Composting workshop

Compost bins at Devonshire Road Nature Reserve

According to this website, composting at home for just one year can save global warming gases equivalent to all the CO2 your kettle produces annually, or your washing machine produces in three months. However, it wasn't really the environmental reasons that persuaded me to start composting but the thought that if we produced our own compost for the garden it would save both the cost of buying it and the effort involved in lugging it home which can be abit of a pain when you don't have a car.

So a couple of months ago I took advantage of Lewisham Council's offer of a free compost bin but have never been 100% sure exactly what I should be composting and what I needed to do to it. That's why  I went along last week to one of the free composting workshops that the Council organises from time to time. I found it really useful even if the first thing I learnt was that I probably haven't put my compost bin in the best location. It is best to put it somewhere sunny as the heat speeds up the composting process but ours is tucked away in a fairly shady corner as we didn't want it anywhere too prominent in our small garden. I've decided not to go through the hassle of moving it though as our garden is something of a suntrap so it should hopefully get pretty hot anyway.

There was lots of discussion about what you should and shouldn't put in your compost. There's a useful summary of this information here. Whilst I knew most of this already, it did make me realise the need for a good mix of 'greens' (tea bags, vegetable peelings, old flowers etc) and 'browns' (cardboard, egg boxes, paper etc) to provide both nitrogen and carbon for the mix. We also learnt that urine is good for speeding up the composting process. If peeing in the compost bin doesn't appeal, nettle and dandelion leaves (but not the roots and stems) are another good accelerator or you could collect seaweed the next time you go to the beach (you need to wash the salt off first).

There are no dates advertised for further compost workshops in Lewisham but if you're interested it is worth contacting Kristina who ran the course to find out if more are planned. Kristina also runs Love Food Hate Waste workshops in the autumn which explain how to make the most of the food you buy and avoid throwing it away.

I'm not sure how many other boroughs organise similar workshops but they seem like a great idea at a time when landfill tax is increasing annually so anything that helps reduce the amount of waste going to landfill will ultimately save local authorities money.