything and take hours to run cycles. They do reduce the size of the waste.

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    2. Not on board*

      There are compost bins that are designed specifically for compost, and use charcoal filters to prevent the smell from wafting out. But they still need to be emptied regularly which wasn’t happening.

      If composting is so important, take your scraps home and compost it there.

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      1. MagicEyes*

        We have compost bins that are tightly sealed and are emptied by our cleaning staff. One of them has a lid that opens when you wave your hand over it and closes automatically–super cool! :-)

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    3. BethRA*

      Or – not to get too crazy here – people who want to compost can bring their food scraps home with them and compost it themselves.

      Because eventually, even the fancy electronic composter is going to need emptying, cleaning or some kind of maintenance.

      Reply ↓
  4. NotAnotherManager!*

    Rotting food is my kryptonite. I am deeply grateful for our office’s kitchen policies that prevent science experiments from growing. Ourhome kitchen compost goes out at minimum twice weekly, more if it’s starting to smell, and it gets brows thrown in with the greens. It also has a lid. I cannot imagine how gross an office bucket would be if only emptied twice a week and nothing was put into it to soak up some of the rotting juices. Ew, no.

    Reply ↓
    1. bamcheeks*

      Yeah, twice a week sounds wildly optimistic to me. We empty ours every 24-48 in northern English winter (room temp about 17-20 degrees), and often twice a day in summer heatwaves when it’s 22-25 degrees. We block off half the bin so it can’t get more than 5l or so of volume and you have to empty it that frequently. If you’ve got a normal office room temp of ~21 degrees twice a week isn’t NEARLY enough.

      Reply ↓
  5. Lacey*

    They want getting rid of it to be a group decision, but installing it wasn’t.

    Also, they already failed to hold up their end, so… this is a fair solution.

    Reply ↓
    3. el l*

      Perfect point.

      Or: “1 person will be made directly responsible for maintaining this disposal, with following amounts of taking it out and cleaning it. If that person fails in their task, or nobody volunteers to do this, then…we can’t have this.”

      Reply ↓
    4. Chili*

      This stuck out to me as well. I am a composting fan but I know enough about kitchen offices to vote for this setup at work.

      Reply ↓
      1. StarTrek Nutcase*

        After 40+ yr of office fridge wars, I can’t see composting wars going well either. At several jobs, I (F) chose to “never” use the fridge because I refused to be participate in clearing out & cleaning. It was only 2 or 3 out of a dozen or more who ever participated and it always created conflict (how dare you throw my moldy smelly months old leftovers away!). I’d lose my damn mind if there was rotting food in a bucket adding to the drama.

        Reply ↓
  6. juliebulie*

    I don’t know a lot about composting, but I think there are indoor-friendly containers for composting. They are more than just a bucket. I think worms are involved.

    A bucket under the sink is probably not ideal. And the timeframe (before getting fruit flies) probably isn’t long enough for actual composting to happen. Eventually the stuff needs to get dumped outside in a designated place, or taken home by one of the compost enthusiasts to supplement their own compost.

    Do the pro-composting people have an actual plan for the compost? Or do they think that throwing leftover food into a bucket rather than a trash can is “saving the planet,” with no additional effort required? Obviously it is not saving the planet if it ends up in the trash anyway.

    Reply ↓
    1. Who knows*

      If it’s something they’re emptying, then it’s just a bin for temporary storage until it’s emptied into a larger container (usually either a city compost container that is picked up, or an outdoor compost bin where the composting actually happens). The type with the worms is if you want to actually compost (the verb) yourself indoors – it doesn’t get emptied until the compost (noun) is fully composted (verb) and ready to use as fertilizer, etc.

      Reply ↓
      1. Observer*

        If it’s something they’re emptying, then it’s just a bin for temporary storage until it’s emptied into a larger container

        Which is fine. But it still needs to be a bin *with a cover*, not a bucket (which tends to mean not covered.)

        Reply ↓
      1. Carol the happy*

        We had a coworker who was into vermiculture; during his vacation, the worm farm crashed up against the “freeze it so it won’t stink” dude.
        LESSON:
        Red Wigglers can’t live in the freezer, although Vermiculture Guy did try to pick the little corpses out without breaking them, and resuscitate them when he found a whole one. “Susie the Security Chief” swears that he was actually weeping as he’d find another one.
        My job has its oddly fascinating aspects….

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        1. That Worm Lady*

          Omg… poor little dudes!! :(

          And I have SO many questions… like do we not all know that you freeze it BEFORE it goes in the bin, never after? After will kill all the good microbes too, and the smells are irrelevant because the worms don’t smell if you’re feeding them properly.

          *maybe* you could have some cocoons that survive the freezer, but I don’t think any adults could be revived…

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    3. Falling Diphthong*

      It’s an array of tubs of dirt containing worms, in which you bury the compost in some dirt and it is broken down.

      We inherited such a system from relatives who moved overseas, and my level of vegetable use was above what the worms could handle. If you’ve got the space to maintain enough tubs and worms, it can be a workable system. But this office doesn’t sound like it would do so. It would just be “What if we added more steps and more needed space to the solution that doesn’t work now?”

      Reply ↓
    4. HonorBox*

      We tried composting at home. It was a huge pain and the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze. BUT we did have a container that had a lid and charcoal filters that kept the smells to a minimum. It does require, though, that someone empty it into a larger outdoor container or location, and that seems to not be part of the equation in this workplace.

      Reply ↓
      1. KateM*

        I have a larger outdoor container, and then I have a bucket under sink. It’s something with a lid tightly closed though, no flies.

        Reply ↓
      2. StephChi*

        Yes, it seems like they should have had a sign-up sheet to empty the bucket from the beginning, because how else would they have taken responsibility to deal with it? That way, if the person who was supposed to dump out the bucket didn’t do it when they were assigned, another person from the group could get on them to do it or get kicked out of the composting group.

        I compost, and I have a small 1.3 gal bucket with a lid and charcoal filters. Fortunately for me, the city has many food scrap drop off locations, and one of them happens to be about a half-mile from me. It takes me about 10 days to fill the bucket, then I just walk it over to the city’s location. There’s also a regular garbage can next to it so I can throw away the compostable garbage bag I put inside the bucket, since those aren’t allowed in the compost bins.

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    5. H.Regalis*

      There are probably a lot guides to this, but the book Worms Eat My Garbage comes to mind. Or else they get an electric composter, but those aren’t cheap.

      That said, I don’t think either of these solutions are going to work for this office, because they involve the pro-compost people having to actually do something. If they can’t empty a bucket twice a week, I highly doubt they’d be able to keep worms alive; and it’s reasonable for the other people to say, “We’re not having a bucket of rotting food sitting around.”

      Reply ↓
    6. That Worm Lady*

      Yes, it is possible to do vermicomposting indoors and (when done properly) it doesn’t smell like anything more than fresh soil; I worry that if the people in question aren’t tending to the situation as it was, it’s definitely not advisable to bring living critters into the situation, especially cute ones like red wriggler worms!

      An on-site outdoor worm bin might be possible depending on motivation and climate, and IMO is easier to set up than a heat-based compost pile, but again motivation seems to be lacking. (If my work had that kind of system, I definitely would be That Worm Lady though).

      Reply ↓
      1. Falling Diphthong*

        The worms are good for potato peelings and cabbage cores, but not well suited to half a serving of spaghetti carbonara.

        Reply ↓
        1. Emmy Noether*

          AFAIK, cooked foods and animal products should never go in a at-home-type composting system, whether that is a simple heap or any kind of worm contraption (an industrial composter can generally handle them). Treat your home compost as a raw vegan.

          Meat (such as in carbonara) shouldn’t go in any type of compost. Meat does not decompose without stink. The compost worms and desireable compost bacteria do not like it, so you are inviting in other critters and other bacteria and fungi, and it will not go nicely.

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    7. Random Bystander*

      I have to admit, this is the first I heard of the idea of indoor composting bins. I always thought those were outdoors. The bucket described by the letter writer sounds like just a garbage can that doesn’t get emptied (and that’s disgusting).

