Non-UK Sales Blog Log In
Basket

0

Author: Julie Halford

Tina’s team delivers more than the goods

Posted on by Julie Halford

If you’ve ever ordered from Great Green Systems your product will have been packed and distributed by staff from Enabled Works, the not-for-profit social enterprise that fulfils our orders.

Enabled Works was founded in 2012 when staff at Remploy factories in Leeds and Pontefract, West Yorkshire, learned the Government was closing the nationwide programme of more than 90 factories. Remploy had been founded in 1945 to provide work for disabled ex-soldiers following the Second World War. The definition of disabilities was later widened to include various health conditions.

Staff were devastated at news of the closure because they wanted to carry on working, so a group of them got together to see if there was a way they could continue by starting their own business, rising from the ashes of Remploy.

The Managing Director of Enabled Works, Tina Brown, was the Factory Manager at the Leeds Remploy factory. She and 12 other staff members decided to put £5,000 of their redundancy money into a start-up pot to fund their own co-operative, owned and run by its own disabled workforce. A local warehouse owner heard they were looking for premises and said he would help out with whatever the group could afford.

‘We asked customers if they would be willing to continue to give us work and it snowballed from there,’ says Tina. ‘We found we were getting more and more work by word of mouth as people recommended us. That’s the best method and something we’re really proud of. You’re only as good as the last job you succeeded in.’

Tina, front right, with other members of the start-up team and Ed Balls, their MP at the time, who helped them to secure some funding.

But the early days weren’t easy. ‘We struggled at first and didn’t know if we would be able to continue for more than a year, not because of lack of work but just managing to balance cashflow.’

The staff of the fledgeling enterprise started out on minimum wage, working more hours than they paid themselves for.

‘Everybody we contacted for help was really supportive. People helped us with things like paying us early to help us until we got going,’ says Tina.

Those days now seem a long time ago. The company’s large factory and storage workspace on the outskirts of Leeds is a busy hive of activity covering many different operations, including contract packing, mailings, distribution, order fulfilment, pallet storage and electrical assembly work. A diverse variety of customers range from major companies, such as Haribo, to smaller concerns such as packing duck food for Roundhay Park in Leeds.

The enterprise also makes hand-spun urns and vases for funeral directors, as well as distributing books for the adventurer and author Alastair Humphreys and the Adventurous Ink book club.

It’s obvious that staff take great pride in their work; Tina says they love to look out for products they have worked on.

The working premises also include offices where training and advice sessions can be offered to help staff to expand work and life opportunities. These offices are also home to the Great Green Systems team, as well as Digital Energy, the web development and design agency who manage our website.

Students from local schools and colleges volunteer with Enabled Works for work experience and might be offered work once they leave education, helping them to get a foot on the work ladder.

When Remploy was closing, Tina spent a lot of time helping staff with interviews and consultations to help them cope with the next stage of their lives. The fact that she went above and beyond her role was recognised by a Director she worked with who nominated her for an MBE, which she was awarded in 2013 for services to disabled people.

‘Just being nominated was enough for me,’ says Tina. ‘I thought that was as far as it would go. I could not believe it when I learned I’d been awarded an MBE. I was just doing what I could to help. I can’t see people struggle, it just breaks my heart.’

She received her award at Buckingham Palace from Prince William at his first awards ceremony, along with Andy Murray and Aled Jones.

Tina swapped the warehouse for Buckingham Palace when she received her MBE.

Tina wears her pin-on medal for formal occasions and might add the impressive initials behind her name on a letter or email ‘if I think I need a bit of extra clout! ‘

The positive attitude of the Enabled Works team is obvious as soon as you walk on site. A poster in the entrance says: It’s amazing what can be achieved when no one cares who gets the credit.

 The website also states: Each of us has an important part to play and we are reliant on each other. Great Green Systems can vouch for the customer-centric culture; everyone goes out of their way to help. As one member of staff said to us, ‘You’re our customers; we want to look after you.’ There is no attitude here of ‘That’s not my job’; everyone pitches in.

This ethos was vital during the pandemic when the team encountered more challenges than most companies because some of the staff were particularly vulnerable.

Pandemic challenge

Tina recalls that with fewer staff at work and of course, lest we forget, the social distancing measures that were in place, life was challenging. This coincided with a particularly busy time for Great Green Systems as people working from home decided to get into composting and orders went through the roof.

‘It was a case of all hands on deck; we were all flying around packing up Green Johannas!’

A memory that stands out for me of how people were affected by that time was a customer who complained at Easter 2020 that her Green Johanna had not been delivered. When we looked into the complaint, we saw that the customer had ordered on Good Friday and was making her complaint on Easter Monday. When we pointed out to her that there had not been a full working day since her order, she was horrified and very apologetic, saying she hadn’t been aware how little time had passed. Those three days had obviously seemed much longer to her as she waited isolated at home and, since every day had become the same, she literally wasn’t aware what day it was.

The Enabled Works team help people who are dealing with a wide range of challenges and often get referrals from employment agencies. When it comes to health, most people these days are aware that many conditions are not obvious, such as mental health issues. A person facing such challenges and feeling fragile may struggle to return to the normal working world, which can seem too pressurised and unsupportive. The Enabled staff know exactly how to help in such circumstances.

Coming back from rock bottom

‘We let people look around and choose what they feel comfortable with and what they would like to have a go at,’ says Tina. ‘It could be working as part of a team or on their own. It could be office work or in packing. They’re given the chance to see if they like it. Some people have hit rock bottom and tried several times to get back into work, or their lives might have taken a wrong turn and they need a bit of support to get back on the right path. Its more than just a job to us, we like to help people to develop. ‘

Anyone who has ever struggled with their mental health, or knows someone who has, knows that a supportive environment is essential to someone whose life has capsized.

Difficult periods come to every single one of us at some time or another, and when they do you need the kind of support that Tina describes.

