Compost your waste
Between 40 and 60% of your household waste may be organic waste, i.e. it was once living but now is dead. Most of it ends up in landfill sites which is costly - a load of energy is used getting it there too. However, there are a whole host of different ways to dispose of organic waste effectively and they may even be of benefit to you.
A large proportion of organic waste is from the garden, for example grass clippings, prunings and weeds. Your municipal waste disposal site (the local tip) is obliged to take this waste for recycling. You'll find that there's usually a couple of huge skips dedicated to garden waste. Be careful not to add other wastes (plastic, glass etc) to your garden waste as it lowers the quality of the finished product - compost.
Many local councils now offer a monthly or even fortnightly collection of garden waste. Schemes usually involve hiring a large green wheelie bin for about fifteen quid a year. However, most schemes only allow garden waste, so you can't add things like old teabags and vegetable peelings.
The ultimate way to dispose of green waste is home composting. There are many benefits:
- you can compost both garden waste and kitchen waste
- no energy is required to transport the waste away
- it doesn't contribute to landfill
- you get to keep the finished product
- compost heaps may provide a refuge for toads (gardener friendly slug eaters!)
My favourite solution to recycling garden and kitchen waste though is the Wiggly Wigglers Can-O-Worms. This uses native British worms to compost all kinds of household waste from kitchen scraps to vacuum cleaner dust to dog hair. I gave some friends of mine the Can-O-Worms as a house warming present. They were quite surprised to get a bag of worms through the post, but now they love it. They recycle most of their other household waste, so their black bin bag is hardly ever full on collection day!
Why not set up a compost heap in your garden this weekend?
caldini
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