Composting tips

There are lots of innovative things you can do to help reduce your rubbish - check out some of the tips below to get started.

Tips about what can and can't be composted:

• Shredded paper can be composted.
• Paper can't be recycled if it's contaminated with food, but it can be composted. Next time you have pizza, don't dump the boxes in the rubbish bin - soak the box, break it into pieces and add it to your compost bin instead.
• Kids' lunches can be wrapped in paper instead of cling wrap. The used paper can be put in the compost.
• Compostable kitty litter takes longer to break down than regular compost. Put the kitty litter into a separate compost bin and add an equal amount of soil every time you add more.
• If the prunings from plants and shrubs are small enough they can be run over with the lawn mower and put on the compost heap.
• Don't compost pumpkin seeds. They often don't work very well in the compost - too hard for worms and they sprout - but they can be cleaned off and saved for salads and lunches.
  

Tips about worm farms:

• For people who don’t have enough garden waste to make their composting bin work effectively, a worm farm may be a better option.
• Worm farms take very little space and maintenance, and are a great way to get rid of most compostable food scraps. The 'juice' is really powerful as a fertilizer.

General composting tips:

• Buy two bins for the kitchen: one for rubbish, the other for compost. This will remove the need to separate compostable waste from non-compostable waste later on.
• A compost bucket can get messy and smelly. An easy way to keep a bucket clean is to put water in the bucket before adding scraps. (The water can be emptied on to pot plants.)
• If you have too much material for your compost bin, stick it in a black plastic household rubbish bag (thin-walled), loosely twist off the opening, and store it beside the compost bin. A few weeks later, the volume of material in the bag will have reduced and you should find worms have made their way in to the bag and started breaking the waste down. The waste can be added to the compost bin when there is room.
• You can compost directly into the garden itself. The vegetables will love you for it, and the compost will attract the worms to that area and the soil benefits directly.
• If your compost bin starts to smell offensively give it a turn - odour can be a sign of a lack of aeration.
• Contribute your organic matter to a neighbour’s compost if you don’t have one, or invest in a worm farm.