A recent report showed that mental health problems are the most common condition among people who are unable to work. As well as the individuals themselves, the economy is suffering as a result too. And yet it doesn’t have to be that way. For some of those people a route back to normal life lies in the supportive environment found at Enabled Works.

The Government could do worse than to listen to the Enabled team, who know from years of experience the kind of support that people might need to get them back on their feet.

As their staff and customers will agree, Enabled Works stand for a lot more than work.

When did we start wasting food?

Posted on by Julie Halford

Let’s imagine the UK a hundred years ago – how much food would you think the average family was throwing away in the 1920s? Not so much, probably.

Yet recent research on food waste shows that:

  • 70 per cent of food waste in the UK happens at home.
  • 85 per cent of people say their food bills have increased yet they are still wasting food.
  • Twenty per cent of people questioned said they struggled to know where to find a recipe for their leftovers.

How did it come to this?

My grandmother was born in 1901. The poverty of her life was evident in the form of rickets – the result of childhood malnutrition. My mother, a war baby, also grew up in poverty and was no stranger to hunger. Lack of money meant making meals out of anything and wasting nothing.

Fast forward to my childhood in the 60s and 70s, which, thankfully, never featured hunger. Meals were simple homemade British dishes that women had learnt in the home as they were growing up. These dishes didn’t involve recipe books or ingredients you might struggle to buy, such as liquid glucose or star anise.  Stews and pies were staples, with little red meat. Egg and chips were a perfectly acceptable meal.

 Somehow over the last 50 years many of us lost touch with the kind of resourceful home cooking that had been handed down over generations. What happened?

Perhaps under the influence of TV (and advertising) we started to feel that shepherd’s pie wasn’t good enough and we should be serving something more sophisticated and aspirational, something that mum and gran had never cooked?

 At some stage it seems we all bought into the idea that foreign was better. Now, I love Indian and Italian food as much as the next person but that does not mean that stew and dumplings are inferior.  I remember my auntie, in her eighties, telling me there was something she had always wanted to try. Her tone suggested something daring, and I was mentally preparing a risk assessment to take her white water rafting or bungee jumping, until she said shyly, ‘Pasta’. She was one of the best cooks I’ve ever known, but somehow she felt this Italian substance was exotic and out of her league.

My mother always loved cooking and learnt from her own mother to use up every scrap of food. Today we would think these women were great role models; they’d be designing food waste reduction apps for multi-national companies.

If I’d had any sense, I would have learned a lot from her. Unfortunately, I was a bolshy know-all teenager (is there any other kind?) taken in by the educational rebranding of cookery in the 70s and 80s as Domestic Science. As a science it was something you could get wrong and fail. I thought my mum couldn’t possibly know as much as the teachers. Sure, what my mum made tasted good, but it was just basic low-level cooking that kept people alive, whereas this was an O-level.

 Part of our task in Domestic Science was to balance colour and texture. You would be given a scenario to cook a menu for and you’d be marked down if there was too much of one colour or texture.

My mum took a keen interest and would make her own menu suggestions, and I would roll my eyes and inform her that, No, obviously you couldn’t have apple pie as a dessert because you’d already had pastry in chicken pie for the main. Obviously you couldn’t have two lots of pastry – it’s the same colour and texture.

My mother would argue that it made sense to use up the pastry remains from the chicken pie as a topping for the dessert and to also cook it at the same time while you’d got the oven on. That would mean no waste and less expense.  And I would retort, Fine and if I do that I’ll fail!  And my mother would shake her head in disbelief as if the world had gone to hell in a handcart.

(At this point I would like to add that in 20 years of child-rearing, at no time did any child complain that a meal was too brown or too crumbly.)

 My mother was a working mother, but in those days there was no school run (children walked with other children) no after-school activities and no parents’ evenings/school meetings to erode parents’ time.  The pace of life now means we don’t plan meals, even though just 10 minutes a week doing this would save time and money in the long run.

Take time to plan

But how to choose what to make? For decades we’ve been overwhelmed by thousands of recipes from celebrity chefs using ingredients you had to buy in specially. In many cases this leads to one-attempt meals, leaving ingredients never to be used again.

 Somewhere along the way we became so comfortable with wasting food that one third of all food that is produced for human consumption globally is lost or wasted, contributing as much as 10 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

 Why do we waste so much?

One problem is lack of knowledge of the damage that food waste does to the environment. Research shows that only 30 per cent of people understand the harm caused to the planet. First there is the cost in terms of production and transport, then there is the cost in terms of waste.

 Food waste has typically been incinerated or buried in landfill along with residual waste and left to rot anaerobically, contributing to greenhouse gas emissions. Food waste is still disposed of this way in almost 50 per cent of councils in England who have yet to implement separate food waste collections. This means that currently in the UK, millions of tonnes of food waste still go into landfill. For every tonne of that, there are over 600kg of carbon equivalent emissions, such as methane and nitrous oxide. The home composting of organic waste avoids this fate, of course, which is why so many people choose to do it.

I know that I’ve not been organised enough in the past. Now that I’m more aware, I can’t bear to throw any scrap of food away, even though all our food waste is composted in the Green Johanna or Compost Tumbler.

Easy wins to waste less are:

  • Plan menus for the week
  • Save leftovers and use apps (such as Kitche) for flexible recipes
  • Batch cook and freeze some for later
  • Attach notes to containers in the fridge telling the family which items need to be used up first. (If you saw Jen Gale on The One Show – along with her Green Johanna – you may have seen that she does this.)
  • See the Love Food Hate Waste website for more ideas Love Food Hate Waste | Food Waste prevention

  And yes, before you ask, I am finally listening to my mum.

Julie

You’ll always be glad you got a water butt

Posted on by Julie Halford

The great thing about having a water butt (or two) is that whatever the weather, you’ll always be glad you got one.

Although the UK is regarded as a wet country, regional variations in rainfall are dramatic, with areas in the south of England receiving less rain than some African countries.

Even in dry districts, an estimated 24,000 litres could be collected from the roof each year with the use of water butts.

