After reading Elizabeth Royte's Garbage Land: On The Secret Trail Of Trash a few years ago and learning the life cycle of nearly everything my family had been discarding, I became obsessed with the idea of zero waste. Unfortunately, after a few days of separating garbage and recyclables into "good" and "bad" (and stinky) piles on the kitchen floor, the family became just as obsessed with the idea of zero Dad.

Anyway, Russ Cohn also had a similar problem with mucking up his living space, and in response, he created the NatureMill indoor composter, an under-the-counter device that turns food waste into fertilizer with minimal effort and zero stink.

Unlike many indoor composters, the NatureMill doesn't require you to transfer its innards to an outdoor compost bin before making the final journey to your garden: Drop your leftovers into its waiting maw, and it mixes and heats the mess until it's ready to use.

The individual-batch results are smaller than typical bin composters' output, but considering that it's capable of handling 120 pounds of waste per month, the NatureMill should work well if you're keeping a small garden or are an urban-dweller with limited green space.

Pictured above, the NatureMill PLUS is available now for $299, but in March, the NatureMill PRO ($399; shown in red below) will add a number of color choices, as well as some bells and whistles -- e.g., a foot pedal, stainless-steel components and a vacation timer -- to the PLUS' core features.