Composting Pumpkins this Haloween

Are you one of those people that let your Halloween pumpkin rot on the side and then just end up throwing it away? Why not make the soil and the planet happy this year and compost that Halloween pumpkin? By composting it, your pumpkin will not be added to the waste at the local landfill.


Here's how to have fun smashing pumpkins and then recycling them.

1. Remove the Insides

If you want to really reduce waste make sure you use up all the flesh from the pumpkin for delicious soup first, and you can even remove the seeds for roasting.

For a carved pumpkin, remove any candles or wax from the inside of the pumpkin as these wont compost down!

2. Smashing Pumpkins

This is the fun part, smashing pumpkins. Literally.  Go ahead and have some fun with smashing pumpkins. They will turn into a nice mushy orange mess, but its really worth doing if you can because it speeds up the rotting process because this will open them up to the air and to the bacteria and other organisms who will help with the composting process.

3. Find a quiet corner in the garden

Find a place in the back garden with access to the ground where you can make a pile of natural materials like leaves and smashed pumpkins.

4. Add Leaves

The pumpkin will compost nicely of its own accord but its better when added to some fallen leaves, or other autumnal garden waste which are probably all over your garden right now.

5.  Sit back, relax, eat your pumpkin soup and just let nature do all the work

The easiest type of composting is called "passive composting." This is when you just let nature, and the worms, do the work. There is no need to check on the compost, or to mix it up, or do add anything but natural materials to it.  Come back in six to eight months time and your pile will be about a third of the size and starting to become nice earthy brown compost.

It couldnt be easier.  For more tips visit www.homecomposting.org.uk or www.shropshire.getcomposting.com

Metal Matters

Metal packaging is 100% recyclable. Not just once: It can be recycled over and over again, into a huge variety of products. Every time it is recycled it saves naturl resources, energy and cuts greenhouse gas emissions. Best of all, it doesn't take a lot of effort on your part to make a big difference.

Evidence from around Shropshire shows that over 75% of residents are joining in with the recycling collections but most people arent making full use of the system. For example we get alot of drinks cans put out for recycling, but much less food tins (which require additional effort in terms of cleansing) and there appears to be limited awareness that people can add things like aerosol cans, metal foil packaging e.g. foil trays from pies and quiches and tin foil as well.

But it's really important that we recycle every last scrap of metal, because all metal is precious. Metal recycling is one the most environmentally beneficial bits of recycling you can do. If you put just two extra metal cans in your recycling box you'll save enough energy to power your TV set for 12 hours!

Just drop your cans, aerosols, tins and foil in the recycling box- not the rubbish bin. It's as easy as that!




Ever wondered what happens to the metal you recycle?




To make collection more efficient for everyone, our metal packaging gets collected mixed with the plastics and so first it has to go to Veolia's Materials Recycling Facility in Wolverhampton to be separated using special magnets. The metal needs further sorting into the steel and aluminium fractions before they can be recycled.

- Steel goes to AGM in South Wales to be melted down in a furnace to make new steel. It goes into a variety of manufacturing processes. It could end up as a steel girder in a building, or a bicycle or a kettle or a washing machine or baked bean tins - the possibilities are endless!

- Aluminium goes to the Novelis closed-loop recycling plant in Cheshire where it is primarily used to make more cans.

All metal is recyclable

...but unfortunately we cannot currently collect it all from the kerbside…

Please dont put metal items like pots and pans, empty paint tins, bikes, garden tools, door handles, nuts and bolts etc. out for collection! You can still recycle them all but you just need to take them up to "the tip" and put them in the scrap metal bay at the Household Recycling Centre. http://www.shropshire.gov.uk/waste.nsf/open/1536bb96cc150f2580257021004523da  

Volunteers help keep Shropshire Tidy

Volunteers from Pride of Place a Ludlow based initiative which aims to keep the town tidy have been getting excellent publicity for their work thanks to their latest recruit young Isla Stewart.  I know their is a strong desire to roll out apprenticeships nationally and so ts great to see them starting early!

