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Composting
Composting is the most natural way to get rid of raw food and garden waste. It reduces the amount of waste in our bins and landfill sites, and can improve your soil quality to help you grow healthy flowers and vegetables.
It makes heavy soil easier to deal with by breaking it up and helps improve the structure of light soil so that it retains more water. Compost is also an alternative to using peat - so peat bogs, which are a habitat for many rare animals and plants, do not need to be destroyed.
Compost starts life as garden and kitchen waste - things that would normally end up in the bin. When waste is put in a composter a natural process of decomposition occurs, which breaks down the waste and produces compost.
Composting is also the best way to get rid of shredded paper, which can be difficult to recycle.
A large proportion of garden waste and food scraps can end up in landfill. If you compost you could be helping to reduce the amount of waste buried. Allowing it to break down in a composter is more beneficial to the environment. Landfill can produce far more greenhouse gas when breaking down organic matter than a home composter and you also end up with a usable material to put back in your garden.
Kitchen and garden waste makes up about 30% of household rubbish in Brighton & Hove. In landfill sites, this waste causes the generation of a gas which contributes to global warming and produces a toxic liquid called ‘leachate’.
You can compost your garden and kitchen waste at home using a home composter or you can take your green garden waste to one of the household waste recycling centres for bulk composting.
- buy a composter and a food waste digester
- what you can compost
- what you should not compost
- not much space? try a wormery
- make your own composter
- make your own four-tyre wormery
- do you want a green waste collection?
Buy a composter or food waste digester
Since our composter scheme started in 2004, the composters sold have helped divert 5,410 tonnes of green waste from landfill, significantly helping to reduce CO2 emissions.
There is a whole range of composter and other products to divert and compost your garden and kitchen waste. Composters cost £5.00 for a 220 litre bin and £11.00 for a 330L bins, plus delivery.
Straight Plc is the company who will take your order and deliver direct to your door within 28 days.
You can order from the get composting website or call 0844 571 4444.
The Green Johanna is a 'hot composter' which is specially designed to break down all kitchen waste. You can get one for as little as £39.95 (normally £98.95) plus delivery and get a free kitchen caddie. Go to www.greencone.com to buy directly from Green Cone Ltd or call 0800 731 2572.
You can also order water butts which are a great way of saving water. They collect rain water which you can then re-use to water your plants any time of year. Water butts should be located next to a suitable down pipe and the diverter installed. Using a water butt can help you collect up to 5,000 litres of water a year for watering your plants. Acid-loving and pot plants particularly like rain water.
What can be put in a home compost bin:
- garden waste (grass cuttings, leaves,weeds)
- fruit & vegetable scraps
- tea bags & coffee grounds
- egg shells*
- cardboard and scrunched up kitchen paper
(note, egg-shells may remain visible in the compost)
Do not compost:
- meat & fish remains (except in a specialised food waste digester)
- dog or cat droppings
- dairy products
- vacuum cleaner contents
- timber, plastic, glass, metal
- tough woody material
- perennial weeds or diseased plants
Not much space? Try a wormery
A wormery is a small self contained unit that will compost soft organic/kitchen waste such as vegetable peelings, coffee grounds and stale bread. As it is so small it can be kept in a garage, shed or even a balcony. The wormery will produce a compost for pot plants and a liquid plant food.
Green Cone Ltd is the company who will take your order and deliver direct to your door within 28 days.
The council is subsiding a limited stock of wormeries and prices start from £26.00, plus delivery.
You can order from the Green Cone website or call 0800 731 2572.
Make your own composter
Use wire mesh, wood, old pallets, bricks, breeze blocks, PVC panels, old packing cases (top & bottom knocked out), or stacks of old tyres. Position the composter on bare earth and provide simple drainage with some sticks or large stones. Cover the heap with a lid (or sheet of black polythene) to keep the heat in and the rain out. Then fill the composter with a mixture of kitchen and garden waste. Only put in kitchen waste if your compost heap is rodent proof. In three months to a year you will have your own compost.
Make your own wormery
A four-tyre wormery
- create a base from old bricks or flagstones (must be flat and with as few cracks as possible). Place a heavy sunday newspaper on top of the bricks
- stuff four old tyres with newspapers. Pile the tyres on top of each other, with the first tyre on the sunday newspaper
- put some scrunched up paper or cardboard in the bottom to soak up any excess liquid
- fill the tyre wormery with organic material (semi-composted is best)
- only use kitchen waste if the unit is properly sealed (no gaps or cracks)
- add worms (tiger or brandling)
- use a piece of board weighed down with bricks as a lid. The lid must be big enough to stop rain getting in
- harvest a tyres worth of fertilizer roughly every 6-8 weeks ago (during warm months)
Green waste collections
Brighton Community Compost Centre (BCCC) can offer residents a regular green waste collection service for a charge. They also operate a bulk garden "clear out" service and can provide discounted garden products.
For more information please call (01273) 620489 or visit www.brighton-compost.coop/household.html
Useful links
www.magpietrust.org.uk/index.html
Useful information and resources to get people composting.
www.harvest-bh.org.uk
Information and training in Brighton & Hove about growing your own food including courses on composting.
www.homecomposting.org.uk
Includes a handy video clip about using your bin and an excellent section on composting myths.
www.wigglywigglers.co.uk
www.bucketofworms.co.uk
www.wormcity.co.uk
Contact us
For further information or to report a problem please contact Cityclean.
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