SCGH's Director of Sustainability, Jennifer Schwab, recently did an interview with Gwendolyn Bounds from the Wall Street Journal.

"Composting isn't Green 101," says Jennifer Schwab, director of sustainability for the Sierra Club's Green Home Web site, which instructs visitors on composting. She admits, too: "When bugs and stuff get on it, as much as I'm a green person, I get disgusted by that."

However, innovations in the compost-bin marketplace, along with the new laws, are fueling interest in composting. For instance, the NatureMill Automatic Composter—one of four units I've been testing—is a small plug-in device that heats waste to speed decomposition (hence my 14-day turnaround) and automatically mixes everything so you don't have to. Since it's designed to be housed indoors, it can save users the step of collecting scraps in pails that then must be carried out to a compost bin. The newest model launching this month borrows a page from Apple's iPod and comes in eight colors; it also boasts a "heavy-duty" mode to handle large loads after, say, a dinner party....

Tags: Renewable-Energy