 Rainwater can be collected from any roof as long as there is a gutter and downpipe that enters the drain at ground level. Water butts with a rain diverter collect water from the downpipe and still let the overflow enter the drain.

Why water butts are winners:

  • Using rainwater on your garden saves on water bills.
  • Plants prefer rainwater as it has a lower pH. Minerals that are found in mains tap water, especially in hardwater areas, can raise the pH of the root zone, which affects nutrient availability. Chemicals added to mains water that are safe for humans can be harmful for plants.  
  • Plants are most vulnerable to shortages of water when they are first planted and their roots have not yet established into the deeper, moister layers of soil. Knowing that you can always water those fresh plantings that need it most takes avoidable stress out of gardening.  
  • Water butts help to reduce flood risk. Urban areas struggle to cope with heavy rainfall as there are not enough porous surfaces to absorb downpours. Water butts capture water that could contribute to surface runoff – a major cause of flooding.   
  • As well as the house, water butts can also be attached to sheds, garages, greenhouses and outbuildings – useful if you have a large garden that requires a lot of water. If you have a smaller garden and low-maintenance plants, you won’t need as much water so a mini butt would be better; storing more water than you need can lead to stagnation – see below.
  • Rainwater is better than tap water for watering dry compost to maintain the moisture levels necessary for successful composting. Chemicals that are added to tap water can kill some of the beneficial micro-organisms that you want to nurture in your compost bin.
  • A vast amount of energy is used to provide safe water to homes, so using stored rainwater or grey water (domestic wastewater) in your garden lowers your carbon emissions.
  • Never is a water butt more appreciated than in the fickle British summer. Even in a wet summer your garden still needs watering – rainfall will water the soil’s surface but not deeper down. And if there’s a full week of sunshine it won’t be too long before a drought is declared, along with water restrictions and hosepipe bans.
An image of a cute dog on a very dry piece of land

Tips to look after your water butt

  • Over time, water that is left in the butt can stagnate, causing bacteria to breed and creating bad smells.  To avoid this, use the stored water regularly.  Replenishing the stored water with freshly collected rainwater helps to dilute it and keep it clean.
  • Keep gutters clean – debris such as bird droppings, moss and leaves can be washed into butts and rot, creating bad smells.
  • A tight-fitting lid is essential to prevent debris falling in. Check or replace the lid if it doesn’t seal properly – a loose or broken lid can attract bugs and cause bacteria to grow.
  • If the water smells, it is still safe to use on established plants but use a watering can instead of a spray hose to minimise the risk of inhaling any airborne bacteria.   
  • Remember good hand hygiene when using collected water.
  • Sunlight and heat speed up stagnation, leading to the growth of bacteria, so choose a shaded area for your water butt. If you find the water butt is getting hot, give it a deep clean and move to a cooler position.
  • If you use hoses for any source of water, disconnect them when you are not using them so that the water will drain out; bacteria grows in water that is left to warm up in the sun.
  • If multiple water butts are used, rotate the use of each one to keep stores of water fresh. They can be joined together by a water butt connector kit.
  • It’s easier to access the water if the butt has a tap at the base and sits on a stand so a watering can will stand on the ground under the tap.

How to clean your water butt

Clean your water butt once a year, preferably in autumn when you don’t need the water.

  • Open the tap and let any stored water drain out completely.
  • Lay the butt on its side and empty out any sludge or debris.
  • Clean the outside with a hose and brush.
  • Clean the inside with gardening detergent and a long-handled brush.
  • Add freshener if required and let the butt refill.

Ways to keep water fresh:

  • Emptying and cleaning the water butt and gutters is the best way to keep water clean.
  • Be Green water butt freshener is a non-toxic treatment that keeps stored rainwater free from algae, scum and smells.  
An image of a water butt.

A water butt attached to a shed at Garden Organic’s garden at Ryton.

Tips to deal with fruit fly nuisance

Posted on by Julie Halford

One summer several years ago our house was besieged by an infestation of fruit flies, the source of which was eventually tracked down to a rotting, black banana under my teenage son’s bed.  It is known in the family as Bananagate and is still referred to even though the son in question is now nearly 30.

If fruit flies happen to you once, you will make sure they never happen again. They are a common nuisance in the UK, affecting more than 60% of households.  Each female may lay as many as 500 eggs and they proliferate quickly.  

They’re most common in summer and autumn because they’re attracted to ripe and rotting food, especially bananas, melon, tomatoes, squash and apples. The smell attracts adult flies, which lay their microscopic eggs in the fruit skins. The eggs might already be present in fruit that you buy or get from the garden. If you then put the rotting fruit or peel into your food waste caddy and then into your garden composter you might be unwittingly transferring fruit fly eggs to the compost to hatch out later when the temperature is right.  

Good composting management usually keeps flies away.   

A few flies can be beneficial since in the compost food web they are considered physical decomposers, helping to break down compost material. Their eggs are also a source of food for other compost creatures. But flies breed fast and if there are a lot of them it’s both a nuisance and a sign that something has gone wrong. 

Their presence is likely due to the following issues in the bin:

  • Lack of oxygen – when there is not enough air, composting is slow and the temperature drops – conditions which attract flies. So add oxygen by aerating with an aerator stick. You can also poke holes in the compost with an iron bar. Deep aeration also disturbs the fly reproductive cycle; some types breed every five days. 
  • Too much moisture – the water content should be about 50 per cent. If there is more water than this, it can force air out, which leads to anaerobic conditions (without air) causing slow decomposition and bad smells, which attract flies. You can monitor compost moisture levels by testing with a moisture meter or by squeezing it in your hands. If it feels like a wrung-out sponge, it has the right consistency. There should only be one or two drops of liquid visible. If it’s wetter than this, add some absorbent material such as shredded paper or sawdust and aerate.
  • Imbalance of materials – a mixture of materials high in carbon (Browns) and nitrogen (Greens) is recommended for active composting. Aim for roughly half and half of both.  
  • Poorly-covered nitrogen-rich materials (Greens) – bury smelly foods in the compost, wrapped in newspaper if possible. Create a covering layer over the top to capture smells. This can include straw, sawdust, wood chips, soil or mature compost.  A fly-proof mesh over the top of the contents will keep flies out while allowing air in.  

