have you used a compost pail for scraps before? My experience is that the whole thing gets very smelly. At one point I stopped using the pail on the counter and went to a container in the freezer - scraping into the bin and freezing until full then tossingin the compost pile. Ideally you don't want the scraps sitting very long. I'll be interested in your solution.

Yes, we have countertop compost right now - one of those stainless steel buckets with a top and a handle. We take it out mostly daily -- sometimes miss a day if it's not needing to go out. Haven't had problems with smells except once, in about six months. We still don't know what caused that one time. At any rate, we throw the whole pail in the dishwasher once every couple weeks or so, and that does help a lot I am sure.

I love the idea of the compost pail built it. Just make sure that the canister has a charcoal filter to help avoid the inevitable smells that come with it.

If it has a lip, I think it will be much messier and almost defeat the purpose of ease of use.

You could do a steam table pan in a pullout drawer- just pull it out a few inches and sweep it into the pan. That would be far, far easier to do, plus there's not a huge hole in your counter at resale, and it would only take up a little of a drawer instead of a lot of cabinet.

I'm getting a pull out dual trash and my husband is making a lidded compost bin to fit in the second hanging basket slot. We recycle mostly everything so 1 trash can will do us for a week. Good luck.

I once saw a counter cutout treated cleverly. Johnnny Grey maybe, 20 years ago. Round hole and on the counter was a small round cutting board with a post anchoring it so it swiveled. Swing/swivel it toward you to chop and the hole was exposed, then swivel it back to cover the hole when done. Brilliant. I've also seen the sides of the cut beveled, and a cutting board 'plug' stuck in, kind of like a cork in a bottle. I liked the swivel idea better.

No thoughts on tricks for lifting your pail.

Mine is in a drawer - with a lidded stainless 'hotel tray' for a liner mentioned earlier. Very happy with it. My first plan was like yours, but I didn't want to cut a hole in the counter.

I just wouldn't.

You are loosing counterspace, and it will actually be less handy than a pull out with a foot pedal.

Thanks everyone for the feedback. I think you have successfully steered me away from the hole in my counter and towards the tray in the drawer. And that's a good thing, the more and more (and more!) that I think about it.

A cheaper solution is to use a large tupperware type container and keep it under the sink. Unless you don't like bending over, or have lots of material on a daily basis, I'd experiment with movable options before installing anything costly or permanent.
I just keep mine under the sink and put it on the counter if Im working with lots of fruit/vegi peels, etc.

mavmomma---to make you feel even surer. I knew someone 20 years ago that did something just like you were talking about. She and her dh were very committed to composting. They put a lot of work into their diy kitchen redo (her dh made all the beautiful cabinets from a mixture of woods.) I visited just after the redo and then several (approx 3) years later and I noticed the hole in the counter for the compost was patched over. I didn't ask why but I thought about this when I tried to come up with an alternative for the on-the-counter system we've been using for 20+ years.

I love celticmoon's drawer! I wanted something similar when planning our kitchen 4 years ago. I thought the drawer over the trash would be perfect since it would be positioned in the veggie-prep area, between the fridge and prep sink. It didn't work out for 2 reasons: 1. our drawer seems too shallow (it's inset) and 2. it turns out I like doing all my prepping across the aisle on the opposite side of our peninsula...so the drawer wouldn't provide the quick sweep easy management of scraps that I had hoped for. A case where reality turned out different from the paper plans.

My compost continues to be on the counter. I find taking the lid off the top really awkward when my hands are full of scraps. I hope to get around to experimenting with a trash pail that attaches to a sink cabinet door with a lid that rises away from it as the door is swung open. Here's a link to the idea. In fact, the price on this one is better than I've found before so I'm putting it in my cart and will hopefully finally order it. We have a charcoal filter in the lid of our current compost container but I just used a cheap stainless steel stock pot for many years. Odor problems were rare (usually only occurred when cleaning old stuff out of the fridge---which meant we dumped the compost right away. We don't compost meat scraps.)

Here is a link that might be useful: pivot out trash