As residents in Merseyside and Halton get their gardens prepared for spring, local recycling officers today announced a series of compost activities and a special competition to promote the benefits of home composting.
To celebrate Compost Awareness Week 2008 (4th-10th May), Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority (MWDA) and the five Merseyside District Councils have organised a series of events in order to help tackle the amount of reusable waste that is currently going to landfill.
Also, any resident of Merseyside and Halton who buys a compost bin between 4th and 10th May has the chance to win £50 of garden centre vouchers to spend on their garden.
Carl Beer, Director of MWDA, said: “Merseyside is involved in a range of regular compost initiatives. Last year we joined the national Recycle Now Compost at Home scheme to offer cut-price compost bins to local residents and last autumn almost 2,000 people turned up to similar compost events across Merseyside.”
Over 9,000 home compost bins have been purchased by local residents in the scheme which began last year. Upcoming activities are as follows:
Knowsley
Date: Saturday 3rd May
Time: 10.00am – 2.00pm
Locations:
Millbrook Park (Kirkby – next to St. Chad’s Church).
Halewood Park Car Park (Halewood).
Stadt Mores Park Car Park (Whiston).
Court Hey Park, Car Park (Huyton).
Knowsley Council are hosting a compost giveaway.
Liverpool
Date: Saturday 3rd May
Time: 10.00am – 2.00pm
Location: Otterspool Promenade (the viewing platform off Riverside Drive near the Britannia pub).
There will be ten tonnes of loose compost so residents are asked to bring along their own bags and shovels.
Date: Sunday 4th May
Time: 10.00am – 2.00pm
Location: Belle Vale Park (near the Millennium Centre).
Bagged compost will be available free to residents.
Sefton
Date: Sunday 4th May
Time: 1.00pm – 3.00pm
Location: Southport Botanic Gardens.
Date: Saturday 10th May
Time: 1.00pm – 3.00pm
Location: Coronation Park, Crosby.
There will be limited quantities of bagged compost available for residents.
St Helens
Date: Saturday 10th May
Time: 10.00am
Location: Clockface Colliery Open Space, Gorsey Lane, St. Helens
Spades will be provided to collect loose compost, but residents will need to bring their own bags.
Wirral
Date: Saturday 10th May
Time: 9.00am – 1.00pm
Location: Wirral Farmers Market, New Ferry.
Wirral Council are hosting a compost awareness event and will be giving away kitchen caddies (limited stocks).
Home Composting is a simple and cheap way of dealing with up to a third of a typical family’s waste bin, and it is a brilliant way to help the environment.
When organic garden and food waste is sent to landfill, it is crushed beneath large amounts of other household waste. This means there isn’t any oxygen present when it breaks down, so it produces methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming. By composting at home, waste such as fruit and vegetable peelings can break down in an oxygenated environment so no methane is produced. This also creates a rich fertilizer for the garden which completes the natural cycle and keeps waste out of landfill.
And it’s not just fruit and vegetable peelings that you can compost – toilet roll tubes, coffee grounds, tea bags, and egg boxes will all add nutrients to the mix. Almost anything organic can be composted, from shredded confidential documents and scrunched up cereal boxes to grass cuttings. All this waste breaks down naturally to create a free product that can be used to keep plants and gardens looking green and beautiful – and it even helps the soil to retain moisture, which is particularly good news during the hot summer months.
Caring for the environment by home composting is such a simple and effective way of making a difference that celebrities such as Helen Mirren, Jenny Seagrove, Chris Evans and June Sarpong are all adding their active support and committing to compost at home.
This Compost Awareness Week, BBC presenter Philippa Forrester is backing the campaign to make sure that waste is recycled at home rather than ending up on landfill sites. She comments: “With three young children, I’ve never been more aware of the impact we make on the environment and the responsibility of bringing future generations into a world that we can really be proud of.
“Composting at home is just one small step towards making sure that we minimise the amount of waste we create, but if everybody gets involved then it makes a huge difference.”
Anyone living in Merseyside or Halton who places an order from the 4th – 10th May 2008 will be entered into the free prize draw to win £50 of garden centre vouchers, which have been donated by DHL, the logistics company that deliver the bins.
Check out the website www.recyclenow.com/compost or phone 0845 077 0757 for more details. To find out what is happening in your area for Compost Awareness Week, check the event locator on our website: www.compostawarenessweek.org.uk.
ENDS