Food waste makes up to 30% of our rubbish in the UK – even though food waste can actually be recycled! If your local council offers food waste collections it’s easy to keep food waste out of your rubbish bin. You can usually collect all your unavoidable food waste, such as fruit and vegetable peelings, bones, coffee and tea ground and eggshells in a kitchen caddy before sending this outside on your collection day to be recycled. Make sure you check with your local council to see if you can get your food waste collected and how this process works. If you’ve got a garden, you can compost your food waste alongside garden waste to produce a free, rich fertiliser for your garden. For those of you without a garden or food waste collection service, what can you do to prevent your food scraps filling up your rubbish bin? Our team have been trying out another solution.
Meet the worms!
Worms can transform your ordinary food waste into a rich compost in your own home! All you need is a small wormery that you can keep in your in your garden, kitchen or balcony. They usually contain 2 compartments, one to feed the active worms and one for the fertiliser they produce.
The worms will eat most raw vegetables and any cooked vegetables; any fruit except for citrus peel; egg shells; coffee grounds and tea bags; bread; newspapers and small amounts of garden waste. The best way to keep the worms thriving is to feed them a small amount of your food waste, often. It will take up to a year to fill a wormery with compost that can be used for potting plants.
Wormeries also provide a liquid that makes great fertiliser. If you don’t grow your own plants, you can give your compost and fertiliser away to a friend or relative who may be glad of it! There’s a whole range of styles and colours you can buy and there’s loads of advice available online – so get hunting if this seems like the solution for you. Your worms even arrive through the post, so it couldn’t be much easier to get started.
