We beg, borrow, steal, and grow it. 3x3x3 is a minimum size, many of us are producing tonnage. You can get waste from restaurants, stores, farms, neighbors, and nature. In rural areas, it's piled up all over the place, you just have to learn to see it. In urban areas, you have to get it before it gets into the waste-stream. The most efficient approach is to find a constant source of at least one material - coffee grounds, lawn clippings horse manure, saw dust - and then make a little more effort to fill in your other needs. If you have a lot of sawdust, you might need to buy some dried blood, if you have chicken manure handy, you might spend money on some hay bales. Getting material should not be hard, the challenge is getting a blend of materials that will work for you.

I abscond with my mother-in-laws and several neighbors. They think I'm nuts. I just chuckle...
hortster

Should have completed by saying, "I just chuckle as my veggie garden cranks it out buku..."
hortster

The bulk of the stuff that goes into the compost pile is dry carbon-heavy matter. I rarely build my piles all at one time, unless it's a special project like building a compost around a stump that we don't want to put a chainsaw to and is too near something important for us to burn.

So I collect my materials over the course of days or weeks--months for the monster piles.

Junk mail comes in EVERY SINGLE DAY. You can stop a few things by trying to remove your name, but total elimination is not realistically possible.

Every piece of paper that I'm done with (all the junk mail, child's school papers, old user's manuals, etc.) gets twisted into a long paper twist and chucked into the compost. The twist helps to keep the paper from matting and provides air space between everything. I get the local newspaper, so that gets torn into strips and tossed in the compost. The shells from the chicken eggs are crushed and tossed in there. Coffee grounds and filter? Bonus! Used facial tissue, facial tissue boxes, cardboard toilet paper or paper towel rolls, food scraps, potato peelings, the frass from my mealworm operation, essentially ANYTHING that is not meat, not plastic/metal/inorganic and isn't contaminated with fecal matter of a meat-eating animal goes into the compost.

Our family of three plus chickens, horse, cat and dog rarely fill even a quarter of weekly trash can. (We do also have a recyclables container that gets far more use).

I'm considering hitting up the neighbors and maybe a local restaurant or two for their food waste (which gets mixed with the drier matter). Our food wastes are currently split up between at least 1,000 mealworms, 35 chickens, unknown numbers of redworms, and our many compost piles, and there just isn't enough to go around.

You can compost in smaller sized piles. It will take long but will break down. Used coffee grounds are a fantastic addition and are high in nitrogen. Leaves, kitchen scraps, stray dogs, abandoned cars......lots of things you can toss in there. :)

Junk mail is filled with toxic chemicals. I buy sheared wood in bag and I get Starbuck coffee grounds. However one can collect leaves around town or grass clippings from lawns. Did you know you can buy straw or collect it in rural areas. Apples and fruit fall from trees and are unwanted left to rot, so I collect fruits, only if they are fallen and rotten.

I don't start a new pile anymore, I only removed the finished and keep the pile going. Starting a new pile does take a lot of stuff, but if you do it once you can just keep on going, if you are not seasonal bound by the elements.

Junk mail is filled with toxic chemicals.

That's a great blanket statement, but could you qualify that with something? Do you have a source to validate the blanket statement? Do you discriminate between office paper and glossies?

I compost all the envelopes (sans the glassy window) and all the non-glossy paper in my junk mail. Glossy papers go into the recycling, stupid fake credit cards and fake keys go into the trash (I need to start calling to yell at those dealerships).

Here is a link that might be useful: Composting Paper

I too like to leave my clippings on the lawn. However, I do make it a point to bag some of the clippings whenever I need to heat my pile up.

I have found that leaves + grass clippings = hot pile

My dad had been bagging his grass clippings and throwing them in a dumpster. Now he brings them to my house. I stock pile leaves every fall. I prolly got 50 sitting around the foundation of my house. Waiting to get shredded and cover the old mans grass clippings. I get 2-3 gallons of UCG from work every week. There are lots of places. Just look around.

