While everybody else apparently is glued to the tube watching the Superbowl (unfortunately, I don't have the sports gene), I'm sitting here tapping away on my laptop while everyone's shouting at the TV, contemplating a new gadget: the NatureMill Automatic Composter. 

Now, you have to keep in mind that I am not an "environmentalist," "green freak," etc. - whatever label you want to use. I can only imagine the hoots of laughter by my parents (who are definitely environmentalists) if they knew that I was considering getting a composter. They would die laughing. It's just not me. But I'm doing it anyway.

So, why am I even thinking about this? Why not just keep tossing everything away in the garbage like most folks do?

Well, there are a few reasons. While I'm not going to go into a lot of detail on it here, let's just say that over half of the garbage we send to the landfills is compost-able. But at the landfills this stuff doesn't do anything useful, it just releases methane (another yummy greenhouse gas) as it breaks down. That's one thing.

Another is that I finally realized how stupid it is to just send all this stuff - everything from eggshells to leftover bits of meat - into the trash or down the garbage disposer in the sink when it could be doing something useful. All this organic stuff should be going back into the land - this isn't some metaphysical hooplah, it's basic biology: putting this stuff back into the land closes the loop in the food cycle, and compost is about the best "plant food" you can find.

The final reason - and this is something else my parents are going to howl with disbelief about! - is that we're planning to start a vegetable garden. Yes, an urban (well, I guess we're really "sub"-urban) vegetable garden, and it would be great to be able to add our own compost to it.

Why am I thinking about the Naturemill Automatic Composter instead of one of the much cheaper compost bins that you keep outside? Because I know myself well enough to know that I'd never go out and maintain a traditional compost pile, bin, etc. It just wouldn't happen. But with the Naturemill, you keep it in a convenient place indoors and just dump your kitchen scraps into the thing. Then it does everything automatically except dump out the compost onto your garden. That's my style!

Keep in mind that getting a Naturemill is not necessarily a money-saving measure: the Naturemill Automatic Composter is pretty expensive ($399 from the Naturemill site), but I'm willing to suck up that cost as an investment in keeping our share of the biodegradeable junk out of the landfills and have a convenient source of compost for our garden. But there are lots of other alternatives, most of which are less expensive. With the Naturemill, you're paying for the convenience - you just have to do what's right for you.

I'll let you know how we do after the Naturemill arrives! [For an update on the Naturemill Automatic Composter, click here]

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