Composting with seatbelts

Compost bins are essential to any garden. I had long ago decided I was putting in a three bin compost system, but I had been hesitating for a while, wondering what I should make it out of. Wood was fine, but boring. Brick? Too time consuming. I wandered over to Buffalo ReUse and asked Peter, the assistant store manager, what ReUse had a lot of that they needed to use up. Peter jokingly suggested the enormous box of seatbelts that someone had donated. It was all in jest, but then I thought, "why not??"

After a few trial and error sessions, I figured out how I could use the seatbelts in my compost bin design. The majority of my compost bin is woven seatbelts...The outer sides, the back (seatbelts woven into a chainlink fence), and the front doors are all made out of seatbelts. The middle dividers are made out of tree trunks that we cut out of my backyard and sunk into the ground. Talk about material reuse! The best part was that it took less than a day to create, is functional, and looks super cool! If you'd like to learn how I made my compost bin, come and talk to me about it at the next workshop (Glass Block Windows, Tuesday June 9th at 6pm).

A lot of progress has been made in and around the house, so be sure to come and check it out! The garden is growing rapidly (I need to harvest the lettuce) and the inside rooms are being tranformed! All with the help of a group of awesome City Honors kids and some wonderful volunteers. An especially big thank you to Vince and to the kids who worked on the compost bin; it looks amazing.

Hope to see you all at a future workshop...

Fondly,
Megan