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Your Sustainable Home - Composting at Home

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Published 29 April 2020

Your Sustainable Home - Composting at Home

Did you miss our ‘Composting at Home’ webinar? No worries, here’s an overview of it, including a recording of the webinar + helpful links and supporting information for you to check out at your own leisure.

Session 3: Composting at Home

Hopefully, after session 1 ‘Make your Bed and Grow in it’ and session 2 ‘Grow Food Now’ you’re ready to get down and dirty with compost!

Healthy soil - healthy plants - healthy people and planet. Living compost is a vital component of growing food and regenerating our soil. Learn as our panel of experts answer questions on how to begin cycling nutrients from your kitchen to your garden, and set up your own backyard compost system.

Panellists & Chair

Still, want to know more? See the further resources below the video.

Is home composting on your agenda? Great. Then this webinar is for you.

We ran out of time during the Composting at Home webinar so we decided to answer your questions in a separate video.

To keep up to date with gardening projects around Wellington - Join our gardening mailing list

Home composting isn’t difficult, but with all of the different advice out there it’s easy to get overwhelmed. We’ve narrowed it down to some good, reliable resources to get you started. 

Check out some of our easy to follow guides: 

  • Ready to get composting? Make sure you check out our post on DIY composting

  • Want to take composting one step further? How about starting your own worm farm with our awesome DIY worm farm  guide. 

  • So, you’ve got a worm farm? That’s awesome! Check out our post which is filled with helpful tips on how to look after your worm buddies - Taking care of your worm farm

Take a look at the Compost Collective and their amazing free learning resources to become a composting pro. 

If you’re ready to take a deeper dive into the compost and learn about the fascinating soil food web, start here with Dr Elaine Ingham.

Help protect our birds and keep your compost rodent free

Follow this guide from Predator Free Wellington on how to rat proof your compost bin. 

  • Our Sustainability Trust educators run workshops on rat proofing - keep an eye on our events page for the next one.

  • Ready to become predator free by keeping rats out of your compost? Check out our guide on How to trap a rat

Prevent rats from snacking on your food scraps by following these tips.

Why is composting so important?

In New Zealand, almost half of the waste that we send to landfill is compostable - mostly food scraps and garden waste.

It’s important to do everything we can to keep these organics out of landfill to help combat climate change. When we send our food scraps to landfill, they break down very slowly due to the lack of oxygen, and produce methane - a powerful greenhouse gas 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

Composting turns what could be a harmful waste product into a valuable resource capable of regenerating our soils and growing healthy food - and helps tackle climate change!

Community composting - what’s the go in Wellington?

If you really just can’t compost at home but would still like to avoid putting food waste in the bin, there a few options: 

  • Check out ShareWaste and see if there’s a compost in your community that you can contribute your scraps to. 

  • Innermost Community Gardens in Mt Victoria have a compost that you can drop off your food waste to when it re-opens. It is currently closed due to COVID-19 - keep an eye on their website for up-to-date info on when they’re able to get going again. 

  • Kaicycle collects food scraps from a number of Wellington businesses and households by e-bike and turns them into compost at their urban farm in Newtown. 

  • If you live Porirua, get in touch with Jessica at Sunshine in a Bottle Composting. Similarly to Kaicycle, Jessica offers a food waste collection service. 

  • In collaboration with Kaicycle and GrowSpace Wellington, we will be setting up three community compost hubs around Wellington this year. Find out more here. 

Composting is a great solution, but we still need to reduce food waste

You don’t need much to get started, but over time it can be useful to invest in some quality tools. Check out our Ecoshop’s garden collection:

  • Bokashi Bin - the Bokashi Bin system is by far the easiest way to get composting at home

  • Bokashi pet poo composter - Got pets? Dispose of their presents the safe way with a Bokashi pet poo composter

  • Worm farm - Worm is the word, not bird. Get a worm farm and let them turn your food waste into black gold

  • Gardening calendar - Never miss a seasonal vege with this awesome easy-to-follow, what to plant and when gardening calendar - specific to the Wellington region

  • Ecowool mulch mats - protect your plants with a 100% biodegradable wool mulch mat. Help retain moisture and boost root grown all while maintaining warmer soil (especially good in winter) 

  • Hemp twine -  fairly self-explanatory, twine made out of hemp. Perfect for tying things up in the garden, but is also great for kids crafts!

  • Bio grow fertili pots -  start your seed in a pot and then plant it directly into your garden. It’s that simple

  • Garden ecoseeds -  you can’t grow a garden without seeds.. and lucky for you we’ve got lots of them

Need tools? Check out our awesome range of Niwashi garden tools made from the highest quality Japanese steel and craftsmanship. 

Got more questions? Get in touch at advice@sustaintrust.org.nz