Composting

Composting is good for your garden, but it is also good for the environment. Over 30 per cent of the average household bin can be composted – that’s nearly 150kg a year, which is about the weight of a baby elephant!

Composting at home is easy, and will give you free, good-quality compost.

The main thing to remember is to balance your 'greens' - which have lots of nitrogen - with your 'browns' - which don’t have much nitrogen - to keep your compost healthy.

For a free online home composting training course please visit East London Waste Authority’s home composting online course with Garden Organic.

Green compostable items include:

• Fruit and vegetable scraps and peels 
• Tea bags, coffee grounds and filter paper
• Crushed eggshells
• Grass cuttings  limited quantity
• Young hedge clippings
• Annual weeds, for example chickweed and speedwell
• Old flowers and nettles
• Manure
• Pond algae.

Brown compostable items include:

• Gerbil, hamster and rabbit bedding
• Egg boxes
• Thin cardboard, paper, ridged cardboard packaging, toilet and kitchen rolls, and newspaper (torn up into small pieces)
• Dry leaves (small quantities)
• Garden cuttings
• Hay Straw
• Woody twigs and hedge cuttings
• Ashes from wood, paper and lumpwood charcoal
• Sawdust and wood chippings
• Wool, cotton thread and tumble dryer lint
• Vacuum bag contents
• Shredded paper.

Please don’t add the following items to your compost bin:

• Cooked food waste
• Meat or fish
• Cat litter or dog waste
• Glossy magazines
• Roots of perennial weeds (that is those which return year after year)
• Diseased plants
• Plastic, glass or metal