Shropshire schools recycling electrical items

Local schools are recycling electrical items as part of a new competition being run by Shropshire Council and their contractor Veolia.  Each school gets a huge pink skip for a week and who ever recycles the most can win a cash prize of £500.  Its all about raising awareness as much as actually recycling old electrical items, like TV's, mobile phones, fridges, laptops, kettles, toasters, torches, alarm clocks, microwaves, computer monitors, cookers and calculators.  So hopefully it will result in more recycling which means less waste to have to end up going into landfill, but its also important in shaping the minds of future citizens of Shropshire, so that they grow up with the right attitude to waste.   

For more information on recycling WEEE (waste electrical and electronic equipment) in Shropshire, visit www.shropshire.gov.uk/weee

Love Food Hate Waste

In the UK we throw away a staggering 7 million tonnes of food every year - most of which could have been eaten! As well as this being a big environmental problem, it costs the average household about £50 a month on their shopping bill!  It's also a double-whammy because burying all this rubbish then ends up costing all Council taxpayers even more money to pay for the landfill disposal charges. 

To help you save money on your shopping Shropshire Master Composters are backing the Love Food Hate Waste campaign. We have been running a localised version of the campaign across Shropshire for a number of years and its already resulted in a big reduction in food being wasted. But there is still too much food being wasted so visit www.lovefoodhatewaste.com for ideas on how you can waste less.

 

Being crafty with your food is the clever way to save those pennies – and it really just means thinking before you throw it.

Hints & Tips

·         Understanding 'use by' dates - you can still eat food after its best before date - it just wont be at its "best" but its still absolutely OK to eat - especially if its being cooked. The only thing you need to be really careful with is eggs.

     ·         Plan your shopping - simple ideas like taking a shopping list potentially leading to    
            big savings.  Try making a meal plan for the week ahead and then only buying what  
            you really need.  It really works - you could save loads.

·         Store it right - knowing the best way to store food to keep it fresher for longer can help save us pounds.  It’s a great investment to have some airtight tupperware storage containers to help fresh food last longer.

·         Portion control - most people end up cooking too much pasta and rice because it expands its easy to misjudge the amount.  A simple tip is to use a mug to measure out your carbs before you cook.  One mug of dry rice feeds 4 people when cooked. 

·         Love your leftovers - It’s amazing how many meals you can get from one chicken! Enjoy a roast on Sunday, the remains make a great curry plus you’ll always find enough spare slices for a sandwich. Also the carcass can also be boiled up for stock and soups. With a little bit of thought, you can create some delicious surprises from your leftovers - they don’t have to mean second best!

·         Cook once, eat twice - a good money saving tip is to cook large amounts of food which can be used again for another meal the next day.  So for example if you're making a tomato sauce for pasta make a big batch up and then use the sauce again for pizza toppings the next day.

·         Befriend your freezer - most food can be kept in the freezer for months to stop it going off.  This is great for bread which freezes well and can be used straight from the freezer for toast.  But did you know you can also freeze milk or even cheese? Try it.

For more helpful tips like this and free recipe suggestions and an excellent on-line portion calculator visit www.lovefoodhatewaste.com

Great tips to ensure you don’t ‘fall’ behind with your composting this autumn

Many of us are missing a trick if we don’t continue to use our compost bin through the colder months as well as during the spring and summer. Adding waste through the cooler weather helps to keep the composting momentum going at a time when decomposition will naturally slow down.

Home composting is easy to do all year round; here are some great tips to ensure we keep a good thing going by not overlooking our compost bin or heap during these cooler, darker months:

• Help next years’ plants grow by making use of this year’s tired vegetation. Adding spent bedding plants to your compost mix will help to capture all the nutrients and will give your new plants a great start when you wake the garden back up in the spring.

