Friends who don't compost!

Went to watch the football / have a BBQ with friends last night, and a fun evening of gentle French bashing was had by all. Apart from the half-French hosts of course

I was helping out, and experienced a real 'omg moment' when I found out they didn't have a compost heap.
There was no where to put the peelings and scraps. I was almost tempted to take them home :thmb:

I held off on disgracing myself, ('can I go through your bins please?' wasn't quite the mein I was going for!) but it always surprises me that people are still throwing out compost-able food waste!

 

I can go one better than that. Our council provide those 'green waste' bins that out collected every fortnight. In them, you can put any garden waste (ideal for grass clippings so your compost heap doesn't end up a slimmy mess), branches providing they are less than a certain thickness and cardboard - it all goes tot he council site for composting.

Our next door neighbour was doing some severe cutting back bushes and shrubs a few weeks ago and despite having one of the green waste bins of his own he put the clippings INTO A BIN BAG AND INTO THE NORMAL RUBBISH BIN!!!

So yes, I know where you are coming from. I was astounded. And annoyed.

 

Mea culpa, I'm afraid. There's just nowhere for a compost heap in my tiny little outdoor space - not unless I give up on gardening and have an ornamental scraps pile instead. We are quite careful about recycling what we can - the council collects garden prunings etc every fortnight - but we still have little option but to chuck a lot of stuff in the general household waste. My little garden already has to house several recycling bins (the contents of which has to be dragged through the house each week, since I live in a terrace) as well as a tiny shed. I suppose I could give up on my ten quid mini-greenhouse, but there still wouldn't really be room for a decent compost heap. I was watching Gardeners' World the other week and marvelling at an elaborate system of wooden bins which looked at though it would not only compost my scraps but fry eggs as well. It was about the size of my garden.

 

Hi Clara

Have you enough room for the burial method? Dig a hole, fill it over time with scraps, back fill when it's full.
Then you dont have to have room for a big ugly bin.

There are major holes in council waste strategies generally. Quite a few you have to call up to ask for a garden waste collection, other councils you have to take trimmings down to a central collection point yourself. These are totally disincentivising methods, because you have to be particularly motivated to do it.
And as SG has demonstrated, even if the service is laid on for some people, they STILL wont bother.

I got called a hippy last night for composting! :D I was raised to recycle, it feels weird and wrong to do anything else!

 

Hi Melinda

I suppose I ought to give it a try. It does mean sacrificing precious border space, whichever way I try to work things out. I love my garden - people are always amazed to find I have one, since the majority of my neighbours are into cultivating rusting bikes and dog poo - but I don't think anyone could call it ideal. It is the typical little dank strip which Victorian terraces so often have - barely fifteen feet wide. Just for good measure, it faces more or less due north. Trying to squeeze things into it is always a bit of challenge. My garden table doubles as a bird table, mostly frequented by the local woodpigeons. Call me an ignorant townie but I never realised until now what impressive amounts of c**p they produce. Maybe I should go into the organic fertiliser business.

 

Mega lols! :D

Were your parents gardeners /composters?

 

Yes, my mum and dad were enthusiastic gardeners in their younger days - as were my grandparents - and when I was small we always had a whacking great compost heap at the end of the garden rather than fairies. These days my mum lives in a London flat. The idea was that she would still be able to look out on a nice big garden, but someone else would do all the hard work and she would have lots of time for other things. I should have known it wouldn't work out. Within days I was being bombarded with 'phone calls complaining that the gardener was a total woose and a who wasn't putting any backbone into the heavy London clay soil, knew nothing about plants and, worst of all, had just pruned a mature euonymus to within an inch of its life, not realising that it would probably take another ten years to get back to its former glory.

The upshot is that Mum now looks after a bigger garden than ever and the paid gardener has been reduced to unskilled labour. Mostly, he transports things to the compost heap.

 

I guess it keeps her busy, gives her an interest in life and a chance to have a man to boss around!

 

He seems to quite enjoy being told what to do, Aaron, which is just as well. There really is no point in trying to argue with her!

 

We've a bin for paper and another for plastics/metal, collected monthly.
A bin for "landfill" collected weekly.
A bin for garden refuse and whatever, collected fortnightly.
The latter is often completely full and hard to move.
Whatever we put in any bin and it doesn't matter how heavy it is, it's always collected.
"Time and finish" is certainly to the council tax payer's advantage.

 

Back to composting, if it means losing a bit of your garden so you can compost, ClaraLou, then don't bother!

 

pity the council don't have a central composting site...perhaps in exchange for taking your scraps there you get a bagfull of the finished product!...it may actually work, but probably cost too much!!!

 

My Council gives us a 'green' bin, in addition to which, it will take up to 6 further bags of compostable waste. Most of my neighbours aren't enthusiastic gardeners so take full advantage of this facility, not surprisingly therefore, I get a bit 'peeved' when I get notes attached to my bin exhorting me to, bascially, leave out more compostable rubbish! Of course, what the bin-men don't see are the 7 compost bins dotted around my garden - no matter, but when I asked the Council if or where, I could buy some of the '... excellent compost ...' their blurb states all this green waste produces, I was told '.. It's not suitable for resale..' whatever that may mean.

I do think however, I may have gone a bit too far in 'educating' my youngest daughter though. She recently moved into a 3rd floor flat in an area where her council don't provide a green waste collection so, once a week or so, she turns up with a bin-bag of peelings etc., for my compost saying '.. it seems wrong to just throw it away'. It's very sweet of her, but on reflection, I think I preferred it when she came home from Uni with just her washing!