Christmas 2011 recycling tips

There’s snow time like the present to be thinking about how to reduce your waste over this year’s festive celebrations.  Here are some top tips to help you save money and have an eco-friendly Christmas and New Year!


Reduce


- This year email your Christmas greetings to your friends and family. You can often send e-cards for free on the internet and so save money on postage and packaging


- Plan your meals and portion sizes in advance and try asking your guests to RSVP.  You may find that you can buy less and throw less out - saving money too! Visit http://www.lovefoodhatewaste.com/ for a handy portion calculator for Christmas meals and parties.


- When shopping for Christmas treats, keep an eye on packaging. Try and buy food with as little packaging as possible – choose loose fruit and vegetables instead of pre-packed goods.


Re-use


- If you are buying electrical items like toys for Christmas, invest in a good battery recharger which means you can reuse you batteries again and again - saves money too!

- Before recycling your old Christmas cards, reuse the front image and turn it in to a gift tag for next years presents!


- If you have a clear out in the New Year take your unwanted gifts to your local charity shop or to your local Furniture scheme.


Recycle


- Make sure you recycle all your paper, cans, glass bottles and jars, and plastic bottles using your kerbside collection service


- Remember you can recycle clean tin foil, biscuit tins, aerosols and aluminium packaging along with your cans.


- Put real Christmas tree out for recycling with your garden waste collection service


- Wrapping paper and Christmas cards can be recycled in your kerbside paper recycling box

 - Any fruit and vegetable peelings from your Christmas dinner can go on the compost heap. See www.recyclenow.com/compost for more ideas.

‘Tis the season to Reduce, Reuse and Recycle!.....

NEW cardboard recycling banks

To make it easier for people to recycle cardboard there are now cardboard recycling containers out around the county.  For a list of locations click here.

You can also recycle cardboard at Household Recycling Centres (HRC's):

•Shrewsbury HRC (Battlefield Enterprise Park)

•Oswestry HRC (Mile Oak Industrial Estate)

•Whitchurch HRC (Waymills Civic Park)

•Craven Arms HRC (off Long Lane)

•Bridgnorth HRC (Stanley Lane)

 They accept all types of cardboard.

The cardboard is all collected up by Veolia and then sent for recycling.

Shropshire's bulky waste collection wins award

An innovative partnership between Shropshire Council, Veolia Environmental Services, South Shropshire Furniture Scheme and Shropshire Housing Alliance has been recognised as an excellent example of partnership working.

The 2011 Shropshire Compact Award recognises the pioneering Bulky Household Waste Collection Scheme, which is delivered by social enterprises, South Shropshire Furniture Scheme and Shropshire Housing Alliance as a not-for-profit operation.

The scheme employs a wide range of volunteers and people disadvantaged in the labour market who gain valuable training and work experience working alongside professional staff to collect unwanted household items from residents in Shropshire.

Wherever possible the items are repaired and reused and sold on to less well-off households in Shropshire, which has a huge socio-economic benefit for the county as well as protecting the environment.


Jean Jarvis, MBE, Chief Executive of South Shropshire Furniture Scheme, said:


“We’ve worked hard to be in a position to work alongside such a large corporation as Veolia, and Shropshire Council supported us in our aim to service a contract on this scale. It is indeed a great example of partnership working and it has been held up nationally for this reason.”

Food for Life Partnership wins prestigious BBC Award

The Food for Life Partnership (which has been active in Shropshire schools alongside Shropshire Master Composter volunteers) has been awarded the prestigious BBC Radio 4 Derek Cooper Award. The award recognises "unsung heroes, whose work has increased our access to, and knowledge and appreciation of, good food".

Award ceremony host Sheila Dillon, presenter of The Food Programme, has described the Food for Life Partnership as "the most important food project in Europe”. She commented: "For years, for decades, we've been looking for this golden way of changing attitudes to food. The Food for Life Partnership has changed things. You've seen the evidence, it's remarkable. It seems to me that if we lost what the Food for Life Partnership has achieved it would not only be a disaster for the schools and the children, it would be a disaster for the entire British society".

Emma Noble, co-director of the Food for Life Partnership, collected the award saying:

“I am delighted to accept this award on behalf of the Food for Life Partnership and the 4,200 schools and communities across England who are working hard to transform their food culture. This is a fantastic opportunity to celebrate impact the Food for Life Partnership is having. We know that children are eating more fruit and veg as a result; that the programme helps ‘close the gap’ in health and academic attainment between disadvantaged children and their peers; schools show a significant increase in free school meal uptake which is crucial in encouraging healthy eating habits; and twice as many primary schools received an Outstanding Ofsted rating after working with the Food for Life Partnership.”

Shropshire scoops top award

A day service for adults with learning disabilities has won a prestigious national award for their community recycling activities.  Shropshire Council’s Oak Farm, won The Community Recycling Champion, at the prestigious national 2011 Chartered Institute of Waste Management Awards for Environmental Excellence.

