Recycling Articles : Turn Your Rubbish Into Compost

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In a recent survey into the amount of rubbish and type of it that we have in the past put into out normal rubbish bin it was found that around 45% of the rubbish could be turned into compost rather than fester in the bottom of your wheelie bin and go into the landfill.

The problem being that currently we are putting too much rubbish into the landfills and it isn’t having enough time to decompose before we need to add more, this means that if we continue to carry on as we are doing we will run out of landfill space.

In order to combat this the government and local councils are introducing schemes to get us to recycle our rubbish, they have given the majority of households around the country a normal wheelie bin, a green bin for compost, a blue box for cans and a bag for paper. However you can do much more than this and turn your own rubbish into your own compost.

Kitchen scraps and garden waste can quite easily be turned into compost which you can then use in your own garden. By making your own compost you are not only helping with the landfill problem but will also find that your soil fertility will improve which will lead to better plants and flowers. You can do all this and it is quick, easy and doesn’t cost that much.

Composting isn’t as hard or as complicated as it sounds; it simply means that you break down your waste, there are basically two types of organic materials that can be turned into compost and these are easily remembered by naming then greens and browns.

Green materials include a lot of nitrogen and these include grass clippings, weeds from the garden and kitchen scraps. Brown materials include shredded paper, vacuum cleaner dust, straw and sawdust.

There are a variety of ways that you can make your own compost, the easiest is to find a corner of your garden which you can turn into your compost heap and pile your rubbish here then cover it with an old carpet or a sheet of polythene.

An alternative to this is to buy or make your own compost bin; all that is needed is some old wood or a plastic bin. If you have a large garden then you can make trenches in your garden and bury your rubbish, this is much like a small scale landfill.

If you want to speed up the process of the decomposing then go and collect some worms and introduce these into your compost, of course worms will appear over time but by introducing them your self you can greatly speed up the process, a tip for getting worms to the surface of your garden so you can catch them if to water your garden.

When mixing your compost try to get 1 part brown material to 2 parts green, to speed up the composting process then chop up the materials as finely as you can before adding them to the heap or covering them.

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