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HOTBIN composting makes a difference

Waldringfield Community Composting scheme is successfully diverting food waste from landfill. 

Last weekend we visited our friends at Waldringfield Community Composting to look at the results of the first 3 months of the HOTBIN use.

Everyone was keen to learn how much food waste the 12 households had actually diverted from landfill. The results are in and the weighing scales revealed: 5 Kg/week per household. (It was much higher in the B&B – but they have guests each week which accounted for the 10Kg/week.)

What a marvellous community composting effort.

How does this compare to other customers and the national picture?

Nationally the WRAP figures indicate that 5 Kgs per household per week is the  average – I’m sure they will be happy to learn they are normal!

Our own HOTBIN customers survey is less rigorous in terms of weighing exact amounts, but it also indicates HOTBIN  users divert around 3-6 Kg of food waste per week from landfill  The main difference is between users who choose to really get stuck into what you can hot compost such as cooked food waste and chicken carcass etc. versus those that choose to only compost vegetable peelings.

What does all this mean? Does it make a difference?

If we take all the HOTBIN customers across the UK, the total diversion is still not that huge but as they say from little acorns….

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One comment

  1. Just a quick note to help clarify what we mean by food waste. We should all seek to reduce food waste by better planning of menus and watching the sell by dates etc. In HOTBIN composting (and in this community scheme) we are collecting and composting food waste that cannot be eaten – it has gone mouldy, chicken bones, fruit and veg peelings. It is often hard to get the words right – we want to explain you can compost more in the HOTBIN than just the traditional tea bags and vegetable peelings so we use the term ‘all food waste’. The term is not meant to imply composting of edible food waste. Eat it, reduce wastage, reuse (compost) the bits left over.!

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