Who Should Compost? An Honest Guide for Six Real Audiences

I get this question a lot from readers, especially from people in apartments who feel guilty for not composting, and from people with gardens who haven't started because they think it's complicated. The honest answer is: composting is not equally useful for everyone. Below is who I actually recommend it for, based on six years of doing it and watching friends and neighbours try it with very different setups.

The short version: composting pays off best for people with a garden, a steady stream of organic waste, and a place to put the finished compost. The further you get from any of those three, the less the math works.

1. You live in an apartment

The case for: less guilt about food waste, smaller bin bags, and if you grow anything indoors (houseplants, herbs, microgreens) you have somewhere to use the finished compost.

The case against: outdoor pile composting is impossible — you need ground space. Your options are:

• Worm bin (vermicomposting) — a small plastic tote with red wigglers, kept under the sink or on a balcony. Handles kitchen scraps. Produces small amounts of very high-quality castings. Doesn't smell if you maintain it.
• Bokashi — a sealed bucket with a starter mix. Pre-ferments scraps (including small amounts of meat/dairy) over 2 weeks. The output isn't finished compost yet — you bury it in a pot or give it to a friend with a garden.

If you have no garden, no houseplants, and no friends with a garden — composting in an apartment is more effort than it's worth. Better to support your municipality's organics collection if it exists.

If you're starting from scratch, the composting for beginners article walks through the basics that apply to either setup.

2. You have a suburban garden

This is where composting starts to make obvious sense. A suburban garden produces grass clippings, leaves, and prunings — all "browns" looking for greens. Your kitchen produces vegetable scraps — all "greens" looking for browns. They balance each other.

What works best at this scale:

• One closed bin (rodent-resistant) for kitchen scraps
• One open pile or second bin for yard waste
• A small compost tea brewer if you want to be precise about the fertilizer side

For the equipment side, the top 3 gardening composting bins article covers the bin options. A compost spreader is worth it once you're producing enough finished compost to top-dress the lawn.

For someone with a small to medium garden, expect to produce about 200–400kg of finished compost per year from a well-maintained system. That's enough to top-dress most of a typical garden every spring.

3. You have a rural or countryside property

This is where I am now. Composting at this scale isn't a hobby — it's just how the property functions. There's too much organic matter coming off the land to dispose of it any other way that makes sense.

The setup I'm building this year:

• A three-bin system near the treeline, downwind of the house, for grass clippings, leaves, kitchen scraps, and the occasional wood chip
• A separate brush pile that decomposes more slowly for things like hedge prunings
• A worm composter (planned for autumn) that takes the high-nitrogen kitchen scraps

At this scale you stop thinking about "composting" as a single activity. It becomes a system: green waste in, finished compost back into the garden, the cycle never really ending. The 7 factors needed for a compost pile covers the technical fundamentals that matter more at this scale than they do in a suburban bin.

The countryside also opens up methods that don't really work in town — like lasagna gardening, where you build a bed in layers of compostable material directly where you want plants to grow eventually.

4. You're running a small farm

Different math entirely. A small farm produces livestock manure, crop residue, and bedding straw at volumes a home gardener doesn't see. The composting question stops being "should I" and becomes "what's the most efficient system for my volume?"

At this level the options are typically:

• Static aerated piles (for high-volume residue)
• Windrow composting (for very high volume, with a turner)
• Anaerobic digestion (if you have the capital — usually a different conversation entirely)

I'm not running a farm. If you are, the article you actually want isn't this one — it's the agricultural extension materials from your local university or government department. They're better than anything a single home gardener can tell you about scale.

5. You're a school, community group, or municipality

At this level composting becomes an educational and systemic activity. The compost itself is a side product; the bigger value is the learning and the waste-reduction.

Practical patterns I've seen work:

• Closed-bin systems with clear "what goes in" signage (school gardens)
• Drop-off composting at a central location (community gardens)
• Municipal organics collection that turns into bulk compost residents can buy back cheaply

If you're thinking about starting something at this level, the question is less "how do I compost" and more "how do I get other people to participate consistently." That's an organizational design problem, not a composting one.

6. You're a landscaper or small business

Composting can be a real input-cost saver here, especially if you're already managing client properties that generate significant green waste. Instead of paying to dispose of it and then paying again for fertilizer, you close the loop on your own.

The economics: a small landscape business in temperate climate can typically produce enough on-site compost from client green waste to offset 20–60% of their soil-amendment purchases. The capital cost is one decent bin system; the labour cost is a few hours a month.

Three cases where composting probably doesn't pay off

Worth being honest about:

1. You produce very little organic waste and have no garden. Single-person household, no plants, no balcony — the volumes are too small to maintain a healthy compost system and you have nowhere to put the output. Municipal collection is the better choice if available.
2. Your climate is too cold for too long. Composting effectively stops at sub-freezing temperatures. If you have six months of winter, your pile is mostly dormant for half the year — still works, but at much lower volumes than the same setup further south.
3. You move every year. Composting rewards continuity. A pile takes months to mature. A worm bin needs steady care. If you're going to move and abandon the system before it produces anything, the math doesn't add up.

The two questions to ask yourself before starting

1. Where will the finished compost go? If you have no plants, no garden, and no friends with a garden — the output has nowhere to live. Without that, you're just making a holding bin for waste, which isn't quite the point.
2. Will you maintain it? A composting system that's started and abandoned is worse than no system at all — it attracts pests, smells, and discourages the next attempt. Honest answer first; then choose the system size.

If you've read this far and the answer to both is yes, your next read is probably what do you need to start a compost bin — that gets you from "I want to do this" to "I've ordered the right things." From there, the step-by-step home composting guide covers the actual practice.

The single most common mistake I see new composters make isn't technique — it's overcomplicating it. Start with one bin. Add scraps. Wait. The compost happens whether you're optimising it or not.