Even people with no yard waste at all are composting food waste from their kitchens in a bin or pile. It starts with the first bucketful and is added to each time there is more material.

Even the largest plastic bins you can buy are only about 1/2 to 2/3 of cubic yard, and they work just fine.

Don't be afraid to start small. A lot of the tips you see here have to do with getting the process to happen as fast as possible.

Even a small pile will turn into compost, it will just happen more slowly.

Glossy print magazines and colored newspapers are supposed to be bad for you if you burn them them. I am only assuming what ever cancer causing thing is in there, I don't want that in my soil. It is all over the web if you care to look up. I found this quickly

Among the most important things not to do is put anything in your wood stove that shouldn't be burned. It can not be stressed enough, so we'll say it again: except for a small amount of newspaper (no colored, slick inserts!) to start the fire, never burn anything other than seasoned firewood in a wood stove. Junk mail, bills, glossy magazine pages, and wet or rotting wood may seem like reasonably good fuel, but they all burn poorly and release high levels of particulate matter, which contains dangerous particles that can enter your lungs but can't escape. This can cause a host of health problems, including asthma and other respiratory diseases and cardiac issues and they can even damage your immune system.
Other items commonly burned in wood stoves are even worse. Never burn any of the following:
household trash
plastics
cardboard
Styrofoam
driftwood (especially from salt water)
pressure-treated or painted wood (including varnishes, sealants, and wood sprayed with pesticides)
plywood or particleboardIn New York State, as of October 2009, "burning household trash, whether in an open pit, burn barrel or a wood stove is illegal." That includes any of the items listed above. (For more information, go to the Department of Environmental Conservation's [DEC] web site.) There's a good reason it's illegal: the number of toxic chemicals these materials release into the air when burned could make your head spin-and literally could land you in the hospital. They include:
dioxins
spin-and literally could land you in the hospital. They include:
dioxins
volatile organic compounds (VOCs) (such as benzene, toluene and methyl chloroform)
furans
halogenated hydrocarbons
chlorinated fluorocarbons
carbon monoxide
carbon dioxide
sulfur dioxide
heavy metals (including lead, barium, chromium, cadmium, arsenic and mercury)

Oh my! All this info is great, thanks to all of you. I'm in S.CA, there are Starbucks on every block; I'll start hitting them up for grounds.

First, you do not need to create a pile 3'x3'x3'. Lets get the facts straight. The pile size is NOT the first thing to consider. Your materials available, and amount of compost desired are the first things to consider.

The average background compost pile should be a min of 3'x3' by 2' high, up to a max of 5'x5' by 2' high, IMHO. Your exterior carbon material can determine the size. With sawdust, the air travels less, so maybe 3'x'3'. With shredded leaves, 4'x4' should be good. With wood chips as the major ingredient, 5'x5', possible larger. I have two piles, each about 4'by8' by 2' high. A proper mix will give a core temp of 150F, at least in the warm months.

The often-repeated so-called optimium pile is FROM 3'by3'by3' TO 5'by5'by5' when the person wants the opportunity to make a hot pile. The person does not have to make a hot pile, but the bin should be large enough to retain heat if the person wants to. And those number probably came from someone who wanted nifty sounding numbers.

One last thing. While heat will speed breakdown, and kill some weed seeds, most piles can reach 160F+. But Cornell says there is faster breakdown at 130F than at 150-165F, where some of the good bacteria are being killed off.

tom, you came to the right forum!

The junk mail that comes to my house does not commonly contain (closer to never, actually):

driftwood
plywood
styrofoam
plastics (except for the little window)
painted surfaces or surfaces sprayed with insecticides

We actually use a wood-burning stove for primary heat. Wood-burning stoves actually take a bit of intelligence and skill to operate without smoking up or burning down your house. Most of those who use one know not to be total idiots and use it to burn dangerous crap.

Getting back to what actually IS in junk mail, which is predominantly a lot of simple white paper, and occasionally some glossies.

Glossies go to the recycle.
Paper goes to the compost.

Frankly, I would welcome a significant increase in the total percentage of driftwood in my mail.

billme:
I'm with you. I'd love to see some plywood out at the mailbox (a shed would be nice).