      Reply ↓
      1. Happily Retired*

        Indoor compost buckets are meant to be temporary collection sites, nothing more. Actual composting would occur outdoors or wherever an actual compost heap is. You want to have good airflow in your compost system, otherwise, eeew.

        Reply ↓
        1. Carol the happy*

          You can have an under-sink worm composter, but nothing but brown paper and uncooked veggies, I think. Definitely no meats or pasta. I have 2 compost tumblers behind my garage, and a bucket under the sink. With a really tight lid.

          Reply ↓
      2. Clisby*

        We do lazy composting at home – any vegetable scraps go directly on our small garden patch, and every so often we dig it in. As a bonus, we occasionally get a volunteer onion or potato.

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    8. Slow Gin Lizz*

      I can just imagine how a container of worms would go over in an office. Sure, it’s a great composting solution (a friend of mine does this), but not at all good for an office. I have no problems with worms but I wasn’t exactly overcome with warmth upon seeing my friend’s worm farm; having a container of worms in an office would be pretty mean to someone with any kind of dislike or even phobia of worms.

      If the employees want to compost so much, OP should suggest that the compost-friendly employees keep the compost bin in their offices (they could rotate!) instead of in the communal kitchen.

      Reply ↓
    9. iglwif*

      You can be super hardcore and do worm composting if you need compost for your garden or, I guess, if you live in a really small place that doesn’t have municipal composting. It’s really cool but more work is involved than it sounds like this office wants to do.

      Most people just have the compost buckets that city governments issue / that you can buy at places like Canadian Tire and Rona and Home Depot. They DO have lids!!!! And handles, and sometimes a thingy to hold a charcoal disc that helps reduce odours.

      Most importantly, they are small and fill up fast and then you TAKE THEM AND DUMP THEM IN THE GREEN BIN (which you store outdoors / in your garage / in your building’s garbage room, with your garbage and recycling containers) to be picked up.

      One does not simply STORE COMPOST IN AN OPEN BUCKET IN THE KITCHEN, omg.

      Reply ↓
    10. Thinking*

      Most people don’t realize fruit fly gestation can be less than 24 hours. And what prompts the mature flies to emerge is sun up. Or turning on a light. Or in experiments they use a camera flash. So the eggs are laid during the day and the very next morning you have a village of flies. In another 24 you potentially have a city. The only good control is taking it out at the end of every single day.
      Composting indoors is not a bucket, compadres. It’s an artsy science.

      Reply ↓
  7. Snarkus Aurelius*

    Rotting food and fruit flies are also a health hazard. Emphasize that point many, many, many times.

    And AAM is right: if composting was a genuine priority in your office, someone would have stuck to the schedule. As for now, it remains purely aspirational.

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  8. Grandma*

    Alternately, the composters can pack out what they brought in, IOW, take your garbage home and dump it into your home green waste can. (Please tell me this locality has a green waste program.)

    Reply ↓
    1. Joana*

      It sounds like there is somewhere they can take the compost, it’s just that no one was actually doing it. So yeah, anyone can just do it themselves at home if it’s that important to them (but it sounds like it’s not).

      Reply ↓
  9. StinkComposter*

    Sounds like they just made a trash can, really! I have an outdoor compost bin. It doesn’t smell “bad (just earthy, like after mowing?), but you have to watch what you’re throwing in there. The majority should be “green” waste, paper products etc, but NO meat or animal products can go in or it smells to high hell. I doubt that anyone there was being careful and sorting out their leftover meat spaghetti vs a salad!

    Reply ↓
    1. wordswords*

      I’m assuming that this is the kind of system where you compost food scraps, etc, and then that goes into an industrial composting program. A growing number of cities have programs like that, and many areas also have private or otherwise non-municipal programs. Either there’s a specific curbside bin that gets collected regularly, or there are designated drop-off sites. If you’re part of that kind of system, you don’t have to be as careful about sorting out your waste. We can put meat, bones, napkins, etc into ours — the industrial scale means the compost gets hot enough to break down that stuff, which a backyard bin can’t, and the central program is the one responsible for maintaining the brown vs green balance. (I assume they also have some kind of deal about getting waste branches, paper, etc to offset all the kitchen scraps, but I don’t know the details.)

      However, obviously, crucial to this system is that the stuff gets taken out REGULARLY. That’s true with compost in general, but triply so when you’re putting meat or dairy in there! Everyone I know with a kitchen bin or bucket either keeps it in the freezer or empties it out on the regular (and more often in hot weather) or some combination, and even then the outdoor bin can get pretty gross between weekly collections. A bucket under the sink going unemptied for weeks and weeks in a shared kitchen sounds absolutely foul, and no matter how much I love composting, I don’t blame LW’s coworker in the slightest for getting rid of it.

      If they’re not upholding the regular emptying side of the deal, they’re not composting, they’re just collecting rotting food and telling themselves the unnecessary extra grossness is virtuous.

      Reply ↓
      1. JustaTech*

        For the “green vs brown” balance, in my city the compost bins are the same as the “yard waste” bins, so you can use them for kitchen scraps, grass clippings, shredded paper, or your left over Christmas Tree, all in the same bin.
        (Mine is huge, as big as a full-sized recycling wheelie bin.)

        Reply ↓
      2. I AM a Lawyer*

        Yep. In my state, we’re required to put all food waste, including meat, into the green waste. We are not supposed to put it in the trash. So, it’s not weird if that’s what they were doing, but it has to be taken out very regularly. (We basically just do it on a meal by meal basis at home.)

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        1. Coverage Associate*

          Yeah, and I think when California passed that law, there was some rollout with free compost bins and no additional charges for green waste pickup for people who didn’t already have green waste pickup (eg, those with 0 or low maintenance landscaping).

          Reply ↓
      3. StephChi*

        In my city, putting anything other than food scraps into the city’s composting bins isn’t allowed, so no paper products or lawn waste. They have a regular garbage can next to the food scrap bins for all other garbage.

        Reply ↓
        1. Katie Impact*

          The exact rules seem to vary a lot from place to place. My city’s green waste pickup service accepts pretty much any kind of untreated plant or animal matter (including bones and wood), but they don’t allow paper or any kind of “compostable” packaging material because a lot of it doesn’t actually break down that well.

          And if nobody at OP’s workplace is willing to take responsibility for emptying the bin, I wouldn’t give great odds of staff taking responsibility for knowing whatever the local rules are and making sure they’re followed either.

          Reply ↓
  10. Planeteer*

    I really hope that this person writes in with an update that their employer has now developed a side business of worm farming (is it called vermiposting?)

    I went down an internet rabbit hole of researching that for a month or 2 a few years ago. Thank goodness we never did that.

    You’re reasonable LW and the wannabe composters are not doing anyone any favors. Reminds me of the yogurt collector in Reddit. What’s their end game? If their end game is to compost… perhaps start by contracting with a company that picks up compost. Don’t collect it first and hope it will get picked up.
    Good luck

    Reply ↓
  11. Who knows*

    Does your kitchen have a fridge or freezer? I had the same problem, and keeping the compost bucket in the fridge has made all the difference. I take it out every 7-9 days. Use one with a lid if you aren’t already.

    Reply ↓
    1. Observer*

      I take it out every 7-9 days.

      In a shared office kitchen? No. People need that freezer for other stuff.

      But also, people were not emptying the open bucket that often, despite the stench and flies. What makes you think that they are going to empty the freezer?

      Reply ↓
  12. LifebeforeCorona*

    There are kitchen sized compost pails that use live worms to breakdown the compost. My friend had one in his kitchen, I do not recommend them for the office unless you want to see live worms outside the pail. It sounds like that with this office, worms would be going wild.

    Reply ↓
    1. UKDancer*

      I think a lot of people wouldn’t like to see worms in the office. I mean I recognise the essential function worms play but I really don’t like them they give me the ick. I’m happy for them to be in the garden but I don’t want to see them in the work kitchen.

      Reply ↓
      2. Nightengale*

        I think the best answer there would be to connect the office with the worms and the office with the ducks. Or, wasn’t there an office with a turtle problem?