The group were presented with a trophy by TV celebrity Alistair McGowan, who praised the waste sector for the work it does in reducing society’s environmental impact and raising awareness.

Oak Farm in Ditton Priors is a busy farm run by people with learning disabilities. Everyone is involved in looking after animals, and growing and selling home grown produce.  The farm champions local recycling by enthusiastically encouraging villagers to compost at home or via their community composting scheme, and looks after the village’s recycling banks.

Councillor Steve Charmley, Cabinet member covering disability, said:

“This is brilliant news for Oak Farm who have demonstrated a very innovative and sustainable way of supporting their local community in disposing their recyclable waste. I am so glad Oak Farm have won this prestigious award and congratulate everyone for their hard work.”

Cae Post MRF visit

Around 18 volunteers from Shropshire Master Composters recently attended a wonderful recycling scheme on the Shropshire-Wales border to find out all about how waste can be recycled.  The Cae Post project in Trewern near Shrewsbury is a social enterprise which employs adults with learning difficulties to help sort through recycling.

The scheme which is a registered charity as well as a limited company is currently sub-contracted to Veolia to provide over a dozen public recycling skips for plastic bottles at a variety of community venues around Shropshire such as supermarkets and village halls.  The plastic bottles they collect get taken back to their Materials Recycling Centre (MRF) in Trewern to be sorted mechanically, magnetically and in part by hand into their different polymer types.

The mixed plastic bottles from Shropshire households are (along with plastic bottles, cans, paper and cardboard collected from rural parts of Montgomeryshire) passed over a complex series of conveyor belts.

Overhead magnets automatically remove the ferrous cans and the plastic bottles get sorted by trained staff based on the type of plastic they are made from.



It all creates worthwhile employment for people who would otherwise struggle to find employment whilst at the same time keeping waste out of landfill.  Of course it also creates a high quality end product, as seen here, huge bales of plastic bottles and cans which is no longer seen as a useless pile of waste but a resource material which can be sold on to industry.









All the volunteers were impressed by the staff and volunteers at this wonderful project.  A big thank you to them for their hospitality in facilitating our study tour.  For more information on Cae Post visit www.caepost.co.uk

Candles landfill site visit

Volunteers from Shropshire Master Composters have been on a fact finding tour to find out where rubbish collected from homes all over Shropshire ends up.  We were kindly taken on a trip out to Little Wenlock near Telford to look at Veolias Candles Landfill site. 

The vast (19 ha.) site has been operating since 1997.  It includes both conventional and hazardous waste disposal cells and accepts mainly commercial and industrial wastes - more than 100,000 tonnes a year from around Shropshire, Telford and the Black Country areas.  In more recent years it has also become the main disposal site for about 75,000 tonnes a year of black bag rubbish from Shropshire Council.

One of the key environmental problems with a landfill site is leachate - all that rubbish rots and it gets rained on and you end up with a dirty liquid which also picks up traces of nasty pollutants present in the rubbish (like heavy metals) so it has to be controlled.  One of the green initiatives at this site is that they have their own on-site leachate treatment system.

This plant can treat 300,000 Litres of leachate per day.  The first treatment is to pass it through a sand based filter just to physically remove any suspended matter. It also gets passed through Granular Activated Carbon (GAC) to remove pollutants from the leachate.

The system not only reduces the pollution to the point that the remaining liquid can be safely discharged to the sewer for aerobic treatment but it also recycles the ammonia into a useful product (which can be used in combustion plant to reduce NOx pollution). The amonnia is removed via a process called air stripping - which is basically agitation of the water to increase the area of air to water contact. 

The landfill site also generates methane gas from the rotting rubbish.   As part of their efforts to stop this methane escaping into the environment (where it is a powerful greenhouse gas) the firm have installed a gas driven engine to generate electricity from this gas instead - it generates enough power for about 1,000 homes each year. 

Whilst we were visiting a truck arrived from Shropshire Council delivering about 40 tonnes of compacted rubbish - this happens several times a day.  It really helps to put the scale of our waste generation into context to see that amount of rubbish all just being buried.  

Despite the huge efforts put into environmental initiatives on the site, we all came away motivated to recycle and compost more and get others to do the same.  Whilst landfill will always have a role for safe and secure management of some types of non-recyclable wastes continuing to rely on landfill to the scale we do in the longer term is unsustainable and has to come to an end.

Hopefully we are now all in a position to understand the issues around landfill sites more now and help to communicate to the public why landfill is considered the least desirable option for managing our waste.  A big thanks to all the team at Veolia for arranging the visit.

Getting schools composting

Our experts at Garden Organic have developed a pilot project which involved placing in-vessel compost systems into seven schools. The general consensus is that the project has been very successful in diverting waste and getting more schools excited about compost. So if you know a school who might want to take composting on to the next level read on.


There are a few things that should be considered initially:


• for it to be successful there should be a dedicated member of staff, who can give regular commitment, plus preferably some pupil involvement.


• consider how much waste your school produces to find out which system will work best for you.


• some form of back up support needs to be provided – of course this could be their friendly local Master Composter!