As the compost becomes active, with raised temperature and faster decomposition, the fly infestation should end.

A word about fruit waste

If you add large amounts of fruit waste to your composter be aware that this will be high in water content. To avoid making the compost too wet (which attracts flies) it should be well mixed with equal amounts of dry carbon-rich content, such as woody garden waste, dead leaves, shredded paper/cardboard, wood chips, sawdust. An equal addition of sawdust, for instance, would be an effective way to absorb some of the moisture in fruit waste.

To avoid attracting flies, reduce the smell of fruit by wrapping it in newspaper and burying it in the existing compost, then cover with carbon-rich content and add mature compost or soil over the top. 

 Take these steps to reduce the chance of attracting flies.

In the home

  • Because fruit flies lay eggs on exposed food, take care to keep food stored in a fridge or lidded containers, not out in the open in fruit bowls.
  • Use up ripe fruit and vegetables as soon as possible.
  • Compost organic matter quickly as flies are attracted by the smell of decomposing food.
  • Keep stored waste in a lidded kitchen caddy. Always keep the lid on your caddy, even between new additions of waste as you are preparing food.

In the compost bin

Follow the steps mentioned above regarding composting management and also:

  • Add more carbon-rich materials (woody garden waste/shredded paper/cardboard/wood chips), and mix in well so that any food waste is covered.
  • Top the contents with a layer of fresh soil.
  • Try putting the composter in sunlight – flies like a warm but not hot environment.
  • Make sure that you always lock the lid securely.
  • Take care not to spill any food around the composter.
  • Monitor acidity – if you have added a lot of fermented content from a bokashi bin to your composter, add a handful of crushed baked eggshells to neutralise excessive acidic conditions as flies prefer a low (acidic) pH.
  • Flies don’t like the smell of certain plants – peppermint in particular – so you could add sprigs of peppermint to your waste and wipe round the compost bin with lavender, lemongrass, eucalyptus and peppermint essential oils.
  • Leave the lid off the bin for a while to allow predators such as ground beetles, rove beetles and earwigs easy access to the flies.
  • Use nematodes – microscopic worms that feed on fly larvae in soil.  

In the Green Cone

 In the case of the Green Cone Food Waste Digester, no garden waste can be added as the Cone only accepts food waste, so covering with garden and paper waste is not an option.

Because the Cone’s basket is underground, smells are filtered out by the surrounding soil, meaning there is no obvious attraction for ordinary flies. But if fruit fly eggs are already in fruit skins when added to the Cone, they might hatch inside it. Avoid this by following the advice above on preventing infestations in the home.

Also:

  •  Freeze your fruit and veg scraps in a plastic bag or container overnight to kill any eggs or larvae before adding them to the Cone.
  • Flies don’t like the smell of certain plants – peppermint in particular – so you could add sprigs of peppermint to your waste and wipe round the Cone with lavender, lemongrass, eucalyptus and peppermint essential oils.
  • Add accelerator powder to add more beneficial bacteria to speed up decomposition.
  • Remember food waste should never come higher than the top of the Cone’s underground basket; waste should always be below ground level.

 Get trap happy

You could also try a home-made trap that will act as a magnet.

Add an inch of apple cider vinegar to a glass jar with two drops of washing up liquid. Put a plastic wrap cover over the top of the jar and poke small holes through with a toothpick. Flies are attracted by the smell and can get in but can’t get out. Remember to change the liquid regularly to keep the fly trap working.

If all else fails, consider disposable fly traps which come pre-filled with bait or attractant and can be placed in the bin. Be aware that these may also kill other beneficial decomposers in the compost.                                                            

Keep food covered to discourage fruit flies.

How to make your own compost mixes

Posted on by Julie Halford

If you’ve ever wanted to learn more about making your own compost mixes, Garden Organic is the place to go – and with the ban on peat compost for home gardeners coming in this year, there’s never been a better time.

 Last week I joined a Garden Organic online talk about peat-free growing, which I can thoroughly recommend. Talks are helpful if you find it easier to learn through listening rather than reading, especially if the talker is as knowledgeable as our host, Anton. Having the chance to ask questions anonymously in the Q and A session is really helpful too.

A Garden Organic (GO) survey showed that very few gardeners make all the compost their garden needs; the majority use a mixture of homemade and shop bought. If you want to garden as sustainably as you can, GO has loads of advice on achieving this balance.  

A few things I learned:

  • Peat only came into use in the 1960s with plants being sold in containers in garden centres. Garden plants don’t need peat, which is virtually devoid of nutrients. Some countries, such as Australia, have no source of peat so their horticulture industry has never depended on it. 
  • In a bag of peat-free compost you will find:  wood fibre (a waste product from sawmills that is also in demand for use in bio mass boilers)/ composted bark (adds structure and air spaces)/ coir waste (a waste product from coconut plantations)/green waste compost (from council garden waste collections).
  • Growing media shouldn’t be used on a large scale to improve the soil – the resources used to make potting compost are limited. To improve soil, use garden waste compost, homemade compost, manures and green manures. To fill raised beds, use topsoil.
  • It’s a good idea to buy in seed compost because it’s difficult to get right yourself. Get the best you can afford because a little goes a long way. Seeds contain their own nutrients so they will germinate successfully in low-nutrient material with good drainage.
  • If you want to adapt multipurpose compost for use as seed compost, remove larger pieces, put through a coarse sieve, mix 50/50 with rewetted coir block.