        Reply ↓
          1. Not that other person you didn't like*

            My compost run around outside and make eggs, but that’s an even less office-friendly solution!

            Reply ↓
        2. UKDancer*

          Yes there was an office that wanted people to take turtles home with them I think as something to do with morale and bonding. I remember because it was so hilariously badly thought through.

          Reply ↓
        3. That Worm Lady*

          I know you’re joking but it actually was a joy of mine in early covid-times when a batch of black soldier fly larvae showed up in my vermicomposting bin (I suspect because all the restaurants shut down so they sought out another place to lay their eggs). It was SO unsettling at first because there were so many, but they are extremely efficient composters and also people use the bigger instars to feed chickens! And the adults exist only to mate and die so they’re just these chill long black insects who annoy nobody (when the cheepy birds discovered they were in there it… was a figurative bloodbath, cause I don’t think they have actual blood).

          I sometimes wish I could figure out how to entice them back… ANYWAY yes duck crossover episode!

          (I really am That Worm Lady today).

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      3. Aspiring Chicken Lady*

        I ordered worms online for a home system. The package was somehow not entirely sealed. My postal carrier started seeing worms in her jeep as she did her deliveries that day and then I got The Door Knock. Yikes. It took a couple of days before I got the system set up to avoid escapees.
        Later my postal carrier told me she posted it on her postal Facebook group and got considerable hero points for her side of the story.

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    3. Nicosloanicota*

      I know someone who lived in a group house that was into vermiculture, and they reported that if things get out of whack and the worms die, there is a whole new sensory experience most people would never dream of.

      I don’t think there’s a good solution without this group of people putting in the work. Perhaps the company can provide biodegradable paper bags and remind people to take their compostable waste home every day.

      Reply ↓
      1. Falling Diphthong*

        a whole new sensory experience most people would never dream of

        Item number 8 on the list of things you don’t actually want to experience in your office.

        Reply ↓
      2. freda fetida (blupuck)*

        It is carnage.
        I goofed once and thought it would be ok to add an airtight bag of rotted veg. Oh my heavens.
        The worst part? you can’t just throw it away. Those are YOUR worms.
        You must save who you can …

        Reply ↓
      3. Resentful Oreos*

        Oh merciful heavens, I can just imagine. Pee yew.

        I think the lesson here is “if you want to compost, great, but you have to take the scraps home and compost there” unless your office has some really responsible people who will keep up on sanitation. Which means, no, you cannot have an office compost bin, and no, you cannot just stick your food scraps in the freezer for all eternity. That’s “wish-composting.”

        You can keep things clean, you can take them home, or you can accept that this bit of food will be wasted. You canNOT stink up the office or draw flies.

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    4. That Worm Lady*

      Omg, poor worms. If they were trying to escape that means they were not provided with a good habitat. My guys never have tried to escape, but I have been vermicomposting for a number of years now (my guess: he probably overfed and did not put in enough bedding like shredded cardboard to balance it out).

      Reply ↓
      1. the Viking Diva*

        here to say this too. In a well-run worm composting operation (which I’ve done for decades now), people rarely see the worms, other than the person actively feeding and aerating the bin.

        Reply ↓
        1. That Worm Lady*

          I did misspeak though, the one episode of carnage I’ve had in recent memory was during a heat wave a few years ago. They’d recently cut down one of our shade trees and my poor little guys overheated; the survivors were all clustered in the back top corner trying to find a cooler area since the lid was on so they couldn’t actually escape (I’ve since become much more diligent about checking on them in heat and preemptively cooling them with paper-wrapped ice packs if it’s especially hot out).

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  13. toolegittoresign*

    Mandate that any compost receptacle have a tight-fitting lid and liner. They make compostable liners that I use in my own home and outdoor compost heap. At least then, there is no smell or flies, and emptying is easier as you just pull out the liner bag like any other trash bag.

    Reply ↓
    1. Beany*

      We participate in a community composting program (curbside collection), using compostable bags and a sealed-lid container. But we keep the container outside our house all the same. It’s sealed against critters, but I really don’t think it’s airtight.

      Reply ↓
      1. Antilles*

        Also, even with a tight fitting lid and a liner, I don’t think it’s really intended to sit inside for (checks OP’s post) two months without being dealt with.

        Reply ↓
  14. BW*

    Forget composting, just having rotting garbage in the office or home is disgusting. My mother-in-law taught me to put all food garbage in a plastic bag in the fridge, and only throw it in the outside garbage can on garbage pickup day. No food PERIOD in the inside garbage can.

    Reply ↓
    1. Nicosloanicota*

      Honestly, most office kitchens seem to have a uniquely terrible struggle just to keep the basic standards met – how many letters have we had on this topic – so I think it’s a bridge too far to add compost.

      Reply ↓
      1. Falling Diphthong*

        It’s a nice little cautionary tale, for any office drones who fill their down time crafting a manifesto on how to get everyone to buy in and work together for the common good.

        Reply ↓
      2. Resentful Oreos*

        You are right. There’s enough people who throw half-eaten tuna sandwiches in the nearest wastebasket, or leave food to rot in the communal refrigerator, to name two, that I think adding a compost bin is too much for all but the most responsible and well organized workplaces.

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    2. That Worm Lady*

      Yeah, I mean the flip side to all this is that the smelly stuff that would have been going into the un-emptied food scraps bin is now just in the “normal” trash smelling up the place anyway… one hopes this isn’t the same office as the one who decided to cancel their regular janitorial service and make other employees “volunteer” for those tasks… -_-

      Reply ↓
    3. iglwif*

      But food doesn’t go in the garbage anyway? It goes in the compost bin!

      Which, yes, you have to empty frequently into the larger container that gets picked up once a week (or whatever), which is NOT in your kitchen.

      My biggest question about this whole situation is, where are people putting their food waste if not in a compost bin?

      Reply ↓
      1. blue rose*

        Food waste does commonly go in the garbage. You personally may elect not to do this, but it doesn’t then follow that everyone else makes the exact same choices as you.

        Reply ↓
        1. iglwif*

          Wait so you just … put organic waste in the garbage with everything else? Doesn’t your garbage then also start to stink? Won’t your company get in trouble with the municipality for putting all their compostable materials in the garbage?

          Idk about your jurisdiction but in mine (and others I know about) residential garbage and recycling are picked up only every 2 weeks while “green bin” (compostable” waste is picked up every week. So it is a very bad idea, just from a practical perspective, to put stinky things in the garbage, since they’ll then be sitting around in your wheely-bin for up to 14 days. Business waste is picked up more frequently but still.

          Reply ↓
          1. blue rose*

            Well, yes, that is in fact what happens. BW even references it in the original comment; that their MIL taught them otherwise means it wasn’t their practice prior to the relationship, and may not even be common practice for everyone else around them. I do find it a little weird that you seem so astonished by the idea that you took it for granted that food isn’t trashed. Not everywhere is run by the rules your jurisdiction abides. Where I am, ALL pickups are done weekly. Yes, people make bin juice, yes it’s revolting, no, the municipality doesn’t care unless you’re contaminating the recyclables with bin juice.

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            1. iglwif*

              It is 2025 and I last worked or lived in a place that doesn’t mandate separating compostable from recyclable from landfill waste in the mid-1990s, so yeah, I was astonished.

              I have since been kindly enlightened elsewhere in this comment section that in the US, municipal composting is actually really uncommon.

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      2. Antilles*

        where are people putting their food waste if not in a compost bin?
        The trash can. You just toss your food waste right in the trash can, then the trash can gets emptied as needed: Because the can gets full, because it’s been a couple days and you don’t want it to rot, or because you had a particularly smelly lunch and want to clear that odor.

        Reply ↓
        1. iglwif*

          It has been explained to me in another thread that in the US, municipal composting is not widespread. I think this explains my confusion, and people’s responses to it.

          I haven’t worked (or lived) in a place where food waste went into the garbage since the 1990s.