I would not compost mail at all. It can recycled and it does not have any good for the plants in the garden. But, if you tell people to compost junk mail without saying not to compost glossy ads, how would they know not to compost all junk mail. My junk mail is mostly unwanted glossies. There is ink the paper, you won't know what that paper was bleached with to make it white. I don't have time to spend researching everything about this. I am sure if you look you can links and reasons not to compost letter writing paper. I just found you the quick link for why junk mail is toxic.

Dear all, The only composting I do is my two worm boxes. I have made hundreds of high heat compost piles over my 41 years of growing and I don't do it anymore. the worm boxes recycle my kitchen garbage plus some leaves and grass. Red Wigglers love coffee grounds and some organic corn meal if you want to give them a treat. Worm castings as slow release organic fertilizer can't be beat!

Being a novice, I won't put glossy paper in the composter--don't want to take any chances--but would you believe Let It Rot has this to say about glossy paper:

"Most glossy paper, including magazines, catalogs, and colored newsprint, no longer contains heavy metals and can be added to your compost pile in small amounts. Because the paper is mostly cellulose, it will break down slowly and use up a good deal of nitrogen in the process. Shred the paper to speed decomposition and to keep it from forming an impenetrable layer in the pile."

I'm still conservative on the paper issue. Newspaper and office paper and brown paper bags, but no magazines, no colored ink, nothing fancy. I get almost no junk mail, so it gets recycled, used in the woodstove, or trashed as appropriate. I've got plenty of other "browns" to work with. I can see how it would be worth doing in a more urban setting.

'Where do you get all that stuff at one time?'

Answer - you don't have to.

Composting is done in almost as many ways as there are composters. Relax - stuff rots whatever you do to it. You don't need to fill your bin all in one go. You can fill it as and when you have materials. It won't compost as fast but it will compost. If you have 2 bins you can fill one gradually then, when it's full, empty it into your 2nd bin and start filling number one again. A lot of posters here are compost perfectionists, some are not. I'm in the latter group. I fill the bin when I have stuff. I don't turn. I spread it when I feel like it. I am not bothered by heat or speed. Whatever works for you is the 'right' way to do it. For me composting is a practical way of dealing with kitchen and garden waste and getting a valuable dividend - it's not a life project.

Well said, flora.

And billme, You said, "I get almost no junk mail,"
Where do you live...Land's End?...hah!

Back to the question of how to collect enough stuff for composting.

Browns, or Carbon rich ingredients:

Is there a better ingredient than leaves? Not in my opinion. All of my neighbors collect their leaves bagged on the curb, and a very few even shred them first! I think of paper as the MacDonalds, and leaves as the fruit/vegetable/meat meal. Leaves keep long periods without problems.

Green, or Nitrogen rich stuff:

Your fruit/veggie wastes.
Those of your neighbor as well. Kids probably would take more of an interest than adults.
Grocery stores have been less keen over the last few decades to let dumpster divers paw over these goodies. Most store use closed systems. There are a few types of stores where one might be allowed to dumpster dive. Two years ago I quit packing my small hatchback with 600 pounds of green stuff, none of it yet smelly. I quit because my soil was improving, and it was too much work to cut it all up. So I will give you my best advice, seafood and Asian grocery stores, if you are looking for a LOT of produce.
And lastly, the coffee store. Starbucks is the famous one, but others may also give away the used grounds. Interestingly, I found the large bags (later small 10# bags) of Starbucks expresso grounds was not the type that worked out best. The larger bags with dryer grounds with filters, mixed with trash, was easier to mix with leaves and other materials.

You probably will have to have some type of relationship/friendship with one or more employees of a grocery or coffee store, to see that you get your share of the goodies. The Starbucks nearest me used to pitch 75-90% of the used grounds even when they were promoting the grounds-give-away. When I was going to the last grocery store giving away greens(I could get 1000# just of bok choy), I would have viewed any other dumpster diver looking at 'my' dumpster, and considered composting him/her.