Pocket money composting

HACKS Pocket money composting

NO FOOD WASTE COLLECTION? No worries! Start composting with your spare change

Wasting your food: what a load of rubbish!

For anyone living in an area with no food waste collection, it can be frustrating. Binning old food so that it gets taken to landfill does one of two things, both terrible for the environment. The food either fails to decompose, as it becomes trapped and preserved by the non-decomposable material surrounding it. Or, it decomposes without oxygen in a process called anaerobic digestion which can release carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. But it’s not all bad news...

Food waste collection isn’t perfect to begin with. Councils can turn it into fertiliser or reproduce anaerobic digestion, capturing the gases to produce energy. But both things require lorries to collect the waste and industrial processing to make use of it. You can do it yourself just fine. All you need to get started with recycling your own food waste is a small patch of outdoor space and a couple of quid. You can even use your old newspapers and cardboard boxes.

1. Getting started

2. How to use it

The first thing to do is get yourself an outdoor dustbin with a lid, 80L should do. Don’t buy yourself a new one if you can avoid it; for a fiver you can buy a used one on Ebay or, even better, an old one to pick up locally from Facebook Marketplace (the cheapest we found was £2.50). If you can find a purpose-built composter, great, but these need slightly different treatment, as we’ll get into.

Now find a way to drill a few drain holes in the bottom or cut some carefully with a sharp knife. People often think of compost as wet and smelly, but neither should be true when done right. If the compost can drain, it should be dry and shouldn’t smell. If you’ve managed to get yourself a proper composter, add a layer of sticks at the bottom to aid aeration – we’ll go into why later.

Then grab yourself a few old bricks or a disused wooden pallet and put your bin on top, ideally in a shaded area. This will allow space for drainage and aeration while preventing overheating from sunlight (another cause of smells). Your thrifty compost bin is now complete and ready for you to begin using. Almost everything you’d put in the food waste can go into your compost but it is important to note that there is a difference between rotting and composting. If you add meat or bones to your compost, they will start to rot, causing smells and attracting flies, maggots and local animals. Meat products need a bokashi bin to pickle and ferment them instead.

Your food waste, known as your ‘green material’, can also start to rot if not looked after properly. Avoid this by adding ‘brown material’ – add either some torn up cardboard, newspaper or old dried leaves every other time you go out to add food waste to your bin. This balances out ‘green’ decomposing nitrogen with ‘brown’ decomposing carbon, keeping your compost smell-free.

Finally, you need to turn the material to introduce air. Every so often, use a pitchfork to give the material a turn. If you don’t have one then simply pick up your bin (lid on) by its handles and give it a good toss, as you would a pan of pasta. For purpose-built composters, this may not be possible due to their size. That’s where the stick layer comes in, which allows aeration from below.

Every six months to a year you’ll have perfect compost at the bottom of your bin. It’ll be easier to get at if you can save to invest in a proper compost bin with a low placed hatch, but this is still a great way to get yourself started. You can use the compost on your own plant beds or, if you don’t have any soil, give it to someone who does. There’s no self-respecting gardener in existence who would turn down an offer of free compost. [ ] TIP: Have no garden? Your local market is a great place to find farmers or allotment owners who will gladly take your com post! 24