One of the easiest composters is a worm bin. You can use your egg shells best there. I do several types of composting from easy to - more work. Build a worm 2-story bin - using a couple of plastic totes - (Home Depot?). Heat an ice pick and make 16 or so holes in the bottoms for drainage. Then add shredded newspaper as bedding in the top bin. Buy some red fishing worms to inhabit the bins. They love coffee grounds, egg shells, any veggie, fruit rinds. I know some folks who even get coffee grounds from Starbucks, etc. Tea bags are OK, but as other posters note - forget the oils, meats, cheese, grease - it will attract ants. Larger bins of this type are also good for folks who have orchards with dropping fruit - as it can help prevent fruit fly infestations. I have a large box that catches all of my orange or citrus droppings. The worms will digest all of this material, including paper, and leave worm castings - that can be added in and around your plants. I personally use it for my fruit trees mainly. Another easy composting method is leaves and grass - just pile them up - a nice 2 foot pile heats up nicely. I cover mine with a black tarp, after watering well, as it helps to get it "cooking" - then turn it whenever you think about it, and it will break down into nice black compost in short order. For heavy duty composting - it is nice to have a good sturdy shredder. Unfortunately, they are expensive, but with my large yard, I try to compost almost everything that grows if possible - except Bermuda grass. My shredder will grind up heavy prunings from trees, etc., up to an inch thick if I want, and makes a nice "mash" that breaks down easily. One of the best combinations is dry bamboo leaves and other green fleshy material - make a good combo. It only takes a month or so to break down when it is ground up that fine. Soo - visit the compost forum for other good ideas, but whatever you do "start your pile" and good luck. Bejay

I never used to have problems with critters. Sure the chipmunks dug out the melon rinds, but they didn't bother me. This year something's been opening my Earth Machine (it was free, don't pick on me) and making a heck of a mess. So I "locked" the little door on the bottom and whatever it was picked the whole thing up and tipped it over. Ripped those silly screws right out. So I surrounded it with old pieces of log (little ones) and it moved those. So I moved it over a bit, "locked" the little door, and weighted the bottom lip with leftover big-assed rocks from when I dug my veggie bed years ago. And the dang thing dug up my veggie and perennial beds for the bone meal in the planting holes. So I replanted the veggies and perennials and applied copious amounts of cayenne to the planting holes, and I think whatever the marauder was has moved on. Why o wy didn't I just leave well enough alone? My old method (big honking pile, bury tempting bits nice and deep) worked fine!

FYI, You can see plenty of images of industrial sized piles by Googling "compost fire." I also Googled "backyard compost fire" and came across at least one incident in which a plastic bin had burned up. Certainly very rare though. Spontaneous combustion is a strange thing. I suspect it begins on a microscopic level. It only takes a tiny volume of material to start feeding on itself to get it started. An itty bitty spot in the maelstrom where the conditions are just right for a few minutes. You couldn't stick a thermometer in and measure temperatures capable of combustion though.

A few days in I felt the pile through the tarp on top, I could feel some good heat. The top of the tarp has cooled down since. Because of daylight saving time I was able to have light to turn the pile in the morning today. It's been 9 days since the pile was built. I used a flat-tined fork to do most of the work. it was quite smelly at times. There was no wind at all so the fumes wafted into my face. Not good, once the smell was intense enough that I actually could taste the fermenting horse poo. Yuk. The pile is looking quite nice. The interior was very hot, I could feel it radiating. It steamed nicely. While turning it my less-than-enthusiastic son sprayed the pile with water and occasionally broke up the chunks. A few years ago I adjusted the plumbing so I could have hot water outside, this was for the kids to play in the sprinkler on slightly cooler days. Didn't think it would be so handy for the compost. This is the original pile with the wire removed. It had sagged about 3 inches within the enclosure over 9 days. You can see the steam. You can also see the lack of wind. I wish there was a little, the smell hurt. On Halloween I added a large amount of pumpkin guts with seeds. These seeds sprouted. Pretty cool! They are now deep in the pile so they will die. I guess these seeds are now officially called "malted pumpkin seeds". Anyone make whiskey out of these ever? Here is after turning. The pile is a lot smaller, probably 20% loss.