Home Truth

Our local newspaper now boasts a double page spread every Tuesday entitled Go Green! I only know this because it also features in the free weekly paper that comes through our door requiring no effort and expense on our part.

So we were scouring the paper last night for houses (even though we have no intention of moving!), special offers that are truly too good to miss or any news of people and places that we know, when we came across an amazing and very exciting fact. This week is Compost Awareness Week. Unless this has been given a higher profile in your area than ours, you are probably unaware of that fact. I haven’t noticed any compost related publicity stunts or bouncy castles in the shape of compost bins or freebies handed out in the streets (what could they possibly be anyway? - a keyring with plastic rotting veg?). What is even more amazing is that this is the SEVENTH annual Compost Awareness Week! What kind of coverage have they ever had in the past?

It’s finally paid off for the compost campaigners. Philippa Forrester and Gaynor Faye are the celebrities (!) backing this campaign for greater composting awareness, bless them (not the sexiest thing to be linked with) and if you buy a compost bin this week, you will enter a free prize draw to win £100 of garden vouchers (I’m thinking there’s not a great budget for this).

As you know, I can afford to mock, as we are already a fully fledged composting family - with our cute little plastic bin for scraps on the window sill and its cute little biodegradable bags. However, I have to admit that we have not gone to the lengths suggested by the information booklet on composting released by the Council and sifted through the contents of our vacuum cleaner removing bits of lego and hair bobbles and whatever else is not suitable for composting. Nor do we clean our vegetarian pet (a gerbil) out often enough to remember to compost its bedding. Nor do we tumble dry our clothing made of natural fibres separately so that we can compost the lint. Nor do we collect up the pieces of wool, feathers, cotton threads and bits of natural fibre string that decorate our carpets. Honestly. It makes a great read. Does anyone out there do all that? I salute you!!

More to the point, neither do we actually use the compost we create! However, it did say in the newspaper article that biodegrading in a compost bin is so much better for the environment than in a landfill. So using the compost is only a secondary consideration. We just need to find somewhere to put it before the compost bin overflows!

Still, I don’t know why I’m mocking really. Cynicism is dead easy. It’s become a habit, I think. This is something I actually support and I’m still poking fun. I’ll try to be more positive. Take some action to support Compost Awareness Week. Convert one other person to composting this week.

Filed under: sustainability, recycling on May 10th, 2007