Recently we started recycling food waste at home through the City of Bellevue’s food-recycling program. It turned out that most of our kitchen garbage is food waste. Instead of dropping a nearly-full thirteen-gallon garbage bag in the garbage bin each week, we now rarely fill a three-gallon bag. The rest is food waste that goes into the yard waste bin. We use three-gallon biodegradable garbage bags to collect the food waste.

Since we are out on the boat so much, we wanted to apply the same system there. We don’t have space for a three-gallon food-waste container—a one-gallon Rack Sack just fits our galley garbage cupboard. So for food waste, we line a 2-liter plastic bottle, top-removed, with a biodegradable dog waste bag. The bottle fits nicely in our galley garbage cupboard and is convenient to set on the counter to drop food waste in when we’re preparing food or cleaning up. We generally fill one bag each day. The bags are thin but sturdy—we’ve not ripped one yet.

Our food-waste ratio on the boat is similar to home. Rather than fill two one-gallon garbage bags on a typical weekend, we half-fill one, and the rest is food waste. Our marina has a recycling program, but not a yard waste program, so we transport the food waste in a sturdy canvas bag and drop it in the yard waste bin at home.