NowRecycle Blog

Compost Bin

clare — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 10:06:39 +0000

Ever year when I plant a garden, it seems my compost bin is better than the year before. Yet, every year I continue to come up with better ideas that I’m going to use for the next year. The success of a compost bin has a lot to do with the success of your garden. A successful garden is 50% work and 50% good soil and fertilization. This is where the compost bin comes in handy and useful.

Why throw out all that kitchen waste when you can put it to good use? On a daily basis, pounds of leftover food are thrown out in the rubbish, where it will spoil and create an odour in the home. No one in the family wants to take the rubbish out when it smells foul. With the use of a compost bin, this is not the case. By saving all your organic waste, you are lessening the amount that needs to go to a landfill, thus helping the environment.

The most important thing is to find an area on your property that has good drainage and is away from direct sunlight. There should be a bottom layer with hay, straw or leaves. This is where you will be dumping your kitchen waste like vegetable or fruit peelings, coffee grounds, eggshells, etc. Cover these ingredients with a little soil and water to keep it moist, but not soggy. Keep doing this with your waste, turning the pile at least once weekly to evenly mix it. Eventually the material will turn brown, which is an indication of successful compost that is ready to be dumped and mixed into the garden. This is the type of compost that makes excellent fertilizer and will give you the most successful productive garden you’ve ever had.

All of this compost is kept outside somewhere. However, unless you plan to walk out to this pile each time you have some waste in your kitchen, you will need a compost bin inside your kitchen to temporarily store the waste until you’re ready to take it out. Most women get a stylish compost bin that is small so the waste and rubbish doesn’t begin to get a foul smell inside the home. Many times, they purchase more than one small bin so they can rotate them. With the addition of folding bins, those ones that are not being used can be conveniently stored elsewhere until they are needed.

Children no longer need to be forced to take out the rubbish when it’s in these convenient, odour free compost bins. If you don’t feel creative enough to build your own compost pile in the back garden, you can have a small bin for in the house and a large one in the garden area. When the small one is full, it gets emptied in the garden. This is what I do. My main reason besides the attractive styles I have (I love putting on designs for each season) is that my two dogs don’t bother the compost bins nearly as much as they do when it’s on a pile in my garden.

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

An Eco Friendly Garden With A Garden Bin

clare — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 09:53:04 +0000

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.

Does your childs school make use of their recycle bin?

clare — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 10:12:54 +0000

Practically every home and workplace has a recycle bin and schools are no different. However, the amount of waste that they do actually recycle is not that great according to campaigners in Wales.

Why Schools Need to Recycle More

Schools possibly have the largest amount of paper waste in the whole of the country. However it seems that they do not really recycle too much of their waste, despite having the appropriate recycle bins. So why is this and should our schools really be helping to recycle more of their waste?

Generally the main reason why people don’t recycle a lot of their waste is because they feel that they don’t have the time. Things that are to be recycled do tend to have to be washed and cleaned up before they are put into the recycle bin. Many people, including staff within schools, simply do not think that they have the time to waste doing this and so it is often easier to just throw the waste in the bin.

Another reason schools may not be doing their bit for recycling is the fact that they don’t actually know what can be recycled and what cannot be recycled. For example, they may feel that paper which has been drawn on quite badly would not be appropriate to recycle. So in that case they would throw it into the ordinary waste bin instead of the recycling bin.

Ways in Which Schools Can Help With Recycling

As well as having a recycle bin, there are also other ways in which schools can help the environment. This includes teaching children about the environment and recycling. There are currently 1,500 schools which have joined the “Eco-Schools” program. This is a program which helps schools to teach their pupils about environmental issues and it also allows them to take part in certain activities too.

As well as recycling paper, schools can also recycle the cans that they sell to pupils on their premises. Teaching the children to put the cans into the recycling bin instead of just throwing them away can really make a huge difference. Remember though that the cans will need to be washed and crushed first usually before they get placed into the recycle bin. So it may be a good idea to have separate bins that the children place the cans into and the staff at school could crush them at the end of the day and put them into the bin.

Overall recycling is a major concern by the government and so it is vital that everyone does their bit for the environment, including schools. Having a bin near to the office and also in every classroom would be an excellent idea. A lot of waste paper often gets left lying around in classrooms and so it would be a help for each individual teacher if their was a bin within easy reach so that they could easily recycle more. So to sum it up, every school should have a recycle bin and they should make full use out of it whenever they can.

Your gardening bin - Understanding composting

clare — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 10:00:51 +0000

If you use your gardening bin to create compost, you will definitely know about the many benefits that come with it. However, whilst you may use your compost when it is ready, many gardeners have no idea that there are actually things that they can do to speed up the process.