Peat-free challenges

  • Peat-free compost behaves differently to peat – the main challenge is watering. Because of their high coir and woodchip content, peat-free mixes tend to dry out more easily. They also have a coarse texture, which can appear dry on the surface but still be damp further down.
  • With pots, watering little and often is best. Check by putting your finger in the mix to see if it’s dry all the way through. Water by going round the pot in a circle to get water to drain all over. Repeat a few times.
  • Water seed trays from below. Use a fine mister or waterer for the surface.
  • Peat-free compost doesn’t store as well as peat so only buy what you need. Don’t leave out in the rain; tiny holes in the bag will let in water which will wash away nutrients. Don’t subject to high temperatures by leaving out in glasshouse. Don’t buy bags that are faded as they might have been lying around for a while. If a mix smells bad it may have turned anaerobic, so return it.  

Feeding tips

A challenge with peat-free compost is that it can run out of nutrients more quickly – after 4 weeks.

  •  After 4 weeks, water with a sustainable liquid feed using comfrey or nettle leaves. Make your own comfrey feed by leaving 1kg of comfrey leaves in 15 litres of water for 5-6 weeks. Use neat to water plants.
  • For a concentrated comfrey liquid feed – stuff leaves into a drainpipe and let the liquid drip out of the bottom. Dilute 1 -10 and use on flowering and fruiting plants. This feed doesn’t smell – adding water is what makes the concoction smell.
  • Urine also gives a very good balanced feed (dilute 1 – 10). Fun fact – the average person produces enough nitrogen in their urine to fertilise 1 and a half tonnes of tomatoes, yet this usually gets flushed away to be treated at high expense, together with drinking-standard water.   
  • Use worm compost mixed with homemade compost as top dressing. Worm compost provides high levels of readily available nitrogen. Use sparingly.

For information and advice about making your own mixes, check out the GO website –  Garden Organic – Discover organic growing

Garden Organic recommends trying different peat-free composts to see which you have most success with. The charity has had good results with Melcourt’s Sylvagrow range for seed and potting mixes.

A word about peat

Garden Organic has long campaigned for an end to the use of peat in horticulture.  Peatlands cover 3 per cent of land surface but store 30 per cent of the earth’s soil carbon. Peat only regenerates at a rate of 1mm a year. In the UK, peat extraction accounts for 5 per cent of CO2 emissions. More than 95% of lowland bogs in the UK have been destroyed or damaged as peat has been extracted on an industrial scale.

Garden Organic’s online talks (webinars) are held on a donation basis to help support the charity’s work in helping people to garden organically. 

If you live near the charity’s Coventry base, you can attend courses or workshops in person, or else watch out for the next webinar. Online courses are also available and you can write in with questions too.

Julie

England’s best kept ‘secret’ – food waste collections

Posted on by Julie Halford

If you were under the impression that the whole of the UK should now be full speed ahead with weekly separate food waste collections, you’d be right.

 That was the plan under the Environment Act of 2021, but the deadline has been pushed back from 2023 to March 2026 to give councils more time to prepare. (Some councils will be given longer than this to allow existing long-term disposal contracts to expire.)

Around half the councils in England already provide a separate food waste collection, as do those in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

But if your council is one of the 50 per cent in England that doesn’t, you may be surprised to hear that this is going to happen at all.  It’s the best kept secret in England. Half the country knows all about food waste collections, the other half thinks you must be joking or mistaken if you mention them. If you know someone who doesn’t have a food waste collection in their local area, ask them what they know about it.

Keeping food waste separate

When I discussed the impending changes with my father-in-law (a resident of Worcestershire), he was shocked to learn that in the not-too-distant future he will have to separate out his food waste and put it in a designated container kept outside his house to be emptied by his local council.

He looked dubious as though I must have got my facts wrong. When I managed to convince him, he asked ‘Why don’t I know this?’

 It’s a good question. When the change comes, it will be big news in large parts of the country. If people are not used to scraping peelings and leftovers into a caddy on a kitchen worktop, it’s a huge change to their daily habits.   

7 litre Kitchen Caddy

Of course, people who compost are already used to treating food waste differently from other waste – they know it’s not rubbish but a precious resource – so this will be nothing new for them. They will simply carry on composting. Depending on how much waste they have, they may use the council service for overspill.  

Nearly two years ago I got my parents using bokashi bins for their food waste. They have no council collection service and were horrified to think that their food waste was going to landfill or incineration. We started a system which involves me taking their filled bokashi bins – after the requisite two-week fermentation period – to empty into our Green Johanna composter. At 85 and 82, my parents are now enthusiastic bokashi fans and wouldn’t dream of throwing an apple core in their general bin.   

Experienced composters think the implementation of food waste collections could prompt more people to compost. Since people will already be separating waste, it’s not much more effort to empty a kitchen caddy into a compost bin rather than a bigger external container.

Carry on composting

At least with composting you’re managing the process of decomposition so it’s breaking down aerobically, and at source – where the waste has been produced. You also benefit from the results too – your own free compost.

There’s no doubt that separate food waste collections are a great thing; they need to happen and happen well. In the UK 70 per cent of food waste happens at home, but only around a third of people understand the harm that this causes the planet, not only in the disposal of the waste but in the production and transport of the food in the first place.

 So educating people around these issues is a vital part of the new system. An additional benefit to separating waste out is that as people become more aware of how much they are wasting, they tend to waste less. 

 Learning about food waste

When food waste is collected along with general waste (usually called residual waste) it is either incinerated or buried in landfill and left to rot anaerobically, which causes greenhouse gas emissions. For every tonne of rotting food waste, there are over 600kg of carbon equivalent emissions, such as methane and nitrous oxide.

 But when food waste is collected separately, it is taken to specially designed anaerobic digestion (AD) plants, where it is reprocessed to create fertiliser (for spreading on land) and biogas, which can be used to generate electricity. The government’s website says this digestion process will not include a composting phase due to concerns around cost and planning.

The website sounds confident that all these changes will occur smoothly, as part of the government’s target to eliminate biodegradable waste sent to landfill from 2028. But some people in the industry are concerned at the scale of how much infrastructure needs to be in place before the March 2026 deadline.