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    4. Grandma*

      The key word there is “rotting.” We keep an old stainless steel dog food bowl on the counter near the sink. All garbage, used tissues, paper napkins, and paper towels go in the the bowl along with the food scraps. Needless to say, the bowl gets emptied into the outside green can frequently, no rotting whatsoever. Gross. Bowl gets full, bowl goes out. Bowl gets 1/2 full, it still goes out at the end of the day and joins the leaves, bush and tree trimmings, and garden waste. No right minded person is going to look at rotting garbage on the sink! (Also, those compostable bags aren’t very compostable – the compost folks say don’t use them. If you must wrap it up, try newspaper.)

      On the appointed day of the week the big truck comes and takes it away to the compost center at the dump where it joins everyone else’s same stuff. Magic commercial compost thing happens and then people are welcome to come and take as much as they want back to their yards.

      Hint: if your outside can is smelly, leave the lid off when you’re expecting rain. About an inch of water on the bottom does a pretty good job of floating whatever might rot, so it all leaves your property with the garbage truck. It leaves the can/bin sort of clean too. Just not too much, you don’t want the poor truck to be a swimming pool.

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      1. BW*

        We cannot leave our garbage cans open. BEARS~. It attracts bears and raccoons and we don’t want to train them to eat in our neighborhood. That’s another reason that food scraps get refrigerated or frozen. They won’t smell and attract animals.

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  15. Book Witch*

    That’s so gross! Everyone there has the option of taking their food scraps home and composting them on their own. I save scraps for my backyard chickens and have occasionally gotten weird looks when I’m putting something like shrimp tails or random bits out of a premade salad (I hate blueberries and they are in so many things!). Coworkers get a kick that chickens will eat all that stuff and some will even contribute if they have something that particular day. But it always goes home with me that night. It’s a terrible idea and practice to let food sit in a shared kitchen–they are already so gross!

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    1. JFC*

      I have always lived in the country and one of the many great benefits is throwing out our scraps in the yard. That is where all of our food scraps have always gone. They are always gone by the next morning. Birds, foxes, coyotes, you name it.

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  16. Crystal Claire*

    Point out to your coworkers and boss that rotting food and fruit flies are still a health hazard and say if they want a compost bucket, they are responsible for their own as the communal one has not been going well. If it continues to be a problem, then there may have to be a ban on compost buckets due to health and safety.

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  17. CityMouse*

    I compost and leaving the bucket for weeks? Absolutely not. This is just a basic consequence. If they want to compost their lunches they can just pack out their food scraps. That’s what I do.

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    1. boof*

      Yes I compost for my garden too – there is an INTENTIONALLY SMALL bucket (an old large coffee container) on the counter that goes out almost daily / several times a week. The actual compost is in a 3 bay exposed bin well away from the house/structures. It makes great compost for the garden! It attracts lots of wildlife :P It is about 100ft walk. Fortunately several members of our household like gardening, like walking around, and like keeping things tidy, or it wouldn’t be a viable project at all.

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      1. boof*

        (also, there’s so much complicated compost stuff out there but… it really doesn’t have to be. you really can just pile anything that was food and/or once alive and let it sit for a year and it will break down – I throw meat etc etc in my compost, I don’t turn it, I put weeds in it when I have that and I put kitchen scraps in it when I have that. But I cannot stress enough that it is not up against the house/structures and I’m sure local critters rummage through it regularly. It also grew a bunch of excellent squash last year so IDK works for me I have a big yard).

        Reply ↓
  18. Keymaster of Gozer (She/Her)*

    Ha! This is timely. We just got rid of the food recycling bin at work for exactly the same reason! Rotting food is a smell that permeates more than you’d think. No word of a lie the place smelt like my university accommodation.

    People can get weird about recycling (see the letter here from someone angry that they’d been sorting stuff out of the bin and putting it out on show for some details).

    We got of course the professional email that it had been removed due to sanitary concerns but additionally one of the managers pointed out that he couldn’t do interviews in the nearby meeting rooms because they smelt like Eau De Rotting Food Bin.

    Reply ↓
    1. Hlao-roo*

      one of the managers pointed out that he couldn’t do interviews in the nearby meeting rooms because they smelt like Eau De Rotting Food Bin

      That was also a letter here in the past! See “I went on a job interview and the office was filthy” from April 29, 2019 (which features compost bins and flies).

      Reply ↓
      1. Resentful Oreos*

        Unless we are in a 2010 environment where offices situated on top of garbage dumps had 500 applicants, having a “filthy” office is going to be a big turnoff to most interviewees.

        And if they are holding meetings with clients, that’s even worse.

        Reply ↓
        1. Carol the happy*

          It’s also surprising how quickly the noses in the office get to where they can’t detect anything rotten in the breakroom.

          We were “gifted” a fridge from another office when Covid was about 6 months in- they assured us it was completely clean, so my boss helped carry it in.

          It wasn’t completely clean. It went on the back patio with crumpled newspaper and bowls of vinegar.
          In August.
          After about 2 weeks, “Brad” came in and asked which room the fridge was in- because it was gone. The next Monday, we saw it out by the dumpster by the sewing machine repair center.

          Reply ↓
          1. Resentful Oreos*

            I live in a condo complex, which means that any appliances coming or going have to be carried down a hallway to the elevator. I’ve been witness to a couple of very old and not so clean fridges leaving a trail of scent down the hallway. Vinegar wasn’t going to cut it. I am sure the former owners of the fridges couldn’t smell a thing because you do get nose-blind.

            Reply ↓
    2. Sara without an H*

      …one of the managers pointed out that he couldn’t do interviews in the nearby meeting rooms because they smelt like Eau De Rotting Food Bin.

      And where is the manager in this post??? I have, with my own two hands (encased in blue nitrile gloves), cleaned out a staff room fridge which contained things that would have frightened Dr. Frankenstein. I made it pellucidly clear to everybody in the building that this was an unacceptable situation and that, going forward, anything not labeled with someone’s name would be tossed every Friday before closing. Great Cthulhu alone knows what I would have done if confronted with a so-called composting bucket full of rotten garbage and flies.

      Oh, and btw — I know a number of proud organic gardeners who would be horrified by this situation.

      Reply ↓
  19. A Lab Rabbit*

    Honestly, I would not have dumped the bucket. I would have set in on the desk of the person who installed it.

    Rotting food and insect vermin could be a health-code violation, as well.

    Reply ↓
    2. Ohio Duck*

      Nooooo that would cause so much drama. The element of personal attack would be much worse than just throwing the thing away.

      Reply ↓
      1. Peanut Hamper*

        Nope. The drama was already there with a bucket of rotting garbage under the sink.

        This has nothing to do with a personal attack. This is very much a case of “You wanted it, so you need to be responsible for it.”

        Reply ↓
        1. Roland*

          I mean it’s nice that’s how you would claim it was meant but 99% of people on the receiving end would see it as a personal attack.

          Reply ↓
          1. StarTrek Nutcase*

            Yeah, cause gawd forbid a person be held responsible for their own actions. Most of us have sat through meetings addressing a problem (timekeeping, lateness, proselytizing, etc) where only 3 out of the 30 attendees are offenders, but management doesn’t want to just address the 3 privately. (And even more infuriating, those 3 in the meeting are totally oblivious.)

            Reply ↓
        2. Ohio Duck*

          Fun to fantasize about on the internet, but that is absolutely not how it would go over in a real life office.

          Reply ↓
  20. A Book about Metals*

    Seems pretty simple – if they want to compost, they need to empty the bucket. I don’t understand why that’s difficult

    Reply ↓
    1. A Lab Rabbit*

      Because human beings are pretty good at initiating things and are pretty sucky at following through.

      Just look at infrastructure. We get excited about building a new bridge, but not excited about maintaining it. This seems to be a pattern of human nature.

      Reply ↓
    2. juliebulie*

      It sounds as though they don’t really know what they’re doing, and nobody knows what to do with the rotting food scraps, so nobody does anything until some nice person throws it out, and then they complain.

      If they want a third shot at composting (not recommended), they need to have a specific plan for the compost. “Somebody will take it out” is not a plan, because Somebody is usually Nobody.

