Industry raises compost awareness

Compost Awareness Week, which started on Sunday, aims to encourage more people to home compost kitchen and garden waste and use peat-free composts containing recycled materials on their gardens.

The campaign, run by The Composting Association and WRAP (the Waste & Resources Action Partnership), also helps to forge more links between compost producers and their local communities.

As part of the campaign, homeowners are being encouraged to do their bit and can win £50 in garden centre vouchers from Recycle Now if they buy a compost bin this week.

Charlie Trousdell, vice chair of The Composting Association, told edie: “If you have a garden you should be composting, however small your garden is.

“I think the joy of composting is that you can deal with the general garden material at home and within a very small amount of time you can start to see the benefits.”

Compost Awareness Week was first introduced to the UK in 2000, but Mr Trousdell said more people still needed to be encouraged to use compost.

“We still need to raise awareness on all sorts of environmental issues,” he said. “Those of us who work in the industry tend to think people know about it all.”

This year’s campaign is being fronted by BBC presenter Philippa Forrester.

She said: “Composting at home is just one small step towards making sure that we minimise the amount of waste we create, but if everybody gets involved then it makes a huge difference.”

Since the Recycle Now Home Composting campaign launched, 1.7m compost bins have been bought.

You can find out more about Compost Awareness Week here or find out how to enter Recycle Now’s competition here.

Kate Martin