International Compost Awareness Week
Wellington City Council estimates that if 50,000 of Wellington’s 68,000 dwellings composted two kilograms of food and/or garden waste per week, up to 5,200 tonnes of waste would be diverted from landfills annually.
To reduce the amount of rubbish you throw away each week there are many options when it comes to composting. By diverting your food scraps and garden waste from landfill, compost provides incredible benefits to soils including growing healthier plants, reducing erosion, and increasing microbial activity.
Some methods require more time and space than others, so here are a few options:
Compost Bin
Hot composting, cold composting or compost tumblers. Learn how to get started and create your own compost bin.
Bokashi
Bokashi is a fermentation process that helps breakdown food quicker than usual. Learn how to use the Bokashi fermenting system to compost your food waste.
Worm Farming
Set up your own worm farm using tiger worms to chew through food scraps, garden waste even paper and cardboard. In return, they’ll give you worm castings (composted material) which you can put on your garden and also use to make worm tea. Cuppa, anyone?
Community Composting
Want to compost but you don’t have the space? You can subscribe to a compost collection from local social enterprise Kaicycle. For a small fee your food waste is picked up weekly and turned into high-quality compost. Or, keep an eye out for the soon to be established community composting hubs in Wellington, where you will be able to drop your food scraps to be composted with your neighbours.
Watch Kevin from Epic Gardening talk about the pros and cons for each method.
So, whether you make your own compost, take up worm farming or subscribe to a compost collector your organic waste is a valuable resource capable of regenerating our soils.