Children learn composting skills to reduce garden waste
Tuesday, May 9 2006
Pupils in the Borders are making the most of the waste from their gardens with new composters. Scottish Borders Council is delivering home composters to schools to mark Compost Awareness Week (7-14 May) and help pupils turn garden waste into energy for flowers and vegetables.
St Margaret's Primary School in Galashiels was one of the first schools to receive their Home Composter from the Council on Monday 8 May.
Geraldine Rowley, St Margaret's headteacher, is delighted with the delivery: "The children came up with the idea of having a composter during a Pupil Council Meeting and had already thought about fundraising to buy one, so this is a bonus."
She added, "We have a school garden and we have dug out a vegetable patch where we hope to plant herbs and early potatoes that we can see sprout before the holidays. Now the children can learn about making compost, which will add to their progress on the Eco Schools environmental programme."
Using a composter gives the children first-hand experience of reducing garden waste and making a valuable product which can be used to improve the soil for flowers and vegetables.
Each year the UK produces over 30 million tonnes of municipal waste. Much of this can be recycled and reused, and one of the key ways of managing biodegradable waste is composting.
Composting is Nature's way of recycling: it uses natural processes to convert organic materials to humus through the action
of micro-organisms and bacteria in soil.
Over the past 10 months, SBC has provided all rural households in the Borders with free home composters to help them reduce
their garden waste. As part of its support for the Eco Schools initiative, the Council has also offered free home composters
to all the region's schools.
"We are delighted to help spread the composting message by giving the schools home composters. They can also call on our compost 'guru', David Allan of Ask Organic, for advice on how to get the best out of their composting," said Julie Rankine, SBC's Waste Strategy Manager.
Compost Awareness Week is an international multi-media publicity and education initiative to showcase compost production and demonstrate compost use.The event originated in Canada in 1995 and was brought to the UK for the first time in 2001 by the Composting Association.
Composting Awareness Week is supported in Scotland by The Composting Association: Scotland, Community Recycling Network for
Scotland (CRNS), Waste Aware Scotland, Recycling Advisory Group Scotland (RAGS), the Scottish Environment Protection Agency
(SEPA), Local Authority Recycling Advisory Committee (LARAC), Community Composting Network (CCN) and the Waste and Resources
Action Programme (WRAP).
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