I grew up in a place where there were no municipal waste pickup. You could either haul your trash to a county dumpster (maybe 20 miles away) or dump it in your backyard. Most people who chose the latter just tied up their trashbags as usual and chucked them out the back door. When I was little, we moved into a new house and had to excavate the backyard because the previous owners had used it as a dump for years, and it was disgusting.

I don't know if there's a right way to do it, but that sure as hell isnt it... even though it's the most common way.

I have a question on a specific type of waste actually: ash from a fireplace. Assuming I'm only burning wood so that the ash is (relatively) non-toxic from a heavy metals point of view, what do I do with all that ash? I've tried searching the web to see if it can be mixed with compost, but there's no real data or info that I could find out there. What do the rest of you do?

metal? not really, unless you want to melt it down in a homemade lil furnace and make something out of it.

plastic, not really. doesn't degrade easily at all.

most everything else can be turned into something else. you might have trouble with a zoning board if you try to build a biodigester in your backyard, but it'll take care of lots of stuff along with composting.

otherwise i figure if you lived somewhere with no municipal waste system you probably aren't creating too much plastic and metal waste either anyways. if you're one of those 'go into town once a week to buy groceries etc' people, just bring your plastic and metal waste with you and drop it off at some recycling place on the way.

Um, you shouldn't dispose of toxic household waste in your backyard.

I doubt if there's a good way to dispose plastic and metals in the backyard other than what would amount to landfill. You can probably only work on minimising such waste.

But just last night I discovered a wonderful way to dispose off all organic waste, including sewerage and grey water produced in the household. A company in Australia makes "Worm Farm Waste System" similar to a septic tank that and is connected with all the outlets of the house with regular plumbing. On top of it is a compost bin in which you can throw in your organic garbage. It doesn't smell, requires no maintainence and most importantly produces odorless liquid that can be used to substitute pesticides and fertilisers in your garden.

Response to Ken's question on composting ash:

According to compostguide.com, here is the direction for wood ash. "Wood Ashes from a wood burning stove or fireplace can be added to the compost pile. Ashes are alkaline, so add no more than 2 gallon-sized buckets-full to a pile with 3'x3'x3' dimensions. They are especially high in potassium. Don't use coal ashes, as they usually contain large amounts of sulfur and iron that can injure your plants. Used charcoal briquettes don't decay much at all, so it's best not to use them."

I live out in the countryside 7 km from the nearest town and down 1 km of dirt road. No garbage truck comes anywhere near me. The trash issue is one that I deal with a lot. First, I try to consume little. This in itself reduces waste. Second, what I do consume I try to buy without too much if any packaging. Third, the garbage generated I separate. Most organic wastes (including bodily wastes) I compost. Certain types of carton and paper, I save for fire-starting material in my masonry stove in winter. Other types, that have to much ´stuff´ in them, I separate out to be recycled - juice and milk cartons and magazines, primarily. Glass and metal jars I store under the house for possible use in future - if I have to put up a post for instance I can break some of the glass to create aggregate. Other glass jars I use for holding candles or for storing jams, marmalades, etc. The metal cans I have I sometimes also use as an aggregate for concrete whenever I have to make some kind of concrete foundation. The stuff that I take to recycle, which consists primarily of juice and milk cartons and magazines, I drop off in town whenever my wife and I have to go shopping - they have a large number of different types of recycling bins. My wife, unfortunately, ocassionally decides that perfectly good clothes are no longer good and deposits them in bins that ship the clothes to poor people in the Thirld World. As for the ashes, my masonry stove doesn´t produce that many so there isn´t a problem depositing them in the compost piles. However, too many ashes can cause an imbalance in the N-P-P ratios that may be detrimental to many plants. So you can put ashes in a compost pile if they aren´t huge quantities. Another simple thing one can do is spread them very lightly over the ground. Ashes have a number of very important elements that plants need - just don´t give them too much at once. This applies also to urine, which my special toilet separates from my compost toilet unit, which is highly concentrated nitrogen. I pour small quantities of urine at regular intervals on my pine and oak trees. The only waste that I consider problem waste is plastics - I can do much with them, I can´t decompose them, and there are not special recycling bins for them in town. Fortunately, unfortunately, I generate only one very small bag of this waste every two to three weeks.

Ken, you can certainly put your wood ash in that compost; just make sure you have plenty of conventional material also, so that the ash composes only a small percentage of the overall compost mass.

Ken -- there shouldn't be any problem putting wood ash in your compost. Alternatively, you can spread it around on the land and it will just become one with the soil. I belive it contains potash (I could be wrong) which is benficial to many plants.

Ken,

For years I have simply dumped ash from my fireplace directly on my garden and mixed it in with the soil. This is a carry-over from my Kansas-pioneer grandfather, who use to burn his waste wood and trash (when most of it was still non-toxic/non-plastic) directly in his garden. It contains potash, ranging from 4% for hardwoods to 9% for a mixture of soft and hard woods. Fireplace ash also has a liming (acid neutralizing) effect. Just beware if you have a PH of 7 or high potassium in your soil.

And if you are a "crafty" person, fireplace ash can be recycled (by adding rainwater and filtering) into lye, the active ingredient in soap and drain cleaners, and turns corn into hominy. Due to homeland security fears, one can no longer find most sources of lye (such as Red Devil) in most retail stores, so your ashes may become a soap-crafter's dream.
--------------------------
Here's a tip for the toxic chemical league, though...used motor oil can be used to keep tools from getting rusty. A tip I learned from a master gardener was to mix used motor oil with sand and, when you are done with your tools, shove them in the sand a few times...they remain cleaner and sharper, and less likely to rust.

Coffee grounds will offset the alkalinity of wood ash to some extent.

I know that some folks have experimented with disposing of fly ash by mixing it into concrete. I should think wood ash would work just as well.

There is a great conversation starting at http://www.changeeverything.ca/node/459 about composting. I bet we could all trade tips and get a great big cool compost project on the go