You don't need a garden to compost - you need a collection habit and an outlet. From a freezer bag plus a drop-off point to a worm bin that fits a cupboard, here's the small-space version that doesn't smell.
Nora Finch
The habit is the hard part, so solve it first: a container in the freezer - a bag, an old ice-cream tub - takes every scrap with zero smell, zero fruit flies, zero urgency. Frozen scraps keep for months, and freezing actually helps later composting by rupturing cell walls.
If you'd rather collect at room temperature, a small lidded caddy with a charcoal filter on the counter works for two or three days at a time. Line it with newspaper or a compostable bag and empty it on a rhythm. The trick either way is making the scrap container easier to use than the bin it replaces - within arm's reach of the cutting board.
Compost wants a rough balance of 'greens' - fruit and vegetable scraps, coffee grounds, tea leaves, fresh peelings - and 'browns' - shredded cardboard, newspaper, dry leaves, egg cartons, paper towels. Browns are the half everyone forgets: too many wet greens and any system goes slimy and sour; roughly equal volumes, and it smells like forest floor.
The never list for home systems: meat, fish, dairy, oily food, and pet waste - they rot anaerobically, stink, and attract pests. Also skip glossy paper, produce stickers, and anything labeled 'compostable' plastic (industrial facilities handle those; home systems don't). Eggshells yes, crushed; citrus and onion in moderation, and not in worm bins, where the worms vote against them.
The simplest small-space system never composts at home at all: collect in the freezer, then deliver to a municipal food-waste bin, a community garden compost, a farmers'-market collection stall, or a neighbor's bin found through a compost-sharing app or local group. Many cities now run curbside organics - in which case the freezer bag and the collection schedule are the entire system.
This route handles things home systems can't (cooked food, in many municipal programs), costs nothing, and scales to any kitchen. Its only requirement is the weekly delivery habit - pair it with an errand you already do.
A worm bin (vermicomposting) is the classic apartment composter: a ventilated bin of bedding and composting worms under the sink or in a closet, eating scraps and producing rich castings that plants love. Run properly it smells of nothing - feed scraps buried in the bedding, keep it moist as a wrung-out sponge, don't overfeed, and the worms keep pace. Expect a small learning curve and harvestable castings in three to six months.
Bokashi is the other indoor route: an airtight bucket plus bran inoculated with microbes that ferments all food waste - including meat and dairy, which nothing else home-scale takes. It doesn't produce finished compost, though: after two weeks of fermenting, the pickled result still needs burying in soil, a planter, or someone's compost pile to finish. Bokashi pairs perfectly with the drop-off route or a friend with a garden.
Finished compost or worm castings is dark, crumbly, and smells like woodland - and a little goes far. Indoors and on balconies: blend up to a quarter into potting mix when repotting, scratch a centimeter into the surface of containers as a slow feed, or steep a handful in water overnight for a gentle liquid fertilizer. Your houseplants and balcony pots can genuinely absorb a small system's whole output.
If you produce more than your pots can take, it's a gift economy: community gardens, neighbors with allotments, street planters, and local growing groups all accept finished compost gladly. The point of small-space composting isn't self-sufficiency - it's diverting your kitchen's heaviest, wettest waste stream while making something useful. Even the freezer-to-drop-off version does that completely.
Not if the system matches the input: frozen scraps don't smell at all, a balanced worm bin smells like soil, and bokashi smells faintly of pickles only when opened. Bad smells always mean a fixable imbalance - usually too much wet green material and not enough browns or airflow.
Freezer collection eliminates them entirely. For counter caddies and worm bins: empty the caddy every couple of days, always bury fresh scraps under bedding in the bin, and keep a layer of dry shredded paper on top. A flare-up dies out within days once scraps are covered.
Match it to your scrap volume: a 30-40 litre bin with half a kilo of composting worms handles a one-to-two-person kitchen's fruit and veg scraps. Start feeding lightly - underfeeding is recoverable, overfeeding is what causes smells.
Yes - food waste is the heaviest part of household trash and the worst behaving in landfill, where it generates methane. A kilo a week diverted is meaningful over a year, and the habit usually grows once the system stops feeling like a project.