• build in time during the planning stage for legislation difficulties & paperwork.

The schools, we got to take part, generally all loaded the systems on a daily basis, which took approximately 10-15minutes including the recording of data. Most schools included cooked and uncooked food, which was balanced with browns, usually in the form of wood pellets. A 50:50 or 60:40 mix of greens and browns, as you would all expect with home composting, resulted in an end product which was fresh smelling and a little dry and woody. The resulting compost does seem to appear a little woodier than you would expect from a home composting system, but most of the schools were happy with it and intended to use it as a mulch or soil conditioner.

Pupils were interested and keen to be involved and the teachers felt there was an educational value in understanding composting and its impact. The catering staff were also fully supportive. They found it quick and easy to use.  Schools generally felt that the financial saving of using the in-vessel system was insignificant, but they all felt the great benefit was in reducing landfill, being more sustainable and providing free compost for the garden.


So if you are considering a composting solution for a school, there is now a rich vein of experience anbd knowledge at Garden Organic so if want to know more feel free to drop them an email at: jgriffiths@gardenorganic.org.uk

Green groups call for Peat Tax

Green groups have urged the Government to slap a £1-per bag tax on peat-based compost in the Budget on 23 March. 

Wildlife and conservation groups say peat bogs dug up for compost are responsible for 630,000 tonnes of carbon emissions every year.  As such the RSPB, Wildlife Trusts, Plantlife, Butterfly Conservation, the Irish Peatland Conservation Council, Buglife and Vital Earth are calling on chancellor George Osborne to introduce a peat tax.

RSPB conservation director Mark Avery said: “It’s incredible that a product as environmentally-damaging as peat is still being widely consumed in the UK.

“We have got rid of lead in our petrol, CFCs in aerosols and DDT in the countryside – so why is this dinosaur industry still lumbering along, causing damage to our environment?”

The Government has set a voluntary target to phase peat out by 2020. However, a report by the RSPB claims “it’s not strong enough or quick enough to make a real difference”.

Community composting in Shropshire

Shropshire Council’s Oak Farm in Ditton Priors is one of 16 council services in the country who applied for the Best Partnership Award in the Local Authority Recycling Advisory Committee (LARAC) 2011 celebration awards, and everyone at Oak Farm is delighted that they have now reached the final three. The awards recognise the dedication, success and achievements of council recycling officers and their teams and partners.

The day service has been shortlisted under the category Best Partnership Award for their Oak Farm community composting scheme. The strength and success of the project is due to the way in which the local community and the farm have worked closely together from the start to produce a project that has many benefits which include:

•a more local solution for green waste

•good quality compost for the farm

•an opportunity for Oak Farm workers to get together with locals
•a reduction in the village’s carbon footprint


Oak Farm provides training in agriculture and horticulture for adults with learning disabilities. It’s a busy place where everyone is involved in growing and selling produce, looking after animals, selling eggs and of course, running a community composting scheme for the local village.  In addition to this everyone in the village can bring their green waste in by car or wheelbarrow where it will be offloaded, shredded, turned and then used as compost on the farm.

click here to see behind the scenes at Oak Farm Community Composting scheme

Bridgnorth furniture recycling

For people who like to be frugal there is nothing more disheartening that looking at the skip loads of perfectly decent household goods which get dumped into landfill every year.  It seems crazy to see fully functional items going to waste, when for many, items like microwaves and TV's are financially out of reach.

Well, it doesn't have to be this way.  There is a great little project in Bridgnorth trying to help solve this by linking up with poorer households who will make use of unwanted items.  It all began 5 years ago when entrepreneur Andy Smith starting offering house clearances, working out of a cattle shed on his fathers farm, with just a second hand Luton van.

It has since (through a combination of sheer hard graft, EU social funding, lottery grants, sale of scrap metal and other recycling, earnings from the sale of second hand goods and support from the Councils Waste Management team) evolved into a successful business which provides training and volunteering for the unemployed alongside paid employees.

They now trade as BDFS CIC - the CIC means 'community interest company' so there's no shareholders.  So whilst the company can trade and make profit, no profit can be taken out of the company and distributed as dividends.  So any surplus is reinvested back into the company and this in turn helps do more training and volunteering and more reuse and recycling of unwanted goods.   

Above is the vehicle used to collect unwanted items from all over Bridgnorth and Wyre Forest area.   All items are given a basic check to ensure they are safe, clean and functional before being sold at rock bottom prices to people on low incomes. Its a real Aladdin's Cave in their furniture shop (see below).   It's unbelievable is to think that much of this stuff would have ended in landfill.

It comes as no surprise when youth unemployment and landfill costs are both spiralling out of control that a project which deals with both is seen as really quite a good idea.  So the scheme is enthusiastically supported by many organisations who recently gathered to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the project.  We were very lucky on the day to be joined by a local VIP in the shape of Member of Parliament, Philip Dunne. 

Operations Manager for BDFS, Christina Wang showed us around the site, on Stanmore Industrial Estate which acts as their all in one depot, warehouse, training centre, repair workshop and retail unit.  A big thank you to all the councillors and volunteers who came along on the day to lend their support.

