In 1992 I was inspired to get some people together to start a community composting scheme, after seeing the amount of stuff people were piling into the bulky household skips the Council brought to our community every month. Just about everything from the garden was being piled into these skips, from bags of grass cuttings, leaves, weeds, prunings, branches, soil and even lovely plants. (Over the years I’ve rescued many wonderful plants that people have just thrown away - my peony collection comes from throw outs). My other motivation was to offer a service to my fellow allotment holders so that they didn’t have so many choking bonfires all the time.
I believe that every community should have a community composting scheme. It’s just crazy to burn or dispose of all these potentially compostable materials and even crazier to load it onto lorries and drive it miles, even if it is going to be composted at some municipal compost site - admittedly better than the old system of burying it in the ground.
In the early 1990’s a few
other likeminded souls were also running community schemes as far flung as
Scotland, Wales, Kent, Skegness and the Forest of Dean. The Community
Composting Network was formed in 1995 and now there are schemes all over, not
only the UK but also Europe, and there is even a scheme in Sierra Leone.
download the original dccn PDF now an historic document! the more up to date version is on the community composting section home page
