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Recycling Food - Urban Compost
By Andy | November 14, 2007
One of the biggest problems facing all of us - and waste disposal authorities in general - is how to better deal with waste. This is especially difficult in the big cities where the sheer diversity in housing stock means that a single authority must employ a range of different strategies and tactics to deal with waste.
I’ve just taken delivery of an amazing product that I thought I should blog about. If you’ve a garden, then this can really make a big impact in your own, personal, waste strategies.
Having more than one strategy is a difficult concept to grasp for many on the left. They like having a single answer. Standardisation is the name of their game. I can remember being responsible for environmental policy, in Birmingham, ten years ago. I was keen to try out some new policies but the senior politician involved used to dismiss any ideas with the sweeping “if it can’t work in a tower block then I don’t want to know”. This may sound like the inverted snobbery of the old right, but this guy was well educated, in a senior management job and quite a sophisticated operator. Times may have moved on but the notion of differential strategies, for different neighbourhoods, still runs against the grain of many.
Back then my plea was that standardisation didn’t matter. If you could employ a good strategy in only one part of the city then, at least, you’d moved someway towards solving as problem, a problem that looked to have no solution if you only searched for a single one.
One of the biggest fusses at the moment is about weekly rubbish collection. Those who are looking to green strategies want separation at source, more composting and this can be done within established budgets so long as weekly collection disappears. The Tories are furious and - their campaigns seem to be striking a chord with many householders. But there is a way to compost easily at home.
My new toy is a domestic composter produced by Juraform in Sweden and available here in the UK through Smartsoil. What makes this such an exciting product is that it composts meat and fish as well as vegetables. Being of metal structure, and sitting on a frame above the ground, means that the composter is rodent proof - and it is rodents that give composting a bad name. This composter is also odourless.
The composter cost a couple of hundred quid but the effect is amazing. The rest of your rubbish doesn’t smell any more which means that you can keep it - quite happily - for longer periods. I’d quite happily now settle for a bi-weekly collection and I might even be happier with something on a longer scale particularly if this time can be used to facilitate more separation at source.
All of this is fine for me because I can afford the initial outlay. But shouldn’t local authorities be looking at making these more available and more affordable?
Over the years local authorities have subsidised all kinds of conventional composters, yet these don’t deal with the worst kind of rubbish. Local Strategic Partnerships are quite happy to give away smoke alarms and to fit new window and door locks to homes - whether the occupant can afford to fit them or not. The reason they do this? These strategies are cheap ways of meeting the targets laid down through government. They can also have a big effect on reducing crime in a neighbourhood and in cutting down on deaths through fire.
Waste disposal is a very expensive business. Those that provide these services need as much help as they can get and if we are to encourage more waste reduction these kind of domestic composters can provide make a major contribution.
If you look at the website you’ll see that same company makes industrial composters - that work on the same principle - that can be installed in public buildings and public housing complexes. And there are other companies that do the same thing.
Why are out local authorities not looking to use these machines? As I speak there is a big panic locally in trying to get rid of an underspend in Neighbourhood Renewal Funding. Much of this will be mopped up in all kinds of low income projects that really make little lasting impact.
Installing efficient composters - domestically or on a bigger scale - that can compost all food waste would be a very sensible thing to do. And it would help the financial bottom line of waste authorities in the process. It is the kind of no-brainer that is always so puzzling. Why haven’t we done it so far?
Anyhow, have a look at the website and also at this short video. Why not get hold of one yourself?
Topics: Green |