Compost is known to be created naturally as bits of waste break down; such as food scraps and cardboard. However, whilst it is mainly a natural process, you can help it out by doing simple little things.

How to Help Out Your Compost

Helping out the compost in your gardening bin is actually not that difficult. It needs certain things in order for it to develop fully and they include:

· Water
· Nitrogen
· Carbon
· Oxygen
· Microorganisms

Each of the above has its own purpose within the compost and without any of them, the compost simply wouldn’t develop as well as it needs to in order for it to be of any use. So how can you ensure that your compost gets the right things into it? Well for a start you can add green plants or grass clippings.

Green plants tend to be quite high in nitrogen. So if you combine them with fallen brown leaves which in turn are high in carbon, you will ensure that the compost is developed as quickly as possible. However, you really will need to make sure that you give an even layer of each of the leaves and green plants; otherwise there will be an uneven amount of either carbon or nitrogen. That would in turn affect the way that the compost is created.

You should also keep in mind that waste materials do not decompose if they become too dry. So you will need to ensure that your gardening bin is actually kept quite damp. With the leaves and the grass clippings for example you should aim to keep them just as wet as a wrung out sponge would be.

It is worth keeping in mind that compost can take up to six months to occur if you do it passively. It can even take longer and so it is not a process that you can rush or use straight away. Passive basically means when you leave the compost to develop on its own. If you find that you cannot find many brown leaves around your home, then shredded newspaper can be just as good. It gives off a good level of carbon and it can also be ideal if you want to place worms in the gardening bin.

You can however, actively help your compost. That way it will take a lot less time to get the results you require, though it will generally be a lot harder to achieve.

Overall it can be hard work making compost in a short amount of time. You also need to ensure that you have the right sized bin. I f you purchase one which is too small then it will not get hot enough. So always try to purchase a gardening bin which is at least 3×3x3 feet.

How could newspaper help your composting bin?

clare — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 09:43:22 +0000

If you are a keen gardener, you will more than likely have a composting bin situated somewhere in your garden. Helping to keep your plants and your soil healthy, compost can be an excellent tool to achieve the best possible results for your garden. However, there is one thing that many gardeners do not understand about their composting bin and that is whether newspaper should be used or not.

Newspaper and Your Composting Bin

When you start to do a little research on newspaper and compost bins, you will find that there are quite mixed responses. Some experts claim that using newspaper in the compost can actually be damaging to your garden because of the ink. However, others claim that no compost should be made without the use of newspaper. So how do you know what to believe?
It is understandable why newspapers do have a bad reputation when it comes to their ink being bad for the soil. After all, when newspapers were first introduced their ink was extremely toxic. However now things have changed quite dramatically in the way that they are produced and the ink is now a lot less toxic.

So you can use newspaper in your composting bin if you would like to, but you will have to take into account the paper that you are using. For example, if you use newspaper, often the paper is quite thin and so that means it will not take as long to decompose. This is excellent news if you are using it in compost, but it is when you use thicker paper that the problems really start.

Magazines can also be used and whilst the paper is thicker, it is still completely safe to use on your garden. However, it will take a lot longer to decompose and so it is much better being used to stop weeds from growing, rather than for your compost.

If you use shredded ordinary newspaper for your compost then you should find that it is better than anything else. It is actually a fantastic source of carbon for the compost and if you are planning on using worms in your compost bin, it can make excellent bedding for them.
When it comes to setting out the newspaper in the bin, you should ideally layer it with things such as weeds and grass clippings as that will help to give you the best compost. If you don’t layer it, it is likely that you will only end up with wet clumpy paper and that would obviously not be ideal.

Another advantage to using newspaper with your compost is that it helps to keep moisture in the soil. This will help to feed your plants as well as stopping the weeds from taking the nutrients that your plants need.

Overall it is understandable that you may be worried about using newspaper in your garden. However, whilst it may have been dangerous years ago because of the toxicity of the ink, it is now perfectly safe and it can actually do your garden some good. So if you have a composting bin, make sure that you add a little shredded newspaper to it every now and again.

Organic gardening tips for your garden bin

clare — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 09:38:13 +0000

Using your garden bin for organic gardening is something that not only helps the environment, but it can also be fun to do. A great way to introduce organic gardening into your life is by using a garden bin, which can be a good start and it is extremely useful too.

Some of the Best Organic Gardening Tips

One of the best organic gardening tips is to make organic compost in your garden bin. Organic compost can give the soil and the plants the nutrients that they need in order for them to grow properly and healthily.

