Home composting
Last updated Wednesday 30 April 2008
Let the grubs break down your grub
Sending food to landfill is a loser all round. For one, it creates methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than CO2 (and today's pungent landfills emit 40% of the UK's methane emissions). For another, a council lorry has to burn fossil fuels to come and fetch it.
With very little effort, you could soon be treating your garden to a nutritious diet of homemade compost, a climate-friendly alternative to store-bought, peat-based composts.
Read more below
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In this article:
- How does it work?
- How will it make a difference?
- What's the debate?
- What's stopping me?
- How do I do it?
How does it work?
Compost forms as a result of the natural breakdown of organic material by bacteria, fungi, insects and other animals in the soil. If your compost becomes starved of oxygen, then it starts to produce greenhouse gases - so it's important to get air into your compost heap, for example by turning it regularly.
How will it make a difference?
Pub Fact
- Every year in the UK, we landfill enough garden waste to fill the Royal Albert Hall 70 times over
- At least six out of ten of us end up throwing food away because it has passed its 'use by' date, according to WRAP
- Each household could save up to £400 a year by buying only as much food as it can eat
- High food wasters are more likely to be younger working people (aged 16-34) and families with school-age children
- 35% of UK households with gardens now home compost, according to WRAP
- In 1994 a meal took us on average 30 minutes to prepare; in 2004 we took just 19 minutes
The first benefit of composting that you'll notice is a flourishing garden or windowbox. Compost improves the nutrient levels of your garden's soil. It also improves the soil's 'posture', reducing erosion and increasing the soil's water retaining capacity. And because homemade compost has so many uses in your garden (see Recycle Now), it will reduce your dependency on commercially-available products, which can be expensive and deplete valuable, carbon-storing peat bogs.
In terms of emissions, more composting means less landfill, and less landfill means less of the potent greenhouse gas methane. It's hard to quantify how much methane our scraps produce in landfill, but Chris Goodall, author of How to Live a Low Carbon Life, estimates that the average Brit's food scraps could annually give rise to twice as much greenhouse gas as the best green electricity tariff could save.
Yet, WRAP estimates that we could compost about half of the 6.7m tonnes of food we waste every year.
Of course, the surest way to reduce landfill-related methane is to waste less food and money in the first place:
- Each year we Brits throw away about one third of all the food we buy and at least half of this is food that could have been eaten
- Halting food waste would save as much CO2 as taking one in five cars off UK roads
- Food is so energy intensive to make that it accounts for a fifth of the UK's total greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, producing, packaging, transporting and delivering food to our homes produces an amount of CO2 equivalent in weight to 71 billion hamburgers
- For every three bags of food shopping we buy, one ends up in the bin according to WRAP
- The average UK household throws away about £325 of edible food every year, and about £20,000 worth in a lifetime
What's the debate?
Badly managed compost heaps may be doing as much harm as good, warn critics. If compost can't "breathe" the process becomes anaerobic and produces the very greenhouse gas (methane) that composting is supposed to be reducing.
Wormeries don't quite wriggle off the hook when it comes to emissions either, scientists say, because worms emit greenhouse gases during digestion. Worms produce nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas 296 times more powerful than landfill methane. While the research focused on large-scale commercial worm beds, it may be that the process can occur to a lesser extent in domestic bins.
What's stopping me?
"I don't have a garden"
Not a problem. You don't need to have a garden to make and use your own compost these days. Composting technology has caught up with modern, compact living: today's bins and wormeries are totally sealed and come in a range of sizes. Once the composting stage is over, you can add the mix to a windowbox or give it to a neighbour who does have a garden.
"It sounds gross. I just don't want to get my hands dirty"
Then let your local authority do it for you. Check whether they have a doorstep collection scheme for food waste. (See DirectGov.)
How do I do it?
A good rule of thumb is that if it rots, it can compost.