Of course if we want to see more of this happening, then its not enough just to do the right thing with your waste, we all need to make more of an effort to buy second hand goods where ever we can.

Ludlow Green Fayre 2011

Volunteers from Shropshire Master Composters spent this weekend at the Ludlow Green Fayre helping to raise awareness of home composting and recycling.   This is an annual event which brings together much of the environmental community in Shropshire and highlights the work which is going on to help keep the place clean and green.

The whole town square was packed out with market stalls displaying everything from photo-voltaic cells to bicycle paneers and local food.  There was willow weaving, music, belly dancing, and even a live 'Grand Designs' style show where local expert Colin Richards, a small building in the Square out of recycled plastic bottles and rubber tyres.

A huge thanks to all the volunteers who gave up their time to make the day possible and hopefully its helped to get the message out to the wider public, we need you to recycle and compost more, for the sake of our economy and the planet.

Waste Collections - Aug Bank Holiday 2011

Due to the bank holiday on Monday, 29th August 2011 the bin men will have a day off - so there will be no waste collections made on this day.  As a result all the garden waste, recycling and rubbish collections across the whole of Shropshire are a day later than usual all week. 

All this is made clear on the calendars you get from the Council, but if you're not sure check out this link to check out when your next waste collection takes place   http://shropshire.gov.uk/waste/binday/

Reusing plastic bottle tops!

We often get asked about plastic - its the bane of a waste managers life! Thankfully the Council are now collecting plastic bottles for recycling in Shropshire, but they dont want the lids! This means literally MILLIONS of plastic lids have to go landfill every year.


Well I’ve just been sent this useful tip for re-using the lids from plastic bottles – it saves them from going in your bin and gives them another life, it will also save you from having to buy bag clips …


Make an incision and using a pair of scissors cut the plastic bottle RIGHT AT the NECK.

Then you just simply have to stick a plastic bag through the NECK of the bottle which you have just cut off.  Screw cap back on for a perfect seal!

Clever hey?

The rest of the plastic bottle can be recycled as normal with your plastic bottles, its just the lids they wont collect.

Composting Safety Video

Waste Management experts Viridor have launched a new film to help improve health and safety at composting sites.


Designed for people who work on either in-vessel or windrow composting facilities, the film provides the information needed to comply with Health and Safety Executive guidelines and manage the risks of working with these processes. The film covers areas such as personal protective equipment; working with machinery, confined spaces and workplace transport in a composting environment.


Alan Cook, Viridor's health and safety advisor in the South East, said: "We have also developed a multi-choice test to reaffirm the key learning points from the film to ensure operatives have understood the information. The test and marking guide are available to download for use or to use as templates to create your own. We're really pleased to have support from the Association for Organics Recycling (AfoR) and the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) for the film, and to be able to share health and safety advice across the sector.”


You can access the film and tests at www.viridor.co.uk/compostingsafety

Bowbrook allotments wins award

Volunteers from Bowbrook Allotments in Shrewsbury have been invited to the Shrewsbury Flower Show to receive an award for the allotment site. Chris Beardshaw, author, broadcaster and TV gardener presented me, on behalf of our allotment site, with the award for “Shropshire’s Best Community Garden”.

The site is an exemplar for composting with every plot supplied with a free compost bin by the local Council to encourage people to reduce waste and practice organic gardening techniques. 

Clun Carnival 2011

Volunteers from Shropshire Master Composters attended the Clun Carnival this weekend to promote home composting. This was the first time we have attended this particular event but I think we would definately consider going again in future years as (partly due to lovely weather) the turnout was very high and everyone seemed in good spirits and interested to find out more about composting and particularly wormeries seemed to generate alot of queries. A big thanks to Mike and Sue, two new volunteers from south shropshire who organised and attended this show for us.

Burwarton Show 2011

Volunteers from Shropshire Master Composters have been out and about promoting composting and recycling at this years Burwarton Show near Bridgnorth.

Despite the inclement weather, thousands turned out to see the show and we spoke to almost 300 people about how they could be greener with their waste. A big thanks to all the volunteers and staff from Shropshire Council and Veolia who helped to make the whole day such a success.

Shropshire Matress recycling firm expanding

A Shropshire company which describes itself as the ‘largest independent national mattress recycler in the UK’ has announced plans to significantly expand its network of mattress recycling centres in response to growing demand for the service.


Shropshire-based JBS Fibre Recovery Ltd - which is part of the JBS Group which also includes JBS Waste Management - opened its first mattress recycling facility earlier this year in Telford. And, over the last three months, the company says it has recycled 14,000 mattresses at the site, diverting 600 tonnes of waste from landfill. It counts the likes of the John Lewis Partnership, IKEA and local authorities among its customers.


The team at Shropshire-based JBS Fibre RecoveryNow, the company has opened another mattress recycling centre in Milton Keynes with the capacity to handle 300,000 mattresses a year and is planning to open another in Bradford in October, followed by even more plants in future months.


