Spring clean your waste with alternative composting

Worcestershire County Council is encouraging residents to 'sping clean' their waste by using an alternative home composting system.

Each year Worcestershire households throw out tonnes of kitchen leftovers – much of it potentially reusable as garden compost. That’s why the Worcestershire County Council is encouraging home composting of kitchen and food scraps as an alternative to our waste mountain.

Residents across Worcestershire are being encouraged to consider Bokashi, an alternative system of home composting, which is ideal for those with small gardens, as it can be performed indoors.

Bokashi, a Japanese word meaning  'fermented organic matter' is a composting system that can be done inside a kitchen using specially designed buckets. The buckets work by using the fermentation process, where you add food scraps to a bucket and sprinkle bokashi active bran over, push down and seal the lid. The process takes about 2-3 weeks, after which the liquid collected can be diluted and used as fertiliser for plants. The fermented contents of the bucket can be buried and makes a great organic fertiliser for the soil.

Councillor Anthony Blagg, Cabinet Member with responsibility for Waste and Environment said; "This is a brilliant idea because a significant proportion of what is ending up in landfill comes from organic waste, that’s the likes of garden waste and kitchen leftovers. it makes sense to find new and alternative ways of disposing of it.

“Sending it to landfill produces large amounts of greenhouse gases which damage the environment for future generations, when it could easily be composted.”

Christopher Atkinson, Senior Waste Prevention Officer said: "The bokashi system enables the organic waste – like vegetable peelings, teabags, and other food scraps and leftovers, and also meat – to be recycled without using an outdoor compost bin."

“It takes about three weeks and the resulting liquid and composted material is excellent for the garden.”

Specially adapted bokashi buckets are available from Bubble House Worms, Tel 01886 832559, http://www.bubblehouseworms.com/ or Wiggly Wigglers 01989 500391 http://www.wigglywigglers.co.uk/ Or they are available with a wide variety of other composting systems at http://www.hw.getcomposting.com/ 0844 571 4444.  Residents wishing to buy a conventional compost bin should visit this site to buy one for £13 including delivery.