I’ve been heartened by a couple of recent visits to cafes in the town, firstly I think we’re furiously fortunate to live in an area with so many fine cafes, coffee shops and tea-rooms – secondly the amount of times I’ve been presented with cups/bags/spoons which have been deliberately chosen and being used by the owners because of their ability to be composted.
Doesn’t sound much, but when figures from the UK indicate that 25,000 tonnes of waste are created there via the 2.5bn (yeah… billion!) single use coffee cups that are discarded there each year you start to appreciate how much waste is created by our fondness for a latte!
My trip saw me presented with a disposable coffee cup which embellished with its ability to be composted at home, and my tray-bake was in a bag made from rice paper – in turn fully compostable, and it made me smile when the spoon was wooden…. and then it got me thinking about making compost.
Now we’re into grass cutting season, many of us will have a heap of freshly cut grass to find a home for each week (yes, you should be cutting the grass every week and not every fortnight), or as I like to think about it – free fertility.
Your grass has been using its superpower of turning sunshine into energy and you’re just going to hoof it over the fence? Or take it down to the amenity sight?? No, this year you’re going to make some great compost from it. But, you’ll need some ‘Brown’ material to balance up the ‘Green’ of the grass (you’re looking for 2:1 Brown to Green ratio at best) – so perhaps you’re daily coffee cup could mix with your grass, the paper from the shredder at work, the newspapers from the canteen at work?
All this is free fertility, just waiting for you to put them together.
So perhaps much of our ‘rubbish’ is just fertility waiting to be utilised for our garden? And weeds are just compost we haven’t made yet…your choice!
Tags: