The garden bin is one of the latest efforts to boost the UK’s recycling efforts and cut down on the millions of tonnes of waste we produce each year. We all love our gardens, and produce a lot of garden waste with our trimming, strimming and mowing. In the past, this was just thrown in with the rest of the rubbish, but councils have become eco-conscious and most of them now provide a separate bin for garden waste. Your garden bin may be green, brown or grey. You may even have a folding bin, for easy storage when not in use. The colour and style don’t matter as long as you use the bin correctly.

So how do you decide on the best way to use your garden bin? It’s all about what you put in and what you leave out. The chances are that you will also be using a composter of some type. This will cut down on the amount of garden waste that goes into the garden bin. In addition to the kitchen waste (fruit peel, vegetable peel, egg shells, coffee grounds and teabags) and household waste (newspapers, toilet rolls, napkins, egg boxes and brown paper bags), your composter can also take a lot of garden waste. The more you put in the composter, the less you need to put in the bin.

One of the substances that you will have a lot of is grass. During the summer your lawn seems to grow almost too fast to keep up with it. Mowing weekly or twice weekly produces a lot of cuttings. You’ll be glad to know that some of this can go into your composter. Not too much, though, as it will produce excess nitrogen and cause your compost to have an unpleasant smell. Don’t put the excess grass in your folding bin for household waste, either. Instead, drop it into the garden bin.

If you’ve been doing some pruning, then you may have some twigs and branches lying around. Don’t put these in the garden bin or folding bin, but in the composting bin. This will break down to make a nice addition to your compost mix. Leaves make another fine addition to the compost heap, so collect them regularly and drop them in. Farmers who have excess straw or hay can add this to the compost mix as well.

So what about weeds? It can be tempting to drop the whole lot into a composting bin as they are garden rubbish, but you could cause long term damage to your garden. Some of the hardiest weeds will survive the process of decomposition. This means that when you add your compost to the soil, they will breathe a sigh or relief and start to grow again. There’s no point in enriching the soil to help the weeds, so throw the pesky varieties into your garden bin. Finally, you want to be sure that your compost is as healthy as possible, so if you have a diseased plant that should go in the garden bin too.

Editors’ notes:
NowRecycle.co.uk is a trading style of Plastic Omnium Systems Ltd - a European market leader in waste containment solutions that provides a wide range of waste containers and services including wheeled bins, litter bins, banks, composters and sacks. It is part of the International Plastic Omnium Group, a world leader in contract waste container solutions with worldwide sales of more than £1.8 billion. It employs over 9,000 people in 25 countries, across four continents, in manufacturing and service solutions for the automotive, environment and performance plastic products.
Press Contact: Simon Dutta, N European Marketing Director, Plastic Omnium Urban Systems Ltd
Telephone: 01952 582 583

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