John Neill, director of JBS Fibre Recovery Ltd, explained: “We are absolutely delighted with our recent round of successes. Thanks to our Telford centre, over 600 tonnes of waste have already been diverted from landfill in the last three months, an achievement that surpassed even our own high expectations. The massive growth of the Telford site highlighted the need for a much greater number of dedicated mattress recycling plants across the country, and urged us to bring forward our plans for new regional hubs UK-wide.


It is estimated in the UK over six million mattresses are disposed of per year with the figure in the USA exceeding 30 million. Many recycling centres are unable to process waste mattresses because they are made from a range of components including metal, fabrics, and foam, meaning that they are often sent to landfill.


JBS Fibre Recovery Ltd’s claims to recycle, reuse or send to energy recovery all materials extracted from the mattresses it handles.

Wem Sweet Pea Show 2011

 
Volunteers from Shropshire Master Composters have been spreading the word about waste prevention in north Shropshire. 

Wem is known as the place where the Sweet Peas come from because of local man Henry Eckford, who first cross bred and developed the Sweet Pea.  Henry Eckford was a Fellow of the Royal Horticultural Society and for his efforts in developing one of the most wonderful garden plants he was given the Victoria Medal of Honour of the society.

The National Sweet Pea Society joins the Eckford Sweet Pea Society in celebrating its Annual Sweet Pea Festival.  The festival in July 2011 was held at The Thomas Adams Stanier Hall and in a large marquee on High Street, Wem and was attended by several hundred people.  Over the course of the day the volunteers spoke to people about how composting can improve crop yields and complement growing schemes by providing you with a free supply of soil improver.

Local AD plant recycling food waste

4Recycling Ltd, part of the 4R Group, has recently been awarded a three year contract by Biffa Waste Services to recycle digestate from a new state-of-the-art 120,000 tonne per annum capacity Anaerobic Digestion facility recently opened at Poplars, near Cannock in Staffordshire.


The contract will require them to source local farmland around Shropshire and Staffordshire to spread the compost like output on and arrange haulage. This is absolutely intergral to making sure that food waste collected from businesses and households around the West Midlands area gets recycled.


Mike Holt, Managing Director of the 4R Group, comments: "We are really pleased to be supporting Biffa on this important contract. Our team of Soil Scientists and Operational staff have decades of experience in developing recycling outlets for organic materials, delivering huge carbon savings by substituting out fossil-derived fertilizers in agriculture or bringing brownfield land back into productive use.


He added "4R Group technicians are continually working with clients to develop value added fertiliser replacements which are then marketed through the 4R Products business. This is an essential activity given the Government's focus on delivering a zero waste economy – developing markets for these products will be a key test for the Coalition.”


Production of digestate from the Poplars contract to PAS 110 standard is likely to commence in mid to late 2011 and 4Recycling Ltd will provide a complete technical, transport and recycling service for both solids and liquids working with local contractors and landowners to provide a continuous service for the plant.

Carbon-14 approval for EfW

Gasification, pyrolysis, incinerators and other energy-from-waste facilities using CHP are set to find it easier to claim ROCs after a simpler way of establishing the renewable content of the energy they produce was approved by Ofgem.

Up until now, very few operators of facilities which convert mixed waste streams into electricity have been able to qualify for Renewables Obligation Certificate (ROCs) support because it is difficult to determine how much of the energy is renewable. This has involved testing samples of the waste in laboratories to determine its biodegradable fraction in a process known as ‘dissolution'


Because of the difficulty of this approach, one of the only companies to successfully claim ROCs for an energy-from-waste plant to date has been Energos for its Isle of Wight gasification facility, which starting receiving ROCs in late 2010.

However, now the energy regulator has said that it is "prepared to consider Fuel Measurement and Sampling procedures that propose to use the carbon-14 technique”. This technique, which is similar to carbon dating, allows operators to test the emissions from their installations rather than the waste itself to determine the renewable content of the energy produced.

Recently living material contains a much higher proportion of carbon-14 isotopes so, by measuring the ratio of fossil carbon-12 to the amount of carbon-14, the proportion of the energy which is renewable can be determined.

The move comes after an independent report commissioned by Ofgem and another commissioned by members of the Renewable Energy Association found that results from using the technique "would be at least as accurate as the existing sampling methods used”.Ofgem stressed that, as always,all sampling proposals will be considered and agreed on a case-by-case basis.

Richard Bellingham, manager of renewables: biomass, waste and co-firing at Ofgem, said: "We see the potential for the carbon-14 technique as a positive step in terms of recognising a new method for generators to consider when setting about making an application for accreditation to us”.


Tony Grimshaw, technical director of Energos, sits on the sub-group of the Renewable Energy Association, which has been lobbying Ofgem to accept the carbon-14 technique. He explained that there were advantages in being able to sample flue gas over solid waste and that the move by Ofgem was welcome.