As yet, little seems to be being discussed upfront – hence my father-in-law not having a clue – and yet it will be a considerable task to inform and educate millions of people so they know what to do to avoid costly waste contamination.  In addition, with election year upon us, will these plans slip from focus?

As mentioned above, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and half the councils in England have already made the change, but with the other 50 per cent in England yet to join the party, it’s still a long way to go.

 More AD plants will be needed – some estimates suggest there should be another 20.  If not, will the waste be transported long distances out of area, which will wipe out some of the carbon benefits? Also needed will be new containers and vehicles. The government has allocated £295 million to support councils in putting plans in place.

Most councils provide households with either a 5 or 7-litre internal kitchen caddy plus a 23-litre external container. These accept all food intended for humans and pets, including inedible food parts, such as bones, shells, skins, teabags and coffee grounds. The government is still looking into the greenest options regarding caddy liners.

Councils have the choice of collecting garden waste together with food waste.

At the AD sites, biomethane will be injected into the gas grid and the producers paid a tariff.

In Wales – one of the best countries in the world for recycling rates – school trips are organised to AD facilities to teach pupils about food waste recycling. Research shows that the more knowledge people have about recycling, the more effective their recycling efforts will be.   

Let’s hope the rest of the UK will follow the Welsh example – and soon.

The book that will keep you composting

Posted on by Julie Halford

You might expect anything written about composting to be down to earth (pun intended) but if you read a lot on the subject, as we do, you’ll know that’s not always the case.

Sometimes you come away from an article thinking you must need a PhD to compost. You wonder how Mother Nature manages without the aid of a spreadsheet and calculator for tracking temperatures and working out ratios. If spreadsheets and calculators are your thing, don’t let us stop you (some of the GGS team are guilty as charged).

But most of us just want simple advice we can follow. That’s why at Great Green Systems we often point customers towards Master Composter Rod Weston’s website (carryoncomposting.com) because it offers straight-forward, practical guidance. So we were delighted to learn that Rod has turned his knowledge into a book.

The Great Green team love this book and anyone who is into composting, or could be with a little encouragement, will love it too. It gives the lowdown on just about every compost bin going so it helps you to understand your own bin better or to choose one that will work best for you.

Rod hopes the book will encourage householders to compost their organic waste ‘and most importantly, to continue composting.’ He acknowledges that people new to composting may encounter various problems while trying to master the craft, but by showing different techniques to deal with issues he hopes to help new recruits to persevere.

‘The key message is to keep composting, whatever style you adopt,’ he says. ‘All techniques can be modified to suit your own particular circumstances.’

He also hopes to encourage groups to set up small-scale community composting on allotments, at schools, and on community gardens. He points out that if garden and catering waste can be dealt with on site, the environmental costs of transporting it to a central location for processing can be avoided.

We recently paid Rod a visit at the Stokes Wood Allotment site in Leicester, which includes a demonstration site that is home to every composter you can think of. Rod demonstrates different bins and techniques to the public.  

The site provides a community composting service for allotment plot holders and also takes food waste from the café on site. Plot holders leave their waste for composting in designated spots and can take compost (and liquid feed) for their own use when it’s ready.

Working bays and bins at Stokes Wood Allotments composting demonstration site

Rod’s book also explains the idea behind the Master Composters scheme. In 2004 around 40 per cent of householders who had started home composting gave up because of a lack of knowledge. Almost two decades later, councils and others now produce information and train Master Composters to provide support. This has resulted in a reduction in the dropout rate to between 8 and 14 per cent. In more recent years this has reduced again to 3.9 per cent. Obviously the scheme has been a great success.

Like many of his generation, as a child Rod helped his father on his allotment ‘in the days when allotments were an important piece of ground that played a major role in providing fruit and vegetables for the family’.  

Before becoming interested in the environmental aspects of composting, Rod initially composted on his own allotment in order to dispose of garden waste and to use the compost produced as a soil improver. He says it was his wife who first became interested in becoming a Master Composter ‘but then suggested it to me because she thought it would keep me off the streets!’

On our visit we loved talking to Rod about all aspects of composting. It’s so refreshing in this world of uncompromising opinions to hear his relaxed straight-forward views. Like us he’s pleasantly obsessed but not a purist. Rod’s attitude is that we can all compost – you just have to find a system and bin that works for you.  The more people who compost the better it is for all of us and for the planet.

Anyone living in or around Leicester is lucky to have easy access to his talks and demonstrations.

‘If you are interested and want to get involved with your bin, go for hot composting. If you’re lazy or too busy, just go for a cold system,’ he says.

He goes about the business of promoting composting in a practical, fun way, giving talks to garden clubs, allotment societies and schools.  For school visits, when talking about wormeries he takes along some slugs and snails as well as worms, knowing his audience will approve.

Other props are a soft toy rat and dog poo (spoiler alert – it’s fake) which is used to explain the workings of a wormery used for dog poo.

Sitting pretty – on the dog poo wormery

He thinks composting will become more popular as more local authority food waste collections come into operation, since a lot of people could prefer to compost their food waste in their gardens rather than having it waiting for collection by the council.

Rod is a fan of the Green Johanna and has a couple at home as well as one on the site.

‘It just sits there quietly and gets on with its job, breaking stuff down, with no trouble,’  he says approvingly.

Rod told us that badgers from a nearby wood had recently made a nocturnal visit and tried to get into the site’s Green Johanna, but failed.

We inspected the teeth marks on the Johanna’s lid and Insulating Jacket, proud that the Johanna had stood firm. And this Johanna is 13 years old.

Rod shows Mark evidence of the failed badger attack

The site also demonstrates an old Green Cone, which Rod says has never needed emptying or cleaning.

Apparently the number one problem with Green Cones that people ask him about is caused by the owner not having read the instruction manual properly. The manual states that food waste should never come higher than the top of the Cone’s underground basket, so there should never be food waste inside the Cone itself, which is above ground level.  Rod said he has seen Cones that have been filled right to the top like a composter, which would not be a great problem to have to sort out.

