What a rotten idea

JOHN Brierley loves his compost. He digs his hands into a mound of the rich, earthy material and inhales deeply.

"Good enough to eat, almost," he says. "Plants are going to love that."

John, project co-ordinator of the Friends of St Nicholas Fields, is a self-confessed compost fiend. So good is the compost he produces on his Scarcroft allotment that it has been known to become a target for thieves. "Which is the ultimate accolade, I suppose," he says.

We could all do with taking a leaf from John's book. Compost is the perfect natural fertiliser, feeding the soil by returning the earth's goodness back to itself.

This is why it is such a shame so many of us don't bother, simply chucking out our grass cuttings and hedge clippings with the rest of the household rubbish.

That is bad, John says - for several reasons. First, it is denying the soil of our own gardens or allotments vital, natural nourishment. Second, it is adding unnecessarily to the mounds of rubbish we bury every year. And third - it's contributing to global warming.

When thrown out with the rest of the rubbish, organic material such as garden waste ends up in a landfill site and produces methane, one of the greenhouse gases responsible for global warming, as it decays.

If we use that same material to produce compost, it doesn't. By balancing the ingredients properly and making sure they get plenty of air during the composting process, perfect compost is produced without any harmful (and smelly) methane being released.

"It's a bit like baking a cake," John says. "You've got to get the right mix of nitrogen and carbon, and the other main ingredient you need is air, oxygen."

John is a man on a mission to persuade more of us to compost our garden and kitchen waste, so we can improve the soil in our own gardens and help stop our rubbish tips burping out methane.

Last year in York less than five per cent of all household waste was composted.

This is poor when you consider that nearly 40 per cent of kitchen and household waste is potential compost. All that rich organic material is being chucked out along with plastic bottles and rusty cans, only to end up in landfill sites and start generating methane.

John, with the backing of City of York Council, wants to change that. He has secured £17,120 of Government funding to boost the work of the York Rotters - a fledgling group of volunteer composting enthusiasts set up with the help of the council and managed by the Friends of St Nicholas Fields. The money will be used to employ a part-time worker who will, over the next year, train up to 60 more volunteer 'Rotters' - enthusiasts who will help York people set up their own compost systems.

The thing about compost, John says, is that it is really easy to get right - but easy to get wrong, too. Fail to get the balance of ingredients right and you will end up with a slimy, smelly mess rather than the rich, crumbly mulch that is the sign of good compost.

That can be disheartening, which is where the Rotters come in. The group was set up after York council began getting feedback from disappointed householders who had bought home compost bins at discount prices under a council scheme to encourage composting.

The Rotters can visit your garden or allotment to find out what is going wrong, and invite you to visit their own compost heap (or compost bin) to see the right way of doing things.

Usually, once the experts are on hand it is easy to put things right, however unappealing your unaided attempts at composting may seem.

So what is the secret of good compost? The right mix of ingredients, John says.

Soft, green organic material such as grass cuttings, young weeds and fruit and vegetable scraps provide the nitrogen. But you then need to balance that with carbon. A great source of carbon is, surprisingly, cardboard boxes - torn into strips and then loosely scrunched up and mixed in, so as to allow plenty of air into the compost.

You can also use kitchen towels, napkins or even the cardboard from cereal packets - the ink on them is usually vegetable-based, John says, so isn't going to poison your garden.

Mix the ingredients in your compost heap or bin, turn every couple of weeks or so to allow the air in, cover with an old carpet if the weather gets too dry (compost needs to be reasonably moist, though not too wet) - and within six months you should have your own free, naturally-produced compost.

It is not only good for your garden, John says - it is wonderfully rewarding too. "When you dig into it and see what's in there, the worms and woodlice and other creatures, it is really quite satisfying," he says.

How to be a real Rotter

Why is composting good?

Because it:

u Reduces the amount of rubbish that is sent to landfill.

u Reduces greenhouse gases - by cutting the amount of waste buried in landfill the emission of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, is lessened.

u Reduces the use of peat-based products and chemical fertilisers.

u Reduces the number of journeys to the tip.

u Saves you money - no need to buy compost.

u Makes your garden plants grow.

u Reduces soil erosion and helps to conserve water - home compost will improve the structure of the soil, increasing its ability to hold water.

What can and cannot be composted?

Can:

- Leaves

- Weeds

- Grass cuttings

- Vegetarian animal bedding

- Wood ash

- Cardboard

- Paper towels and bags

- Egg boxes

- Fruit and vegetable scraps

- Teabags and coffee grounds

- Old flowers/ plants

- Old straw and hay and straw manures

- Hedge clippings/prunings

- Autumn leaves

- Sawdust

Cannot:

- Meat/fish

- Newspapers/magazines

- Cooked food

- Cat litter and dog faeces

- Disposable nappies

Recycling: York's record

Household waste collected in 2003/04: 98,610 tonnes

Percentage of household waste buried in landfill in 2003/04: 84.58 per cent

Percentage of household waste recycled in 2003/04: 10.7 per cent

Percentage of household waste composted in 2003/04: 4.73 per cent

Recycling rate 2003/04: 15.4 per cent

Council recycling and composting target for 2003/04: 12 per cent (exceeded by 3.4 per cent)

Council recycling and composting target for 2005/06: 18 per cent

How much waste could potentially be composted but isn't?: 38.52 per cent

What's your waste measurement?

GETTING us all to compost more kitchen and garden waste is only half the battle. City Of York Council, together with the Friends of St Nicholas Fields, is keen to get us to recycle more of our everyday household rubbish too.

Tin cans, old newspapers, glass bottles and plastic containers can all be recycled and put back to good use: if only we can be persuaded to separate them out from the rest of our rubbish.

The council's kerbside recycling scheme - where recyclable rubbish is collected in green boxes once a fortnight from your doorstep - is a big part of that.

Most households in York are now covered by the scheme. Some streets, however, are too narrow or cramped for the kerbside recycling team van to reach.

The Friends of St Nicholas Fields run a scheme which uses tricycles to collects recyclable rubbish from about 1,000 of these hard-to-reach households.

Now, with the help of a £32,750 Government grant - the second of the two grants the Friends of St Nicks have just received, which total almost £50,000 - the organisation is to buy an electric van. With the help of the van, it aims to increase the number of hard-to-reach households from which it can collect recyclable rubbish to 2,500.

The areas from which the organisation hopes to be able to collect rubbish for recycling in the future include parts of Bishophill, South Bank and Aldwark.

"We are absolutely delighted," says project co-ordinator John Brierley. "We submitted two projects to the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (for the York Rotters scheme and the recycling scheme) and both have been awarded funding."

The Friends of St Nicholas Fields will be holding a Wild World Day at the York Environmental Community Centre from midday to 4pm on Saturday April 16. The day will be a chance for children to take part in a range of activities looking at the 'mini-beasts' such as insects and earthworms that live wild all around us. There will also be a demonstration of a 'wormery' - an alternative to a compost heap which uses earthworms to process kitchen waste.

How to start composting

To ask for advice on your compost from a York Rotter, or to volunteer as a Rotter yourself (you will be given training) email recycling.team@york.gov.uk or call Sara Goodhead at City of York Council on 01904 551503.

The council operates a scheme whereby you can buy easy-to-use compost bins at discount prices (£15.95 for a large bin, £11.95 for a smaller bin). Call 0870 849 4866 to find out more. You can collect the bins yourself, or they will be delivered to your home for £5.

Updated: 09:14 Tuesday, April 05, 2005