Bowbrook Allotments Open Day 2012

Bowbrook Allotment Community

Mytton Oak Road,  Shrewsbury,  Shropshire,  SY3 5BT

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Opening dates and times:Sun 15 July (1-5)
Admission:Combined adm £3, chd free

Facilities:

Refreshments:Tea
Contact:n/a
Postcode:SY3 5BT

Location:½m from Royal Shrewsbury Hospital. 
From A5 Shrewsbury bypass take B4386 following signs for hospital. Allotments situated ½m along B4386. (Mytton Oak Rd) on R
click here for a map
Website:www.bowbrookallotments.co.uk

Description:The 4-acre site which opened in Spring 2009 has 68 productive plots displaying wide-ranging cultivation methods. Organic techniques incl companion planting and attracting natural predators are encouraged. Green spaces throughout the site are designed to attract wildlife and encourage community involvement. Nest boxes, bat boxes and insect shelters abound. The site features an interest trail, 2 orchards, picnic area, wild flowers, wildlife areas and ‘Gardens of the Seasons’. Local environmental groups and schools welcomed. The community has a website(see above) and regular newsletters for members. Children enjoy the trail, willow den and tunnel, turf maze and sensory garden. The site boasts a compost toilet and information hut. Surplus produce is delivered weekly to the local hospice
Displays by Shropshire Wildlife Trust, Shropshire Masters Composters, Shropshire Hardy Plant Society. Children's quiz sheets

In the press:Featured in Shropshire Life magazine, Natural England Big Wildlife Garden Gold Award, RHS "Its your Neighbourhood" Level 5 (outstanding)

A big thanks to the volunteers who helped organise the event and the shropshire master composter volutneers who did the composting display

New Recycling Centre for Bridgnorth

The residents of Bridgnorth can look forward to better recycling facilities following the approval of the planning application for a new recycling centre on Faraday Drive just on the outskirts of the town of Bridgnorth. The intergrated site will house a recycling centre, transfer station and transport depot.


The £2m development will be financee on a long term basis by Shropshire Council under its private finance initiative backed contract with Veolia Environmental Services (UK) Ltd. The site will be used as an operating base from which to operate the household waste collection service (which is also contracted to Veolia) and also Shropshire Councils street cleansing and grounds maintenence operations.


Donald Macphail, Managing Director for Veolia Shropshire said of the decision: “We are delighted that the application for this much needed facility has been approved today. The facility will mean that the residents of Bridgnorth can enjoy the same level of facilities and services as the rest of the county. I am aware that some local residents are not happy with the plans for the new facility and we hope to work with them during the construction and operational phase, and reassure residents of any concerns they have.”


The new facility at Faraday Drive is due to be operational by the end of 2011 and once its ready this will allow the introduction of a kerbside recycling collection for plastic bottles across the whole of the Bridgnorth district for the first time.

Call to recycle (or compost) your Argos Catelogue

Residents in Shropshire, Telford & Wrekin are being encouraged to help reduce waste to landfill by recycling their old Argos catalogues, when the new one is launched in July 2011.


It is estimated that there are over 36 million Argos catalogues in circulation across the country, each weighing 2kg each – a combined weight equivalent to more than 10,000 double decker buses!!!!


In Shropshire, people can recycle old and unwanted Argos catalogues in their kerbside collection box with their paper. They also compost down well eventually but you may need to tear them up a bit first.

Councillor John Hurst-Knight, Shropshire Council’s Cabinet member with responsibility for recycling and composting, said:


“By recycling old Argos catalogues, people can play a big part in reducing the amount that is sent to landfill. I hope that when people pick up their new catalogue they will remember to recycle their old one.”


All Argos catalogues collected in Shropshire will be sent to the UPM paper mill at Shotton, Deeside where they are turned into newsprint paper and used to make newspapers.

New Community Garden launched

Alot of local volunteers have been celebrating with mid Wales charity Cwm Harry Land Trust having created an abundant organic garden on a disused piece of derelict land on a light industrial estate.  This has all been created with next to no funding and using compost made from waste food collected from businesses across Wales! 

The vast majority of the project was designed and built voluntary labour. The garden was designed by a group of permaculture students studying a Permaculture Design Course with Shropshire social enterprise Sector39.

The aim was about trying to demonstrate that permaculture principles will work anywhere and can create abundance in the most unlikely of situations. 

In our first year they used 1,300 hours of donated labour to develop the garden, which now also hosts 20 micro-allotments plots, managed by local care groups, apprentice gardeners and gardening enthusiasts.

Its open to the public 10.00 to 4.00 pm every Wednesday, Cwm Harry Land Trust Vastre Estate, Newtown, Powys, SY16 1DZ. So get yourselves down there some time!

Funding for Rewarding Recyclers

Innovative ways of boosting recycling rates and rewarding people for doing the right thing are to be given a ‘Dragon’s Den-style’ kick start under plans outlined on Friday by recycling minister Lord Henley.

As announced in the Government’s waste review, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) will provide up to £2 million over the next three years to help fund local projects that look into fresh ways to help people recycle more and produce less waste. 