- Buy a sealable compost bin. Your local authority should sell them at a discount, or you can buy them from a DIY centre. (Check Recycle Now for discount bin offers in your area)
- Choose a level site that drains well - preferably on a soil base
- Add a mix of 'greens' - moist, nitrogen-rich materials like vegetable peelings and other raw food scraps, grass cuttings, nettles and so on - and smaller quantities of 'browns' - drier, carbon-rich material, like woody stems, straw, cardboard and fallen leaves. Read more about it on Waste Online's Compost Recycling Information Sheet
- If the mix is too wet (you'll know by the pong) add some 'browns'. If the mix is too dry (you'll know by the ant, bee or wasp infestation) then don't skimp on the 'greens' - you can even add water to the mix
- Unless you plump for a Bokashi system, you can't compost meat and other cooked foods (see table, below)
- To speed things up, chop big pieces of waste into smaller, more degradable chunks, or mix in finished compost and soil. If you're a real free-spirit, urine can also help, as one leading Conservative politician attests , reported in the Guardian
- Make sure your heap can 'breathe' (so that it doesn't produce methane). Adding scrunched up bits of cardboard is a simple way to create air pockets and you should try to dig it over regularly
- Alternatively, if you have room, build a timber frame for your compost heap and cover it with old carpet or plastic sheeting to retain the moisture and heat - a bigger, more open heap can be easier to turn
- Dig the compost out of confinement after six to nine months, when it has formed a rich, almost black, soil-like layer
- Still unsure? See the BBC's How to Make Compost website - where you can play a game on how to make your own compost heap
For an adventurous alternative to the compost bin, you could try:
- Wormeries, which speed up the composting process
- Japanese Bokashi systems, which can use meat and other cooked foods - claim to reduce the smells
And for the particularly motivated, there are composting toilets and even a 'composting funeral'. (Read Ethical Man's blog on this cheery topic.)
| Do compost | Don't compost |
|---|---|
| Fruit and veg | Cat or dog excrement - contain dangerous organisms that won't be killed by the decomposition process |
| Tea bags and coffee grounds | Meat - attracts vermin and flies - unless you're using a Bokashi system |
| Crushed egg shells | Dairy produce - attracts vermin and flies |
| Grass cuttings, leaves | Fish - attracts vermin and flies |
| Shredded paper and soft cardboard | Disposable nappies - attract vermin and flies |
| Human and animal hair | Shiny card - because of the chemicals used in the printing process |
| Vacuum dust (only from woollen carpets) | Hard objects like fruit stones |
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I have set up a compost bin on my decking. (I inherited a garden completley decked when I bought the house!)
I made a square out of recycled planks and put down some old pond liner.
Your website is correct, composting has been 'modernized'. But its not just through plastic bins in your garden and saving a few tea bags from going to landfill either.
Invessel composting is being pushed forward as the number one solution by many schools, community sites, business, large apartment blocks, and many more.
Only a few companies offer this kind of solution and the results have been very impressive. Some composting food waste (including meat) in just 14 days.
Your website is correct, composting has been 'modernized'. But its not just through plastic bins in your garden and saving a few tea bags from going to landfill either.
Invessel composting is being pushed forward as the number one solution by many schools, community sites, business, large apartment blocks, and many more.
Only a few companies offer this kind of solution and the results have been very impressive. Some composting food waste (including meat) in just 14 days.
I started my first compost bin in a big blue pastic barrel, I cut off the bottom, fitted an old hinge to it so it could be opened easily and turned the bin upside down. Its amazing how quickly it fills with the rubbish form food prep like veggie peelings and teabags.
I have a small watsebin (2Lts) at the side of the sink with some newspapaer in the bottom. This is used to collect the waste scraps and is emptied into the compost bin along with the newspaper. I have taken no compost out yet, these thngs take time.
I have 2 large compost bins that I bought from the council very cheap and I also use a kitchen composter that uses buckashi and will take all the kitchen scraps including meat and dairy it's brilliant and good for the garden soil too.
There's loads of advice out there about what do do/ how to set up. The book I'd recommend - especially if you fancy building your own compost bin - is 'Compost' by Clare Foster. Bag a cheap copy from www.thebookdepository.co.uk - cheaper than Amazon.
I've had two plastic bins for a couple of years. Dead easy to fill and we have a plastic caddy that we empty every couple of days - even our toddler knows to put bits of fruit in. Plus it saves going inside for a wee on those (rare) summer evenings when you sit outside drinking wine till late! Just wait till it goes dark though.
I set a compost bin up March 07 and have been using it ever since - just keep a plastic box in the kitchen for all the teabags and veggie peelings and empty once a day! Now the the compost at the bottom of the bin is ready to use (June 08) - lovely black crumbly goodstuff - and it's cut down on how much rubbish goes to the bin as well - simple action to do
© 2012
Very easy to do and keep up with and has meant our bins emptied by the council are now only just half full!