Used Wooden Pallets or Skids: Making Free, Easy Compost Bins
I’ve seen fancy compost bins that rotate and produce a continuous supply of ready-to-use compost at all times being sold for as much as $500. I don’t know about you, but I could buy an awful lot of compost from the local landscaping store for that much money. If you’re on a budget like me, consider making your compost bins out of readily-available, free wooden pallets. Not only are you helping the environment by not paying to introduce more plastic into the world (although some commercially-made compost bins are made from recycled plastic), but wooden pallets / skids are perfectly suited to the job. They’re all the same size, square, and come prefabricated with ventilated slats that help your compost stay aerated!
Here’s how to make easy compost bins from shipping pallets:
First go to a local factory or warehouse store and ask if you can have three shipping pallets. Don’t pay for them because most places are happy to just get rid of the things. Check the free section of Craigslist and you’ll usually find some.
Some designs call for four pallets – three sides and a bottom – but I find it easier to use the dirt as the bottom. You get less aeration from undernieth, but it’s easier to shovel and allows worms to come up from the ground and help with the composting process.
If you want to build a multi-stage composting system just repeat the steps and get more pallets.
Step 1: Connect the pallets with long screws so that they are all standing up and joined together in a U-shape. See picture.
Step 2: Staple chicken-wire to the outside walls on all three sides. Some instructions call for this to go on the inside walls, but we find the shovel or pitchfork catches the chickenwire this way and tends to make turning the compost more difficult.
Step 3 (optional): Using another wooden pallet or an old screen-door, attach a hinged door to the front of the bin. I find it easiest to just leave it three-sided with the front open.
Step 4: Start adding yard and kitchen waste like raked leaves and vegetable-based kitchen scraps.
You can expand on this and create a multi-tiered system in which you have three such bins. The first bin is for new compost, the second is for semi-composted material and the third is where you collected the finished compost. Just rotate them out, which ensures regular aeration as you turn the compost over to the next bin. The benefit here is that the third bin will almost always be ready for harvesting by the time you need it.
Perhaps it is even better illustrated by the video below:
More composting resources!
Very nice. I invented the same thing. A bungee band makes getting the door open easier. The thing that is missing in our bins is a system for dropping the finished compost (worm castings, etc. out the bottom. In worm farms they use a row of 1/2 or 3/4″ PVC pipes with little slots in between. That lets the air in and lets the compost drop out into some sort of tray. A elaboration for later. Worms would need a cover (piece of plywood held down with a block?)as well. I didn’t have a lid on mine and when the cows were in that pasture they came and ate up most of the nasty weeds I had thrown in the bins.
I did this years ago and they are still going strong. Not being very handy with tools, I just unbended some wire coat hangers and wired the pallets together with those. I have 2, side by side, and use one each year, covering it up with some hay/or leaves in the fall, and then use the compost in the spring and start filling the one I emptied the year before. It works for me!
I have been doing this for about 25 years. I find that I get about 10 years, give or take, before they have to be replaced. I make three bins at a time and tie them all together. Pallettes are easy to come by at least here where I live. There are dozens of places where you can pick them up for free. I constantly collect them and use them for a variety of purposes including cutting them up for fire wood. They burn very hot and make great kindling.
As far as compost bins, I just nail mine together and have found them to work well and the price is right!
I do not put fronts on mine as I turn them every few weeks with a pitch fork.
Works great for me!
I just tie the pallets together with the nylon rope used to hold hay bales together. Every time I open a bale I just hang the rope over the edge of one of the bins. When I turn the piles, I just snip the ropes holding the intervening upright pallet, remove the pallet, turn the pile, then replace the pallet and tie it with a couple more lengths of rope.
I was just wondering what you do about all the rain during the rainy season and early spring do you ever need to cover it
Nope. We just let it rain on the compost. No big deal.
Just a note for urban dwellers — put a pallet underneath, too. Several people in our neighborhood learned the hard way that rats like to live under compost heaps that are on the ground. They don’t actually live in it, of course, but they like to make burrows beneath it, because then their home comes with free heat and insulation.
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