Why Compost at Home?
Six Big Benefits of Home Composting
- FABULOUS GARDEN SOIL: You get super-nutritious compost to feed the plants in your garden, giving you better fruit and veg and lovelier flowers and plants. Compost bought from garden centres is no substitute for home-made compost. Home-made compost is 3 x richer than bought potting compost and BCCS’s research has proven this .
- MORE ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY and AVOID COMPOST MILES: Home composting is more environmentally friendly than a council composting scheme, to which your garden or food waste has to be transported by lorry, causing pollution/C02 and traffic congestion. Then the finished compost is transported by lorry as well. Hundreds of lorry miles, instead of a few dozen human steps in the garden. And it saves you long car trips too.
- IT’S CHEAPER: It’s cheaper NOT to waste at all but if you can’t avoid it make home compost. Council composting schemes make you pay to buy back the compost made from your own garden or food waste, and compost sold in garden centres is expensive.
- YOU CAN HELP ADDRESS CLIMATE CHANGE BY AVOIDING LANDFILL: If you don’t have access to a council-run food waste collection service, then unless you do home composting, your food waste will probably end up the black bag rubbish collection. Food waste tipped into landfill rots anaerobically (without oxygen) creating lots of methane, a more potent ‘greenhouse gas’ than C02, and a major contributor to climate change. Composting helps the soil store carbon – with compost mulch your garden can become a carbon capturing paradise!
- IT’S EASY – LET THE WORMS DO THE WORK: Once you’ve got the knack it’s easy! And with a wormery, you can compost all your food waste at home, even cooked food, including meat and fish!
- FEEL GOOD: It feels more satisfying to take charge of your own household’s waste and turn it into something useful. If we all take responsibility for our waste, and by example encourage our friends, families and neighbours to do the same, we end up with a cleaner neighbourhood, town and planet, with less waste, traffic and pollution. Be part of the solution!
For more information here are some useful links:
https://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/compost
https://www.gloucestershirewildlifetrust.co.uk/sites/default/files/2018-02/Making-Compost_0.pdf
https://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/gloucestershire-master-composters
Some examples of the many types of compost bin
Plastic wormery – consists of 3 circular trays, a lid, and a base with a tap for drainage of liquid. Trays can be lifted out and emptied separately when the compost is ready.
Spherical plastic compost bin – can be rolled around to mix the compost.
Compost bin made from old wooden pallets tied together with garden wire.
