Living in a Rental

Have you looked at your LADWP bill lately? If you’re wondering why your DWP bill keeps increasing, it may not have to do with the amount of electricity your using. LADWP religiously increases the trash fees on us. All this bill analyzing has got me thinking,

Holy cow I throw out a lot of trash!

Well all the trash has to go somewhere and DPW has to charge us more and more and more and MORE for it. Where is all this trash going? Why am I paying so much!? These ridiculously high DWP bills really got me questioning my consuming habits. Before calling up and having a ragging fit with the poor helpless LADWP customer service foks, I decided I needed to make some changes first: consume less, recycle more and start composting. Once I’ve eliminated 50% of my waste, I’ll bring up my case with the ‘ol LADWP folks to reduce the fee.

In this post, I focus on composting.

After some initial research, I discovered by composting I can eliminate about 20% or more of what I throw out in the trash. I also discovered that many people have an aversion to composting. Especially us city-folk. Being an L.A. native, I was skeptical at first. I hardly have any yard space, the buildings are close together, compost smells, attracts flies, and even rodents… and bugs… and oh my! But I got the idea in my head and I was determined to make this work.

Sure enough some environmentally conscious city dweller has created a simple and efficient composting method for urban homes and apartments: The Green Cone. This green upside down ice cream cone-looking thing takes all cooked and uncooked food waste and uses the sun to convert it into water. Open lid, dump food, shut lid and let glorious sun do all the work. Virtually NO maintenance! And to top it off, it doesn’t smell or attract bugs around it. You do need a small patch of dirt, $170 bucks and a shovel. Dig a hole, bury half the cone and start composting. Brilliant!

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