Other ways to recycle garden waste

We encourage you, where possible, to recycle your garden waste at home using composting and grasscycling methods.

Home composting

You can produce your own compost at home using suitable kitchen and/or garden waste. Composting your kitchen and garden waste at home avoids any costs and impacts associated with waste collection and disposal and provides a supply of peat-free compost to improve your garden’s soil quality.

You can home compost suitable food and garden waste together in an open heap, using a home made container (e.g. made out of old wooden pallets) or using a container sold for this purpose.

If you have limited outdoor space, you can still compost suitable food waste using a wormery or use a “Bokashi” system to produce compost for house plants.

Get advice on home composting from the Royal Horticultural Society.

Buy home composting containers

You can buy compost bins and wormeries from the following places:

• www.getcomposting.com - A wide range of containers is available via mail order, all at discounted prices for local residents
• Townmead Road reuse and recycling centre - A limited range of containers is available for purchase on site - we buy these in bulk quantities and sell them on to residents at the lower price (with the exception of wormeries which are sold at an even lower subsidised price in order to encourage households that do not receive weekly food waste collections, most of which do not have gardens, to compost their food waste at home)

Grasscycling

Grasscycling is a way of recycling your grass clippings by leaving them on the lawn when mowing. This practice is beneficial to your lawn, reduces waste going to landfill and saves time bagging and disposing of grass cuttings.

Guidelines for grasscycling

• Cut no more than 1/3 the length of the grass
• Cut when the grass is dry to the touch
• Cut when the height is between 3 and 4 inches (7 to 10cm)
• Ensure the mower blade is sharp

Water butts

A good way to recycle rainwater is by using a water butt. Rainwater can be collected and used on the garden and to water pot plants.

Water butts are available for purchase via GetComposting.

Wormeries

A wormery is a small self contained unit that will compost soft organic kitchen waste such as vegetable peelings, coffee grounds and stale bread. As it is small it can be kept in a garage, shed or even on a balcony. The wormery will produce compost for pot plants and a liquid plant food.

For more detailed information about wormeries and troubleshooting go to the Worm City website.

Buy a wormery

You can:

• Buy a wormery from Townmead Road Re-use and Recycling Centre
• Order a wormery on Getcomposting.com
• Make your own wormery out of old tyres