its gonna take forever to fill my compost bin!!

just taken care of my first huge plastic compost bin. thing is is that its going to take me soooo long to fill it!

with my very bad eating habits I prob only eat veg once a week so thats no good. I resorted to going to a couple of local shops and asking them what they do with their gone off fruit but as there appear to be no actual fruit and veg shops about here they told me they only have minimal waste. I may try the big supermarkets but suspect they send all theirs off somewhere. I am now going to have to ask my work colleagues to bring me their peelings!

 

You'll be surprised once you really get started. All your garden clippings, used tea bags, egg shells, ripped up paper and cardboard food packaging, spent compost out of pots, coffee grounds if you have a posh coffee maker. Basically anything that biodegrades, except meat.

Keep a bucket/bin in the kitchen to put all these things in, and then when its full (probably quicker than you think), transfer it to your compost bin.

All that said, it does take a while to fill them. I find that once the weather warms up, the bin eats stuff as fast as I can add it, as decomposition gets into full swing. Its not uncommon for me to be unable to get the lid to close properly, then a week later there's about a foot of spare space at the top.

 

Freebie newspapers (some supermarkets have a bundle of free ones outside their stores on a Sunday), junk mail - we never escape that - also, I shred any correspondence I'm getting rid of and that goes in the compost bin.

Quite!!!
You could try altering your eating habits Good for your compost bin and great for your health plus it might encourage you to grow a few of your own and give you somewhere to put all the compost you make to good use

 

Egg boxes too. Also all the stuff you suck up in the hoover goes in mine, toenail clippings and hair from my hair brush all goes in. Also used tissues from when I have a cold are bagged up and then tipped into the compost bin when I feel better, (these break down really quickly). Also shredded documents go in. Even moldy bread ends are torn up and thrown in.

I don't have one but used to get a vast amount from the tea room I used to volunteer with along with tea bags and other peoples left over fruit cores/peel. I would be taking well over 2 buckets home every week, which worked out as an awful lot of nitrogen I was adding to the bin. Find your local coffee shop and ask what they do with their coffee grounds. If you go to Starbucks then they have a bag of coffee grounds for people to take apparently.

You really should be adding more fruit and veg to your diet though otherwise your compost may be too carbon heavy. Perhaps try with baking something with apples in it. That way you get the left over peel, eggs shells and flour added to the bin. It all adds up and isn't going to landfil.

 

thanks for all the replies!! until my garden stops being wet there wont be any grass clipping There is not one plant in the garden so far either!! i forgot about paper. I shred all my mail too-ooh just thought we have a shredder ar work too!! and we are always drinking tea!!!! i really should improve my diet but that's a very long haul process! so will have to get from other people in th e short term i think

 

Are you neighbours paying for a Brown Bin and would be happy using your compost heap instead, perhaps?

 

sadly we dont have any kind of garden waste collections where I am. Have resorted to putting a notice up at work!