      Reply ↓
    3. boof*

      Any group project without individual responsibility is going to fail at the unpleasant parts, which is… regularly carting around a bunch of discarded food scraps.
      The only way this would work is if the company hired a service to do it.
      If the people trying this were so dedicated as to take it home regularly, it wouldn’t have failed TWICE . That ship has sailed.

      Reply ↓
  21. Juicebox Hero*

    It seems like the train of thought was 1) composting is good for the environment 2) You compost by saving food scraps and stuff 3) DERP. They didn’t seem to have a plan to do anything with the compost once they’d collected it.

    To create compost, you can’t just throw stuff in a bucket and expect it to turn into anything useful. It needs to have the right balance of nutrients inside it for beneficial bacteria grow and generate enough heat to kill off potential pathogens. It needs to be aerated and turned and brought to the correct temperature. Incorrectly composted compost can actually damage plants and spread disease.

    It’s making me think of the pickle maker who was given a jar of mold by her well-meaning coworker. Compost isn’t a pile of moldy food and maggots any more than a fermented pickle is the same as a jar of rotten food.

    Reply ↓
    1. Nicosloanicota*

      To be fair, my home compost bin is more of a waste-diversion effort than a gardening boon; I dump non-smelly foodstuffs in there every few days, and then I do nothing with it ever, and it disappears on its own somehow (it’s one of those rolling ones, but I can’t recall the last time I actually rolled it). I don’t spread it on my plants or anything, but there’s always a bit more space in it for the next load. I do have a long garden and the bin is at the end of it so if it smells a bit, nobody notices. However, that isn’t going to work for an office for a bunch of reasons, and especially because of the increased volume of input.

      Reply ↓
  22. Aggretsuko*

    No composting inside the building, as far as I’m concerned, because this is disgusting.

    If you must compost, at least do it outside if you’re never going to clean it up indoors.

    Reply ↓
  23. BigLawEx*

    This is one of those things that I don’t understand. I think there’s too much waste. I compost and minimize waste in my personal life. Isn’t the general understanding that offices are…wasteful? All the electricity and HVAC and garbage generated. I want it to be better, but it’s not and we live with it no matter how uncomfortable. Or not. I don’t know. I’m in LA part-time and I’ve never seen so much waste from people who claim to care so much about the environment.

    Reply ↓
  24. Alton Brown's Evil Twin*

    1) Get a completely air-tight bucket, and somebody empties it every day.

    2) Unless people are actually **preparing** lunch, a lot of what could get into that bucket won’t be very compostable. Salad scraps covered in dressing = too much fat (ditto rice with curry sauce, etc). Citrus peels are antimicrobial and shouldn’t be added to compost. And so on. I compost pretty religiously at home – what goes in there is mostly vegetable trimmings before I start cooking, not the residue that’s left on my plate.

    Reply ↓
    1. Nicosloanicota*

      That’s why I love that my county started a pick-up composting program, and they explicitly say you can put all sorts of crazy nonsense in there that I would never put in my own little compost bin at home. It’s really great for diverting waste from the city dump. I have no idea what they’re doing with all my weird leftovers and often the containers they came in too (the instructions specifically say “pizza boxes and cardboard food containers okay”). Not sure if they’re incinerating it or what.

      Reply ↓
      1. Juicebox Hero*

        Paper products are compostable. The cellulose they’re made of and even the binders and coatings can be broken down by microbes. It’s a good way to keep greasy pizza boxes and other paper contaminated with food waste out of landfills; they can’t be recycled, but the bacteria will happily digest whatever’s still stuck to them.

        Reply ↓
        1. Nicosloanicota*

          Yeah but I think it only works at industrial scale. I wouldn’t put a greasy pizza box in my little home composting bin. Greases and fats aren’t very good (and would attract stuff too).

          Reply ↓
          1. That Worm Lady*

            I actually LOVE pizza boxes for my home compost! Shredded up and mixed with other stuff, they make great worm bedding, especially since they can’t go in the municipal recycling stream, and they keep the bin nice and moist compared with newsprint or something else. There’s grease, but usually only on a small part of the box and the rest is pretty clean so it’s diluted (maybe it helps that we always only get veg pizzas). Those and paper egg cartons are definitely my fav for bedding.

            Reply ↓
          2. Freya*

            I wouldn’t put a pizza box in my compost bins either, but I also have videos of my mastiff scraping the grease off with his teeth, and nothing goes in there that he might be tempted to chew the lid off (again!) to get at…

            Reply ↓
        2. Clisby*

          Yeah, every once in awhile I go on a paper-shredding frenzy, and I put all the shreds on our garden patch. I wet them down with the hose to minimize them blowing away, and they eventually become one with the garden.

          Reply ↓
      2. Beany*

        We’re participating in something similar. It makes our regular trash much less smelly, and I *assume* the people picking the composted material up every week are doing the Right Thing with it …

        That said, it’s currently free to us (after a small initial outlay for the bin). But I heard rumors that it’ll have to switch to a paid service, and that the rate might be something like $20/month — comparable to our current trash/recycling fee. In which case, we might have to stop.

        Reply ↓
        1. Freya*

          Our city’s Food Organics and Garden Organics program (FOGO) sends the stuff to the people with the contract to deal with the green waste at the tip – you can drop off whatever garden waste doesn’t fit in your green bin or kitchen caddy directly at the tip for free (within reason – if it’s branches over 2m long, for instance, they’ll class it as oversize and make you pay for them to take it), and they process it and compost it and produce garden landscaping supplies that you can purchase (their vege mix compost, for example, is AU$65 per cubic metre)

          Reply ↓
      3. Gumby*

        There’s a chance that they are putting it right into the same landfill as the trash. A city around here got caught doing that – apparently they had already paid for a certain amount of landfill volume and it would cost more to do something else w/ the compost (not to mention that people are *terrible* at following instructions regarding what can go in which bin and so sorting/checking of some type is necessary) so it was all going to the same place.

        Reply ↓
        1. Not that other person you didn't like*

          Yes, our city collects everyone’s yard and kitchen waste for free (including meat and bones and all kinds of things that you don’t typically compost at home), commercial composts it, and sells the resulting compost in bags to businesses and the public to fund the system. It’s genius.

          Reply ↓
          1. I AM a Lawyer*

            Same here. It’s state law in my state now since a couple of years ago, and they tell us we have to put all food waste in there and not to put it in the trash. So, it all goes in, even meat and bones (as well as used napkins, paper towels, pizza boxes, non-coated paper plates, coffee filters/grounds, and tea bags).

            Reply ↓
        3. Dinwar*

          It’s a real problem with mulch, too. If you pile mulch too high it becomes compost, which ruins its value for mulch after a surprisingly short time. And makes handling it somewhat uncomfortable. NOT my favorite job!

          Reply ↓
      5. bamcheeks*

        You actually need lots of “brown waste” like cardboard and paper to make compost work! All green, fresh stuff doesn’t break down as well in a closed system, apparently— it just goes slimey and wet. Cardboard and other dry, post-processed organic matter balances it out.

        Reply ↓
      6. amylynn*

        I don’t have the citation but Domino’s Pizza got so feed up with customers being told that their boxes weren’t recycleable that they actually did the research and discovered that for a pizza box to be unrecycleable the pizza would have to be so greasy as to be inedible.

        Municipal composting is usually industrial composting – large-scale, very hot and very fast. So it can handle a lot of stuff that would not break down in a home system or would attract vermin.

        Reply ↓
        1. Wayward Sun*

          The places that accept waste cardboard grade loads by how much of it seems like garbage instead of clean paper. Pizza boxes probably fall in the “garbage” category and lower the value of the load.

          Reply ↓
    2. That Worm Lady*

      That is a very good point against vermicomposting in this context versus some kind of collection service or hot compost pile— worms can be a lot more sensitive to … I guess we’d call it wish-composting? It seems a bridge too far to expect someone to fish out those chicken wing bones that Fergus tossed in, because the worms can’t process those…

      I was imagining it’d mostly be a bunch of banana peels, apple cores, orange peels, etc though. Like you said, the latter can be iffy with worms (I put some in mine, but it requires moderation), but other fruit remains should be fine. But still.

      Reply ↓
    3. judyjudyjudy*

      Ok, but who is going to empty it every day? Based on past performance, the bucket will not be emptied and nothing will change except that the bucket will have a lid, which I suppose is an improvement.

      Reply ↓
  25. Samwise*

    A nasty compost bin is likely an OSHA violation.

    1910.22(a)
    Surface conditions. The employer must ensure:
    1910.22(a)(1)
    All places of employment, passageways, storerooms, service rooms, and walking-working surfaces are kept in a clean, orderly, and sanitary condition.

    Reply ↓
  26. freda fetida*

    Worms are not the answer here and please do not try. It would be carnage.
    A waste bucket with flies and mold or fermentation would kill most compost worms. They would do their best to escape first … all over your kitchen. Be kind.

    Buy a compost machine designed for inside use or take the compost outside.

    Reply ↓
  27. Seeking Second Childhood*

    I had a worm bin in my home for years — but I wouldn’t consider it at work because it’s a mini ecosystem that can go wrong. Just add meat or fish or thorny roses or fruit with fly eggs, or just plain too much too fast.

    I’ve switched to a small compost bucket in my freezer– and I wouldn’t trust that in an office either!

    Reply ↓
  28. Observer*

    telling the other colleague it wasn’t okay to get rid of it and it needed to be a group decision

    Nope. *Allowing* that bucket in should have been a group decision. No needs needs group buy-in to remove an objective health hazard.

    Reply ↓
  29. Lynn Mackenzie*

    Each person could bring an individual Tupperware type container or small washable plastic bag take their own compost home each day.

    Reply ↓
  30. Mesquito*

    One way to frame it is, it was never a compost bucket. Calling it one makes people feel like they’re not wasting food – but it’s a food trash bucket. Food trash can be rescued from the waste stream for compost, but just putting it a food trash bucket is not eliminating waste. It’s just using more cans for your trash.

    Reply ↓
  31. boof*

    Yeah no – once flora/fauna move in, unilateral decisions are allowed. There’s no group consensus on “so, just how many flies are ok” etc etc – the only thing is if it was some fancy/expensive contraption then the person who bought it ought to be able to take it back (and have a very short timeline to do so).
    if folks are so passionate about composting they can take their compost home themselves, in their own storage devices, and anything gross found on worksite gets immediately thrown out.

    Reply ↓
  32. HonorBox*

    This seems like a situation where “your rights end when the rights of others begin” applies. The rights of the composting coworkers to have the bin and to be consulted about the disposal of said bin ended the minute there were flies and smells that impacted others. Everyone has a right to a workplace that is as healthy as possible, and when you mix rotting food smells and flies into the mix, that’s not a healthy workplace.

    Reply ↓
    1. Observer*

      his seems like a situation where “your rights end when the rights of others begin” applies.

      I believe that the saying goes “Your right to swing your fist ends before the tip of my nose.” It seems like a pretty close match for this situation.

      Reply ↓
      1. HonorBox*

        I’ve heard that version too. I was thinking less violently, but depending on the smell, I could be willing to change my mind.

        Reply ↓
        1. Hlao-roo*

          “Your rights to compost in the office end when the smell reaches my nose” and “your rights to compost in the office end when the fruit flies reach my cubicle” both seem like apt reworking for this situation.

          Reply ↓
          1. Seeking Second Childhood*

            I would say the right to compose ends before the break room smells and before the fruit flies hatch.

            I have strong opinions about this apparently LOL.

            Reply ↓
  33. Essentially Cheesy*

    These people must know my coworkers. There has to be a network.

    Someone left a partially emptied mayonnaise container out on the lunch room tables. It’s been there a week. This article helped me get the nerve to toss it. Week old room temperature mayonnaise gives me nightmares.

    Reply ↓
  34. Massive Dynamic*

    In California, it’s technically the law that businesses and homes must compost. Our work does this, with a compost bin in the break room. It never gets gross or smelly though because the janitorial staff empties it regularly for us like they do the trash and recycling bins. If we had what LW is going through, I too would throw it out. That’s nasty.

    Reply ↓
    1. Nightengale*

      Does this legislation apply to apartments? I would love to compost but I live in an apartment in a city and don’t drive. Or do apartments have a compost bin for pickup same as they currently have trash and recycling bins? As it is, my workplace – a giant hospital – doesn’t do paper or cardboard recycling so I bring home what I can on the bus. . .

      Reply ↓
      1. Hlao-roo*

        It looks like yes, this also applies to people in apartments. I found this information from the State of California website:

        Multifamily complexes of five units or more are required to either:
        1. To subscribe to and participate in their jurisdiction’s organics curbside collection service OR
        2. To self-haul organic waste to a specified composting facility, community composting program, or other collection activity or program.

        The following activities would be conducted by the multifamily complex property owner or the manager:
        – Multifamily complexes are required to provide organic waste collection services for:
        Employees
        Tenants
        – They must supply and allow access to an adequate number, size, and location of containers with the correct labels or container colors.
        – They must also
        1. Annually educate employees and tenants on how to properly sort organic waste into the correct bins, AND
        2. Provide information to new tenants within 14 days of occupation of the premises.

        I’ll link in a reply.

        Reply ↓
      2. Jinni*

        In theory, sanitation services were supposed to supply buckets. I never saw it happen. I’ve also not known of any landlords providing anything beyond the original green bin. I know about one person who follows this (as a renter) because of the problems in the post. Turns out good neighbor relationships and pestilence don’t mix.

        Reply ↓
      3. That Worm Lady*

        The other reply is accurate but yes! In our city (it’s up to each locality to decide how to implement it) there are now food waste bins in the common dumpster area with the trash and recyclables. Like in the letter though, compliance is … difficult to enforce, and our neighbors are bad at it (also so bad at like, frigging recycling, sigh). Eventually the state might start fining cities with poor enough compliance but it’s a start anyway. They also are encouraging waste diversion through things like establishing compost hubs (our community garden started one last year; they give buckets to families who then bring in food scraps for hot composting).

        You can do vermicomposting on your own in an apartment though, especially if you have a small outdoor space or a garage.

        I think if this letter was from CA, whatever janitorial service they have would be required to implement that into their waste stream, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

        Reply ↓
    2. Wayward Sun*

      Our city bypasses this by claiming they separate the compostables from the garbage at their facility. I do not believe this for a second.

      Reply ↓
      1. BigLawEx*

        I didn’t believe it either until I saw a video of it some 20 years ago on the local news… Honestly, it seemed like the worst job in the city.

        Reply ↓
  35. MillingMyMill*

    Look into getting a Mill. It is essentially a garbage can but for food scraps. It dehydrates the scraps and they get shipped back to Mill to be processed for chicken food or composting. Doesn’t smell, no rotting food.

    I am not associated with them in anyway. I just have one and it works great.

    Reply ↓
    3. RagingADHD*

      Bear in mind that the Mill and similar food recyclers do not produce actual compost that you can use directly in a garden. They produce dehydrated food scraps that can then be added to compost to finish decomposing. And some of the brands smell nearly as much as an open bin.

      You could keep the grounds for your garden or your municipal organic pickup program. But if you don’t already have a suitable compost bin, you’ll want to send them off somewhere to avoid attracting vermin.

      Reply ↓
  36. Zona the Great*

    I feel like the title of this question could be, “My co-workers are mad that we threw their trash in the trash.”

    Reply ↓
    1. A Lab Rabbit*

      Seriously.

      This reminds me of an Xzibit meme: “Yo dawg, I heard you like trash, so I put your trash in the trash so you have even more trash.”

      Reply ↓
  37. Lorax*

    Some jurisdictions in the US have mandatory composting. I live in one of them, so this question struck me entirely differently! In areas like mine, it would be the employer’s responsibility (or building ownership / building phys plant) to maintain adequate composting facilities the same as trash and recycling. The issue isn’t composting at work, but that it needs to be done professionally and responsibly, and not just the pet project of individual employees.