• Bring the inside, outside! Half of all our household waste can be composted at home. Anything from loo roll tubes and egg boxes to coffee grounds and tea leaves are all welcome additions to your compost bin.

• Make your compost mixture more a-peel-ing. Don’t forget to regularly add your kitchen waste to your compost. It will really appreciate the peelings from your tasty winter vegetables.

• Give your mix a Christmas present! Many of us will have extra waste over the festive period. Your compost mix will benefit from adding a few of the telltale signs of Christmas; fallen poinsettia leaves, scrunched up wrapping paper, Satsuma peel and egg shells will all be welcome winter additions.

While there are lots of things you can keep adding to your compost, try to avoid the temptation to overfill your compost bin with unwanted surplus fruit and vegetables.  If you only compost vegetable matter it can sometimes go a bit sludgy and wet, so you really need to mix in some drier material like shredded paper and cardboard to help get the mix right.  

For more information visit www.shropshire.getcomposting.com  

Shrewsbury Sew and Social

One of our volunteer Master Composters is not only a wizard in the garden and expert on home composting but is also a bit of a wizard on the sewing machine and ithey're organising sewing classes in St. Giles' Church Hall, Shrewsbury this winter.  Check out the flier below for details.  

Trees seeds and composting

Event day	Sunday
Starts on	07/10/2012
Start time	10:00
End time	12:00
Category	Children's event
Location	Llanymynech, nr Oswestry

Families can join this Owestry Hills Wildlife Watch event for an action-packed morning. Find out about composting, with a Shropshire Master Composter volunteer running workshops and collect acorns, ash keys and other tree seed. Plant them and take home to grow.

£1 per child.

Meet at The Stables in the Llanymynech heritage area at 10am.

Booking essential, ring 01691 828617 

Caring for gods acre

Volunteers from south Shropshire have been helping to maintain local churchyards whilst encouraging wildlife and sustainability in the maintenance of the church estate.

By the end of September 2012 there scheme has involved 48 different volunteers who have been out with the Churchyard Task Team, working in 39 different churchyards around Herefordshire and South Shropshire.

Four of these volunteers have completed over a hundred task days....a total of 602 in all just between them!

The highlights of the summer have included building this wonderful composting area for their local churchyard to manage all the grass cuttings from the graveyard.

Congratulations to the volunteers who show that you can have wonderful gardens whilst protecting the environment and make a fabulous contribution to their local communities by keeping the area clean and green.

Yet another Anaerobic Digestion Plant for Shropshire

Heath Farm Anaerobic Digestion Plant Shropshire

Heath Farm is owned by family partnership Bedstone Growers. The company grows a wide range of soft fruit and vegetables as well as rearing broiler chickens. The company is looking to minimise its carbon footprint and the AD plant will contribute through electricity and heat generation, waste management, biofertiliser application and GHG capture.

This new AD plant is currently under construction and is due to be commissioned in late 2012.  The main feedstock for the plant will be poultry litter with some maize silage too and the plant will produce 250 kW of electricity per hour, 24 hours a day.  The resulting digestate can also be used on the farm as a compost like fertiliser.

The main benefits of the new development will be increased farm income and profitability in particular with the generous subsidies for electricity production from the Feed in Tariffs.  Further benefits included increased fertiliser and waste management efficiency.  Also the annual chicken shed heating costs will be significantly reduced and it is hoped in the longer term that a reduced carbon footprint for the site will help win new business as contracts increasingly specify environmental performance. 

 

Key stats:

• Output: 250kW(e)
• Primary digester = 1800m³
• Digestate Storage Tank = 980m³

Phillip Mann, Partner at Bedstone Growers said "As a family farming partnership looking to build a Biogas plant it was very important that we chose a British engineering company that would provide not only a well-built plant but would also be flexible to our requirements and design it to fit in with our current farming operations.  We are pleased that when built this plant will be easy to maintain, deliver very efficient gas production and with low running costs."