Community groups, charities and local authorities can bid for a share of the first £500,000 of funding until 26 July 2011, and Defra will begin advising successful applicants from 16 August. Funding will only be allocated to what Defra called ‘genuinely innovative projects that reward or recognise individuals or communities’, and are tailored to local situations and different collection systems and housing types.

Recycling minister Lord Henley said: “People want to do the right thing and recycle more – and local communities know what’s best to make this happen. I want to tap into the ideas from the best and brightest local entrepreneurs and organisations to develop exciting and innovative new ways to boost our recycling rates even further.”

Do you want up to 150 FREE trees?

Do you want up to 150 FREE trees?

It could form the basis of a community project, a day of action to encourage volunteering or a community clean up.  It might be a good chance to use your composting skills to develop a community garden scheme or tidy up an area of waste land.  It may be helpful to spruce up a community building or help an old peoples home improve their grounds.

The Shropshire Community Tree Scheme is simple and free.  It aims to support tree planting in Shropshire. It enables parish tree wardens, schools, environmental and community groups, Parish and Town Councils, farmers and landowners to apply for native trees and shrubs free of charge. In fact the scheme is open to anyone who wants to plant trees in a location where they will be readily visible to the public and enhance the landscape and character of the area.

The trees that we supply are usually small bare-rooted transplants, between 40 and 90cm tall. Rabbit spirals and canes can also be included to help protect against damage from rabbits and field voles, which could otherwise eat the foliage and gnaw the stems of the young trees.

You can apply online simply by clicking here

They can post them out or arrange a convenient pick up spot for you to collect them.

World Worm Charming Championship

As many of the Shropshire Master Composter volunteers are enthusiastic about worms you will be delighted to hear that the 32nd Annual World Worm Charming Championship is to be held at 2pm on Saturday 25th June 2011 just up the road in Willaston, Cheshire.

The event features entertainment, music, food and drink alongside a huge range of worm related activities for all ages.



To find out more or get involved visit http://www.wormcharming.com/

Parish Council to debate Telford In-vessel Composting facility

Plans for a giant composting plant near Telford which would process up to 64,000 tonnes of waste each year and reduce landfill are to go before parish Councillors.   Veolia Environmental Services want to build the plant next to Granville Community Recycling Centre in Grange Lane, Donnington Wood.

Local Parish Councils have organised a public meeting to debate the planning application.   The facility, if given planning permission by Telford & Wrekin Council would be up and running by 2013. 

Cat Slaytor, spokeswoman for Veolia said "We dont have a date for its opening yet but it will be 16 weeks before the planning department hears the application, then assuming we get permission we will go out to tender for contractors.  The final opening will be in mid-2013, we think."

The new plant would create six full time posts (as well as numerous construction jobs during the building phase).  The completed facility would include eight tunnels which would be made on reinforced concrete.  Each would be five meters high and together the site would be able to compost up to 64,000 tonnes per annum of mixed garden waste, food waste and cardboard.   It is anticipated that about 50,000 tonnes would come from Shropshire Council and the remainder would be allocated for waste collected by Telford & Wrekin Council or commercial sources.

New Recycling Plant in Telford

Environmental consultancy JBS Recovery has invested £500,000 into the first of 10 dedicated mattress recycling facilities it plans to open as it aims to divert over a million mattresses from landfill by 2012.

The new facility at Stafford Park in Telford, Shropshire, enables mattresses to be split down into five separate components: fabric, polyurethane foam, metal springs, flock, and the base. Each of the first four components is fully recyclable, and although the base – usually comprising of some form of coconut matting – cannot be recycled because it is so low-grade, the material can still be used to generate energy from waste by the process of anaerobic digestion, eliminating the need to send any part of the mattress to landfill.

The Shropshire-based company has already recycled 180,000 mattresses since it started recycling them 12 months ago.

John Neill, director of JBS Fibre Recovery, said: “This fantastic new facility gives us the additional capacity to work alongside stakeholders including Wolverhampton city council, Telford and Wrekin council, major retailers such as John Lewis, bed manufacturing companies, and the general public to significantly slash waste and reduce our dependence on sending materials to landfill.”

Families find out about food waste

Families with children under five in south Shropshire can find out how to save money and have fun with food this half-term.  To celebrate National Family Week, the Surestarts in South Shropshire are staging special "Love Food Hate Waste" workshops.  The workshops are free and will advise parents and carers on how best to store food to get the most out of it, and help find ways of save up to £50 a month on your grocery bill.


The Love Food Hate Waste sessions have been set up to give parents the knowledge and skills which they can share through fun activities with their children.  The workshops include practical demonstrations, handy hints and tips, recipes, advice on shopping and meal planning, ideas for 'recycling' leftovers, and advice on how to store food to last longer.

