on Oct 31st, 2006
Compost bins and a whole lot more
Last year I bought a plastic (recycled) compost bin from a company called Blackwall that were running an offer in conjunction with my local council. It cost £5, although I splashed out on a ‘base’ for the bin and a ‘compost caddy’ - a small plastic bin (complete with biodegradable, corn-starch liners) that you keep in the kitchen until there’s enough to warrant a trip to the main compost bin.
Using the compost bin hasn’t been hard and one of the most amazing features is how much will actually go in - just when you think it’s full, the layers start to compost and the heap shrinks, creating more space - simple!
The manufacturer, Blackwall have just sent me a copy of their latest catalogue ‘Even Greener’ and I thought some GreenVeg readers may be interested in some of the contents.
As well as the usual suspects of compost bins and water butts, I particularly liked the latest kitchen bins with integral recycling segregation compartments. The Trio has three sections - 2 of which are 17 litres for recyclable and residual waste, whilst the smaller 6 litre section is for green waste. All compartments lift out individually. The Duo has a 15 litre section for residual or recyclable waste and a 6 litre section for green waste.
The catalogue also contains some great offers on low-energy CF (Compact Fluorescent) light bulbs and other gardening and ‘green’ accessories.
To get your catalogue, call Blackwall on 0845 658 8866 or visit their website www.evengreener.com
Do you know any other great ‘green’ catalogues or stores that we could mention? Let us know - thanks!
Biodegradable corn starch liners are mentioned. Someone told me that these still produce green house gases when decomposing. Can anyone confirm if this is true or false?
I just found this on a manufacturers website: “As the bag biodegrades in composting, breaking down to CO2, water and carbon biomass just the same as the food scraps, there is no contamination with plastic particles so the compost is of high quality.”
It doesn’t give any stats on the amount of CO2.
Personally, I feel that issues like this fall into the ‘where do you draw the line’ category. In an ideal world, I would always put veg peelings etc straight onto the compost heap, but at 10:30pm on a cold, wet and windy night I don’t feel much like going to the compost heap! The other alternative would be to simply place the peelings into a ‘caddy’, but periodically the caddy will have to be washed out etc.
Oh the dilemmas of trying to be green! Any other thoughts on this?
There’s even more info on the technology behind ‘bioplastics’ here: http://www.resourcepublishing.co.uk/eresource/eresourcearticle.html