    Reply ↓
    1. That Coworker's Coworker*

      Yes, I was coming here to say the same thing. I think this works better at my company exactly because it’s a state law (we can be fined for not composting) so management needs to assign it like any other task, evaluate whether it’s working, and address it with the appropriate personnel if it isn’t.
      It seems like the OP’s problem is that it’s being treated like an optional volunteer task by those doing it, and as an annoying non-necessity by those throwing away the receptacle. The company needs to care about it and manage it, or it’s not going to work.

      Reply ↓
      2. judyjudyjudy*

        And what if the company is not obligated? What is your solution then? Mine would be the side with the person who threw it out, as disappointing as that is for the composters.

        Reply ↓
    2. Three Flowers*

      I also live in a mandatory-compost state, and we have compost receptacles all over the place, with clear signage about what can go in them. It works only because emptying them is part of the custodial service’s job. Otherwise it would be a total clusterf.

      Reply ↓
    3. Always Tired*

      Same! The office manager empties our bin midweek, then the cleaners do it again on Fridays, and the big bin goes to the curb for pickup on Mondays.

      Reply ↓
    4. Lorax*

      While it sounds like these folks aren’t in a jurisdiction with mandatory composting, I did want to point out that that’s a thing, since it’s not unheard of for folks who live in areas where it’s mandatory to be unaware of that fact. So first you’d want to check to make sure you’re complying with local law. Consider that my PSA for the day! But I also wanted to point this out because composting at work or in public places generally is not an unusual thing, so while these folks are doing it poorly, they’re not crazy for attempting it. Given that composting is really beneficial, it could be worth asking the employer in this case (or building management) if they have a more “official” way to do this.

      Reply ↓
      1. judyjudyjudy*

        And if it’s not a legal obligation? Not one company I’ve ever worked for did something beneficial for earth without the law requiring it. I guess LW you could encourage your coworkers to ask.

        Reply ↓
    5. Roland*

      Yeah, I totally understand that this isn’t the case here and why OP and co are disgusted, that’s fair. But the people acting like no workplace could ever have compost bc ew are making me lol.

      Reply ↓
  38. Lisa Large*

    The composters can follow the ‘trek out what you trek in’ policy and take their compostables back to their own homes to dispose of properly. Rotting food/flies/maggots are a health hazard. At the workplace, this issue can be construed as a liability to employees.

    Reply ↓
  40. L_Rons_Cupboard*

    I actually wonder if these people don’t fully understand that composting isn’t just throwing the garbage into a bucket and letting it sit there to break down. Like, more action has to happen after you toss the banana peel. It doesn’t magically become dirt!

    Reply ↓
  41. Too many dogs*

    I have a worm farm. At home. Like many others, my scraps live in the fridge, to avoid all the stuff the people were complaining about. To those who wanted the compost bin under the sink, please note: rodents love warm, smelly compost. Even compost you think you’ve hidden under the sink, in a building with elevators, and automatic doors, and high security. Mice can work around that.
    And mice can fit through any hole small enough to fit their little skulls through; they just “fold” their little skeletons up and come on in.

    Reply ↓
  42. Cat Lady in the Mountains*

    I worked at a place where it made total sense for us to have an office compost bin (akin to the community garden example someone mentioned). It required having a dedicated staff person who had it in their job description to maintain the composting service, sought coverage when they were on vacation, educated staff on what could go in, etc. And even with the existence of a job description that included all that, at one point we had a low performing employee in that role who had to be put on a PIP specifically because of a lack of compost management, which then involved a need to let them fail for several weeks before they could be fired, which was horrible.

    I cannot imagine an organically-managed compost bin ever working.

    Reply ↓
  43. Dinwar*

    We tried a compost bucket in our office. We’re an environmental firm, figured it was worth a shot.

    Trouble is, everyone’s busy. Almost by definition in a business. So the result was that no one did anything with the bucket. Fortunately we had an air-tight lid on ours, so there was no smell or insects, but after a few weeks we gave up. We weren’t generating compostable waste at sufficient volumes to justify it, either.

    If an environmental company has trouble maintaining such a system, I have serious misgivings about anyone else doing so.

    At home we compost, by which I mean, we put in a composting bin and it’s become a buffet for local herbivores. Which is fine, either way it keeps the scraps out of the landfill, and there aren’t THAT many rabbits and squirrels in the area.

    Reply ↓
  45. Three Flowers*

    Under the sink is a terrible place for anything you want dealt with, especially anything with food. Mice love cabinets. Get a one-gallon compost bucket with an odor filter and keep it on the counter where the people responsible will remember it exists.

    Better yet, have them keep it by their desk. I bet that won’t last long.

    Reply ↓
  46. Ann O'Nemity*

    If the company isn’t paying for professional composting services to take care of this, it’s going to be a smelly tragedy of the commons.

    My employer pays our trash service extra to include composting. It’s picked up twice a week and the trash company provides special composting bins that reduce odor.

    Reply ↓
  47. Always Tired*

    Man, I would not have thought this a contentious issue, but I live in a big city where compost is picked up same as our trash and recycling, and we are required to compost and can get fined for too much mixed waste. We have a compost bin on the counter next to the sink, it is lined with compostable bags, and has a lid that seals. We take it out to the wheelie bin in the garage on Wednesday, and the cleaners do it again on Friday, and that gets emptied on Monday morning. And by “we” I mean the office manager or me as her backup. Sometimes someone puts something foul in there and it goes out to the big bin sooner (looking at the person who had fish curry and dumped some in the bin.)

    Also, fun fact of the day: pizza boxes should go in the compost, not the recycling. The grease can damage the machines used to recycle paper, and the cardboard breaks down just fine in industrial composting facilities. As do bones.

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  48. Pizza Rat*

    Rotting food attracts pests, which leads to all kinds of problems, up to and including expensive exterminators. Composting is great. Shared activities can be great. This is not a place where they overlap.

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  49. I'm just here for the cats!!*

    a compost bucket in a shared office kitchen???? YUCK!
    If people want to compost their lunch leftovers, they can put it in a container and take it home to compost!

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  50. CubeFarmer*

    Where is your office’s leadership on this.

    “Smelly trash is inappropriate, especially in an office setting.” End of discussion. Yikes.

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  51. AVP*

    If they want to keep it so badly, tell them to pitch in and buy one of those tabletop, enclosed self-composters instead. They work great! And they’re sealed off so they don’t smell or attract bugs. If they don’t care about this enough to buy one…tough!

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  52. Retired Vulcan Raises 1 Grey Eyebrow*

    FinalJob had 2 medium-sized bins in each kitchen area, one for fruit & veg remnants, the other for everything else. Both were emptied by the janitors every few days, which was sufficient to avoid smells or overflow.
    Pretty normal here (DE) for organisations with any claim to trying to be being green.

    However, I suspect this system would not have worked if the people using the kitchen had to empty bins. It needs a professional service.

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  53. Strive to Excel*

    The oddest thing about this to me is that of all the waste types offices generate, food scraps seem like they’d be the smallest proportion. The only food scraps I can think of that I generate on the regular while eating are fruit cores and peels. Maybe some coffee grounds or tea bags. Most of my food scrap production happens when I’m at home *preparing* the food, not when I’m in the office eating it. So what compost are they generating, anyways?

    Reply ↓
    1. RagingADHD*

      We have an employee who occasionally brings in a 5 gallon bucket to gather compost. We have a drip coffee maker rather than pods, and prior to our mandatory return to office order, folks made between 3-6 pots of coffee a day to serve the floor, so it’s mostly coffee grounds and filters. Some fruit peels.

      We have between 40-50 people on the floor, and before RTO, it took about 3 weeks to fill the bucket. She hasn’t brought it in since RTO, but I expect it would go a lot quicker now.

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  54. I AM a Lawyer*

    Our compost bucket at home needs to be emptied multiple times a day or we get ants. Twice a week even isn’t enough.

    Reply ↓
    1. Ann O'Nemity*

      You may want to look into a different type of bin. We used to have a counter bin with a sealed lid and never got bugs, but I hated the smell when I opened it. Now we put it in the freezer. No bugs, no smell.

      Reading this thread made me realize that my community is actually pretty good about composting! I hadn’t thought too much about it before, but composting is really widespread here.