Love Food Hate Food Events in south Shropshire will be held on:

Tuesday 31 May 2011

• Sure Start Children’s Centre, Albrighton school from 1pm to 3pm
• The Café at The Foyer, Marstons Mill, Portcullis Lane, Ludlow, from 1pm to 3pm 

Wednesday 1 June 2011

• Highley Severn Centre, Bridgnorth Road,  from 9.30am – 11.30am
• Sure Start Children’s Centre, St Mary’s Bluecoat CE Primary School, The Grove, Bridgnorth from 1 pm – 3pm

 Thursday 2 June 2011

• Sure Start Children’s Centre, Bishop’s Castle Primary School, Oak Meadow from 9.30am to 11.30am
• Sure Start Children’s Centre, Stokesay Primary School, Meadow Street, Craven Arms from 1pm – 3pm

Friday 3 June

• Broseley Methodist Church, Duke Street from 9.30am 11.30am

Shropshire Councillor Aggie Caesar-Homden, who is responsible for Sure Start centres in the county said:

“Our busy lifestyles can often leave us with little time for family life and to shop wisely and prepare fresh food.  So to mark National Family Week I want to encourage parents and carers to take part in these Love Food Hate Waste Workshops.  I hope they will gain lots of useful hints and tips and a great deal of fun from these sessions, and share their experience at home with their children.”

Free crèches will be available at each centre.  For more information about these events and to book a place for you and your child, call 01694 723465

Sutton Farm Community Cafe

Some volunteers from Shropshire Master Composters have been helping to teach residents around Sutton Farm in Shrewsbury all about home composting.  We took along our display of home composting bins and some compost and worms and gave a talk about the basics of how to compost, and what types of material work best for home composting.   Around 25 people turned up for the talk which went down very well with the enthusiastic audience.

Sutton Farm Community Cafe, is a new initiative, set up by Shropshire Master Composter volunteer Jean Breakwell.  The aim is to help bring residents together for a cuppa, a chat and slice of (yummy!) cake.   It takes place every Thursday afternoon at the St. Giles Church Hall, which is on Sutton Way, Shrewsbury, SY2 6EF. 

Fair trade tea and home made cakes are available from 1:30pm-4.30pm.  Alot of residents bring along a book or a paper and just like to catch up with each other.  Many of the residents are enthusiastic knitters and so a bit of a knitting circle has formed around it and so rag rug making, knitting and crochet help is available.  Help with transport may be available on request.  For more information ring 01743-360519.

New IVC planned for North Shropshire

Shropshire Council 's planning committee has just approved plans by a private firm to install a demonstration “in-vessel” composting (IVC) unit at a disused aircraft hangar on Peplow Airfield in the village of Childs Ercall near Market Drayton.
 

Once built the site will be capable of process around 25,000 tonnes per annum of kitchen waste, woodchip, paper/cardboard, garden waste and sewage cake.  Although at present the company behind the plans - In-Vessel Composting Ltd based in Wrexham are planning to use the site as a demonstration plant only.

It will process de minimus quantities of waste which will be sourced independantly from commercial sources but their main aim is for the site to act as a show room, demonstrating their innovative rotary steel drums which can be used to process mixed organic waste in controlled conditions.  The steel composting drums are available in a range of sizes to suit everyone from a small school or hospital right up to industrial scale commercial composting operations.  

Electrically powered versions of the unit which add heat to guarentee composting is compliant with the Animal Byproduct Regulations are also available.

Despite some local opposition the plan was recommended for approval and construction can now proceed subject to the neccessary permitting being approved.

Master Composter Training 2011

We have just recruited another 20 volunteers to the Shropshire Master Composters network.

This is fantastic news which will allow us to really expand the reach of our community engagement programme and hopefully get more people in Shropshire into home composting as a cost effective and green way to manage your own household waste as well as helping to make your garden beautiful.

Our training involved a day in Shropshire hosted by the Shropshire Wildlife Trust and the second day was hosted by Garden Organic at their HQ near Coventry. 

We got alot of technical instruction and interesting talks about waste management, bacteria, fungi and minibeasts in your compost heap, what to compost and what not to compost and how to engage with the public about these issues.  We also did a site visit to the Councils farm near Shrewsbury where they compost garden waste on an industrial scale. 

We also played the Compost Game - see below...

We also had a tour of the Garden Organic composting area to learn about various different systems for home composting... 

Gary from Garden Organic showed us how to build your own New Zealand Box style composter from old wooden pallets.

We learned all about how to make leaf mould...

We learned about "food waste digestors" like the Green cone system.

We also got shown about sealed units which can rotate like the "compost tumbler" below.  These can be used to accelerate the composting process.

And of course the bog standard "darlek" type compost bins like the Council sell which are simple but effective.

We even learned about using food waste in a bean trench.

We got very excited about wormeries! These are great for dealing with cooked food waste which you wouldnt normally want to put into a home compost bin.

We also learned about how to use Comfrey, that wonderful plant, to make an accelerator for your compost bin.  You can also stew up this kind of comfrey soup to use as a direct fertiliser.

All the volunteers found it very inspirational, even the dog!

A big thanks to all the staff from Shropshire Council, Veolia, Shropshire Wildlife Trust and Garden Organic who gave up their weekend to get us all enthused and confident to go forth into our communities and talk to people about composting.