How a Green Cone should work – with food waste only in the underground basket

We appreciated this insight and we intend to make this point much clearer in the next edition of the Green Cone manual so that no one can possibly miss it. Although it’s obviously not much good if people don’t read the manual.

In his book, Rod says: ‘There are almost as many ways of composting as there are composters and, despite what might be read online, there is no single right way of doing anything. If what you are doing works, it must be right for you, although, of course, the method may be open to improvement. The main thing is to enjoy your composting in the knowledge that, while you are improving your soil to produce better crops, you are also, in a small way, helping to save the planet. ‘

Wise words from a Master (Composter).

Ants in your wormery? Here’s what to do

Posted on by Julie Halford

Showing that even the youngest of children can rise to the challenges of worm farming, our friend Magdalena, two, stepped in to look after her worms recently.

One day while feeding the worms with her grandparents, she was quick to spot something new – ants.  Grandma told her this was due to the worm farm bedding being too dry, creating conditions that appeal to ants.

The solution was to gently add some water. Wormery bedding should be neither wet, nor dry. If you squeezed the bedding material it should feel moist with minimal water dripping out.

So Maggie filled up her watering can and got to work, sorting the worms out and making sure they had conditions just as they like them – moist and dark, covered by a few sheets of newspaper as a blanket (or cardboard, or hessian) to keep them feeling cosy and safe.

Then she sensibly washed her hands – which is when things went a bit wrong. As you can see from the photo, the worms and ants weren’t the only ones getting a bit wet!

Maggie somehow got in the way of the water, whether on purpose or not who can say? It’s all in a day’s work for a two-year-old worm farmer.

For a joke I asked Maggie afterwards if she’d had ants in her pants; with an appalled look she informed me that, no, she hadn’t, because she was wearing a nappy. Fair enough. She thought for a second before adding that Grandma had ants in her pants though. You have to keep an eye on these grandmas.

It’s fantastic to see that Maggie now loves worms. When she first watched her older brother Reggie looking after the worms she was a bit apprehensive and took a back seat but now she appreciates them for the wonderful work they do.

Keeping worms cool

It’s important that wormeries stay moist. In hot weather you can flush your worm farm with half a small bucket of water (5L) once a week to keep conditions moist. When doing this, replace the liquid collection tray with a container that will hold the sudden influx of water.

The moistened bedding sorted out the ants issue for Magdalena, but if you have a repeated problem you could follow this advice shared by wormery guru Mary Appelhof in her book Worms Eat My Garbage:

  • Set the legs of the worm farm in coffee cans with mineral oil or soapy water in the bottom. Any ants would get trapped in the oil or soapy water and would not be able to enter the wormery.  

And so to bedding

Worm bedding is a major component of a wormery. It has several functions, providing:

  •  moisture retention
  •  a medium in which worms can work
  •  a place to bury food waste

Bedding also provides a carbon source which will feed the worms; they will eventually consume the bedding as well as the food waste.

The bedding provided in the Maze Worm Farm is coconut coir, which is a great choice as it is clean, odourless, moisture-retaining, easy to prepare and worms thrive in it.

 Cocount coir, often called coco peat, has a fluffy soil-like texture. It comes compressed in a block that expands when placed in water. Because it has good water-retaining capacities, it can also be mixed with other bedding materials to aid water retention. Coir is a natural by-product of the coconut industry. In the past when coconuts were harvested for their meat and juice, the husk was considered waste until its many uses in horticulture were appreciated.

 In the first few days of setting up a new wormery it’s important that the worms acclimatise quickly and they find coco coir to be a hospitable environment thanks to its fluffy soil-like texture. Coconut coir will get your worm bin off to a great start but an established wormery should happily accommodate other freely available carbon sources.  

Other suitable bedding materials:

  • Shredded newspaper in strips 3-5cm wide. You can use a shredder or tear the strips by hand.
  • Leaf detritus from the bottom of a pile of decaying leaves, or compost.
  • Wood chips – some wormery enthusiasts report that these are excellent when mixed with leaves or other materials that are capable of holding moisture.  Wood chips provide bulk and create air spaces throughout the bedding. You can pick wood chips out when harvesting vermicompost from the wormery and reuse them.  

TOP TIP

It can be useful to add a handful or two of soil when initially preparing bedding. This helps to control moisture, acidity and texture as well as adding some grit to aid in breaking down food particles within the worm’s gizzard. It also introduces an inoculum of a variety of soil bacteria, protozoa and fungi which will aid the composting process.

Mary Appelhof is an inspiring champion for worm farming, describing it as a way to ‘save the world – in your own backyard’.

 In her book she says that through worm farming you will see mounds of waste converted to material you can use on your houseplants and in your garden.

‘You will enjoy healthier looking plants, better tasting vegetables and money in the bank.’

Let’s end with her wonderful description of the added value that worm farming provides.

‘Hopefully you’ll also gain a better appreciation of the intricate balance and interdependencies in nature. You will be treading more gently on the Earth.

As your gardens are enriched, so is your life and mine. You will have joined the worm-working adventurers who say, ‘Worms eat my garbage.’ Isn’t that a grand beginning to a task that needs to start somewhere? You, personally, can make it happen.’

Julie

How Bokashi boosts your hot compost

Posted on by Julie Halford

When it comes to boosting the composting process, we have found a Bokashi bin to be the perfect partner for the Green Johanna.

We recently carried out trials involving additions of fermented food waste from a Maze Bokashi bin to a Green Johanna and found that temperatures in the Johanna rapidly increased as a result.  

For our trials, we re-started a Johanna more or less from scratch, having previously removed large amounts of compost.  Using a permanently installed insulation jacket and large amounts of Bokashi bran and carbon-rich materials, compost temperatures were around 30 degrees Celsius. 

 We added the contents of a Bokashi bin that had been fermenting for 21 days, followed by a full 1kg bag of Bokashi bran.   We then added some mulch and stirred well with a garden fork, before completing the process with a thin layer of mulch. 