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      1. I AM a Lawyer*

        Thanks for the tip! We just basically take it out after every meal at this point.

        I live in a very blue state that mandated every county require that we put all food waste (plus other stuff) in the organics bin. I am so glad I live here because, before that, we were just putting it in the trash.

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  55. AnneCordelia*

    Ugh, I’ve been through just this kind of virtue signaling while spending years organizing the coffee hour at church. People would just shove random bits of leftover food (unwrapped, uncovered, on a paper plate) in the refrigerator because “they didn’t want it to be wasted” and “the church staff could eat it during the week.” Um, no, the church staff doesn’t want to eat your gross dried-out half-slices of cheese, and browning apple slices on a plate with two squishy grapes and one lone baby carrot. And the leftover Triscuits won’t still be “good for next week’s coffee hour” if you just stick them on a shelf in their open basket. I got really fed up with people who wanted to “feel good” without doing the WORK that this involves. Take the food home yourself to use during the week, find someone else who wants it, or at least wrap/process it properly. Oh, no, that would require actually locating ziploc bags, plastic wrap, etc. Plus even if you do carefully wrap things, the burden should be on you to check back next week and make sure your leftovers did get eaten and toss them if they didn’t. The church office staff is not your magic guilt-relieving garbage disposal.

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    1. Sara without an H*

      The church office staff is not your magic guilt-relieving garbage disposal.

      This. I suspect that many of the Earnest Composters in this post don’t actually understand what composting involves and simply want the warm feeling that comes with Doing the Right Thing.

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  56. iglwif*

    I don’t even understand what’s going on here. How was the garbage and recycling getting emptied, but not the compost? Why is composting a passion project? Where is the organic waste going to go now?

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    1. RussianInTexas*

      If there is no mandatory composting laws, I would presume the cleaning people are not paid to empty “non regulation” receptacles.

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    2. RagingADHD*

      Municipal composting is not widely available in the US – only about one-third of the population lives in areas with public composting programs, which are concentrated in large cities. About half of those public programs are drop-off only, so someone would have to be tasked with driving the compost to the facility.

      About another third of the population is served by private composting services, but again, about half of those are drop-off only.

      The final third has no access to group composting programs at all, so it’s an individual or small scale community effort. Hence the “passion project.”

      Presumably the LW works in an area without a municipal pick-up program, so there would be nowhere for the company to put organic waste in the ordinary course. Therefore organic waste goes in the regular trash.

      Employees who want to separate out organic waste and compost it would need to deal with it on their own, or possibly advocate for the company to subscribe to a private service – but someone would still need to execute it. That’s either going to fall to employees who do not normally handle trash, or require renegotiating the contract with their janitorial service.

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      1. That Worm Lady*

        Honestly I’m surprised to hear it’s that high— 1/3 to 2/3 of the US population has access depending if you’re willing/able to drive? Can I ask what your source is? (California has 1/10 the population and we’ve only fairly recently worked to implement organics diversion, although yard waste collection has been a thing for longer, I think). Just curious!

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        1. RagingADHD*

          Huge swaths of the geographic US has no access, but I think perhaps you may be underestimating the population density of large cities compared to the rest of the land mass.

          NYC has a composting mandate now, Chicago has a non-mandatory dropoff program, Houston has drop-off, LA, Phoenix, San Antonio and San Diego all have curbside pickup, Philadelphia has a lot of private options, etc. And of course, California’s statewide 2022 food scrap separation mandate means that 10% of the US now has access, so that’s a big chunk right there.

          The source for my original comment was this pie chart: https://sustainablepackaging.org/our-work/public-resources/mapping-urban-access-to-composting-programs/

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    3. Dahlia*

      I don’t think most standard office cleaning contracts include “cleaning a random bucket of rotting food scraps under the sink”.

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      1. iglwif*

        No but standard office cleaning contracts (where I live and work) have long included “empty the [covered] compost bucket into the green bin at the same time as one empties the wastebaskets and recycling bins into their respective receptacles”.

        I see in someone else’s comment that municipal composting is not as widespread in the US as it is here in Canada (at least in cities) so I think I have been just completely misunderstanding this whole situation.

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        1. Dahlia*

          But this isn’t a covered compost bucket, and there’s pretty clearly not a composting program, when the plan was for the people who wanted to the bucket to empty it.

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  57. Sorry to be that person*

    Helpful hint: keep the compost in the freezer instead of under the sink and it won’t rot.

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    1. blue rose*

      The office that neglects to empty the compost bucket beneath the sink will also neglect to empty the compost hoarded in the freezer. Perhaps this would work for you, but in LW’s workplace, it would only make the freezer unusable. None of the food scraps would ever become compost, they’d just sit in the freezer until Compost-gate II.

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    2. judyjudyjudy*

      You’ll just get a freezer full of compost scraps. It’s only a helpful hint if people can follow through.

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    3. The Kulprit*

      One of my colleagues had an 8in brick of a sticky rice dish, wrapped in banana leaves for Lunar New Year. Stuck it in the freezer and forgot about it for 2 years. On top of the one from a previous year. I left that job 3 years ago, and I’d lay real money that they’re still there.

      If a plague of flies and odor of rot didn’t spur them to empty it regularly, being able to remove those elements completely probably won’t go any better. Best case: they forget it entirely and don’t put anything in the pile at all.

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  58. The Kulprit*

    This was a completely predictable outcome. Office fridges end up full of forgotten and rotting things by accident, and the suggestion of freezer compost only kicks the can down the road. The person who said enough and tossed the decomposing mess is a hero and should be rewarded.

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  59. Part time lab tech*

    As a witness to the composting habits of three procrastinators plus a reluctant one, you did the right thing.
    I think a pair of bokashi bins is the option, but only if it’s on a visible bench or shelf.
    Current set up issues:
    1.Under the bench is out of sight out of mind.
    2. The bin is too big for the volume of waste. They need a smaller bin that fills up in 3 or 4 days to force them to empty it twice a week. (My sister has 2 4 Litre containers for compost for two people. She also doesn’t like emptying the bin but my Dad has no sense of smell so chicken doesn’t work with him. There have been pupating flies hatching on at least two occasions when I visited. I have one 2 litre for 4 people and just had my first case of maggots because I’d forgotten it in an empty house for 5 days. I just chucked the whole thing.)

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  60. N C Kiddle*

    Sounds like they like the idea of composting but nobody wants to actually take responsibility for it. Which I can sympathise with, but rather than inflicting the smell of their failure on the whole office, they need to face the fact that it just isn’t workable.

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  61. Marshmallow*

    It’s interesting that the person added it without it being a group decision or vote just because they and a couple people wanted it… then when it became gross thought it needed to be a group decision to get rid of it. Sure, the nice thing to do would’ve been to give a warning “if this doesn’t start getting emptied on Wednesdays and Fridays, it’s going away. There will not be anymore warnings.” And then follow thru but they had something that is not unreasonable to get rid of… fruit fly attracting garbage… and they didn’t take care of it so now it’s gone. Tough cookies.

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  62. Bill and Heather's Excellent Adventure*

    Alison is much nicer than me. These people had two chances to show they can be responsible over the compost bin and they’ve wasted both of them. They do not deserve a third chance.

    (Why is this stored inside in the first place? Compost should be outside if at all possible!)

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  63. She of Many Hats*

    Many office buildings will also ban compost bins that they do not control due to healthy & safety issues since a poorly managed one will attract pests & rodents that are expensive or difficult to eradicate. If the composters want a bin, they should work with the building management to develop a plan to include composting in the building’s waste & recycling plan.

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  64. The Unfrazzled Project Manager*

    Years ago I worked for a company where the janitors emptied the fridges at 5:15pm every Friday and cleaned them. Anything left in the fridge went straight in the trash. It did not matter if it was a takeout container or vintage Pyrex. 5:15? Welcome to garbagetown! This was a well established and enforced rule, and our janitors were older, curmudgeonly take no shit (but beloved!) guys. I’m trying to image their reaction to this bullshit compost disease heap. LMAO.

    Reply ↓

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