Do Not Allow Even One Fruit Fly Into Your Kitchen Compost

Last week, as my spouse and I were settling into our new home, we were dismayed to find a small cavalry of uninvited visitors in our kitchen. They raided the pantry and the fridge; they snuck into our bathroom. Every evening, we tried to shoo these invaders out the door, to no avail: The container of food scraps on our counter, waiting to be picked up by our local composting company, made the allure of our abode too strong for these fruit flies to resist.

My household had been through this particular saga before, and I’ve generally grimaced my way through it. In the U.S., food waste is responsible for nearly of material that gets dumped. Diverting even some of that waste is a win for everyone involved, and more cities across the U.S. are at least trying to persuade people to separate their scraps from their trash. I, like , just wish that the whole business could be a bit less … friendly to the flies.