 The Johanna was then left for 48 hours.  Temperatures rose to 66 degrees Celsius whilst outdoor temperatures were in the 0-10 degree range.   After 48 hours we re-stirred to spread heat more widely through the Johanna.    Using two Bokashi bins in rotation we repeated this cycle roughly every three weeks and got the same results.

We used the Green Johanna in combination with a regular kitchen caddy (as the Johanna needs regular feeding to maintain the hot composting process), twin-bin Bokashi system, Insulating Jacket, Bokashi Bran as an accelerant and plenty of mulch.

Photos show starting temperature at 30 degrees Celsius/adding fermented waste from a Bokashi bin/ adding Bokashi bran/temperature at 66 degrees Celsius.

The Bokashi process was developed in Japan in the 1980s; the term means ‘fermented organic matter’ in Japanese.  It involves adding all your food waste, cooked and uncooked, to a specially designed airtight Bokashi bin, with the addition of Bokashi in the form of a fermented bran or spray. The food waste is compressed with a compactor to eliminate as much air as possible as this is an anaerobic process.  Once the bin is full, you close the airtight lid and leave for 2-3 weeks.  Many people use two or three bins to keep the process going.

The bacteria (lactobacilli) in the bran or spray will create lactic acid which will effectively pickle the food waste rather than letting it decompose as it would in a regular food waste caddy.  After a week or so, liquid should start to form in the Bokashi bin which should be drained using the tap.   This ‘Bokashi tea’ can be used as a drain cleaner or diluted for use as plant food.

 At the end of the fermentation period the waste food is a pre-compost mixture that can be added to a composter or buried in soil to become a soil enhancer. Its composition is such that virtually all its original nutrients, carbon and energy enter rapidly into the soil.   No greenhouse gases are released to the atmosphere as they are during regular food waste decomposition in landfill.

Bokashi composting has traditionally proven particularly popular in urban environments where traditional garden composting is difficult. 

Mark

Why wormeries make great eco gifts for kids

Posted on by Julie Halford

It’s hard to buy presents for a friend’s children or grandchildren, especially if you don’t see them all that often. You know how it is – you ask Mum if Sam still loves dinosaurs and get the response – not so much since turning 17.

I exaggerate but it really is difficult to know what to get a child if you don’t know what they already have and what their current interests are.  You don’t want to waste money or add to the mountain of discarded junk by buying pointless gifts.  

I thought long and hard a few months ago before getting Christmas presents for my best friend’s grandchildren – Reggie, 6, and Magdalena, 2. I always like to get practical, useful things – I’m not bothered about being popular (‘Oh great, another swimming cap/duvet cover/homework bag from Auntie Julie.’)

But this time I upped my game.

Eco gifts are gifts that keep on giving. It would be easy to drive children to despair about the climate crisis, but how much better to show them instead what they can do to help? Yes, tackling the climate emergency is a big job, but it’s one that each and every one of us – no matter how young – can play a part in.

And so I gave Reggie and Maggie a worm farm.

Why? Because worm farms (also called wormeries) are a great way to introduce children to small-scale composting and the marvellous way that nature deals with waste. Not only does vermicomposting (from the Latin ‘vermis’ for worm) keep organic waste out of landfill, but also shows how easily worms can turn our food scraps into a highly nutritious food for plants

Yes, there were quizzical looks from the kids as they opened the box – it was clearly not a fort or a unicorn castle – but they were very keen to set it up and probably very relieved that it wasn’t a pack of thermal vests. As it was the coldest time of year, they set the worm farm up in the greenhouse, which provided warmth and shelter for the winter, and waited excitedly for their worms to arrive. The worms come separately through the post from a supplier of specially selected composting worms.

The children’s reaction when the worms arrived was a mixture of ‘Eurgh’ (Magdalena) and ‘Ooh’ (Reggie).

Reggie was keen to show how brave he was and gently introduced a worm to his sister, who also became brave but was happy just looking. They made a cosy home for the worms, providing a blanket of newspaper (hessian is also good) to keep them warm and safe in the dark.   

Reggie introduces Magdalena to a new pet

Reggie and Magdalena noticed the worms were not very active for a few weeks, probably because of settling in at such a cold time of year, but then they soon started tucking in (the worms, not the kids).

The young vermicomposters were careful to follow the rules of not overfeeding. If you give worms too much food it will be left uneaten, which will obviously start to smell. Like most young children they were expecting fast results, so were surprised to learn it can take two to three months to get worm casts (poo, since you ask). You can’t rush these things…

Children start a wormery
Magdalena and Little Bear wait for worm casts

But when you do harvest the casts you realise why gardeners call this stuff ‘black gold’. One tablespoon of worm casts provides enough nutrients for a plant to thrive throughout the growing season.

Ten weeks in and Reggie and Magdalena were the proud harvesters of some of this black gold.

Harvesting worm casts

Wonderful things about worm farms

  • They make great projects for children as this subject can grow in complexity as the child grows – it can be super simple for pre-schoolers but gradually takes in chemistry, biology, ecology, the food cycle and carbon cycle as well as gardening and growing your own food.  
  • Children will develop respect for these humble but mighty creatures. Through tunnelling, worms aerate and improve the soil, providing nutrients for plants to flourish. Without them the earth would become cold, hard and sterile.
  • Studies have shown that the simple act of introducing worms to degraded soil in poor regions of the world has increased plant yields by 280%.
  • Worms are easy to feed on vegetable and fruit scraps, coffee grounds, tea bags, and crushed eggshells.
  • Convenient to set up indoors or outdoors in a sheltered spot.

Inspired by how well Reggie and Magdalena have taken to vermicomposting, I’ve decided they don’t really need yet another boring Easter egg from Auntie Julie this Easter.

Not when there are other fabulous presents to be had, such as membership of the Earthworm Society!

 I like to think they’ll thank me one day.

Julie

Spare Parts