Compost really helps the roots of plants to grow deeper into the soil. This in turn helps the plants to get the nutrients that they need and the moisture as well. If the plants can get the moisture from the soil then you will not have to water them as often as you currently do.

You can use your garden bin to create aspirin water if you would like to keep your plants really healthy. It is a well known fact that plants tend to get a little tired and stressed during certain times of the year, just like we do. Many gardeners choose to use fertiliser to try and bring new life back into unhealthy plants. However what they do not realise is that this can sometimes actually be damaging to the plant. What it may actually need is something known as aspirin water.

What is Aspirin Water?

Aspirin water can be made up from chopped up willow twigs. All you need is your garden bin, the willow twigs and some water. Simply leave the twigs in the bucket with the water overnight or for a few days if you would prefer to. Then simply use it on any new plants that you are planting, cutting or transplanting to a different area of the garden.

You can place willow chips and water in the bin too if you would like to grow any plant cuttings. Simply keep them in the bin with the lid off until they start to grow roots. Then you can plant them using the aspirin water. However, you should ensure that the plants are given compost and soil every few days until they are transferred over. This is because the roots on the cuttings will not be able to cope with heavy soil straight away and so you need to prepare them by giving them small bits at a time.

Remember that if you want to keep it organic, you will need to ensure that you do not put the mixture in a sprayer that has been used for pesticides. It is always better to use a clean one with the aspirin water.

So overall the best organic gardening tip is to use aspirin water instead of fertiliser whenever possible. It is good for the environment and it is particularly good for your plants. It will help to revitalise them and keep your garden looking healthy and glowing. So if you are thinking of a use for your garden bin, then why not use it to store aspirin water in?

Why not treat your compost bin to a little compost tea?

clare — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 11:19:45 +0000

If you are a keen gardener and you own your own compost bin, you may be aware of the term “compost tea”. Used mainly to put the nutrients back into the soil, compost tea can be excellent for your garden. It is not overly difficult to make either!

What is Compost Tea and how does it benefit Your Garden?

Compost tea is something that you can use in your compost bin and there are a number of different types that you can create. Some of the different types of compost tea include:

· Fresh
· Modern
· Fermented
· Actively Aerated

Each of the above is relatively simple to create and so you should not have a problem brewing your own compost tea no matter which one you choose to use.

Fresh compost tea is made simply by steeping the compost in water for just a small amount of time and then you apply the liquid to the soil. It really is as simple as that.

Modern compost tea is created by using dechlorinated water, aerobic mixtures and compost. This type of tea is ideal for giving the soil extra nutrients as the added mixtures help to feed the bacteria. You will need to aerate the mixture for around two days before you can use it however, so it is slightly more complicated to make than fresh compost tea.

Fermented compost tea involves leaving the water and compost mixed together for quite a few days. It is also commonly known as “Anaerobic Compost Tea” and the way that it is made encourages anaerobic bacteria to grow and that is what makes this mix slightly different to the others.

Finally actively Aerated compost teas are used straight away and they are extremely easy to apply. The best thing about this type of compost tea is that it is extremely inexpensive to make and it is also quite quick to make too.

So you can use any of the above compost teas in your compost bin and you may notice a difference in your soil once you have used the mixture on it. However, there have been no actual studies to prove that compost teas work. Gardeners are the ones who notice the difference and you may or may not notice one but you will obviously not know that until you give it a try.

Really all you need to make compost tea in your compost bin is a cloth diaper, a bucket and a plastic bottle. Simply place two cupfuls of compost into the bucket, along with one gallon of water. Next put the diaper cloth over the bucket and seal it in place with something like a bungee cord. Now start to pour the mixture through and once you have finished you should place the lumpy bits back into the compost bin. You can use the tea by placing it into milk gallon containers if you can get hold of any, or failing that you could just use any container that you have.

Overall it really is easy to create compost tea and so if you do have a compost bin it may well be worth trying it out sometime.

Do you place tyres in your recycling bins?

clare — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 11:13:48 +0000

Your recycling bin is not always used just for pieces of paper, tins and plastic. A large number of products can be recycled and one particular item which you may not even think could be recycled is tyres.

Now you wouldn’t necessarily place your wasted tyres into your recycling bin, but they can be recycled all the same. You may be aware that tyres have recently been banned from landfill sites because of their effect on the environment. That move has now led to a large tyre recycling plant being opened in Port Talbot in South Wales.

Why Recycle Tyres?

When the ban was placed on shredded and whole tyres being placed into landfill sites, people started to wonder where on earth they would put their old tyres once they were worn out. Many people have resorted to leaving them in their gardens or in their garages and obviously this is not an ideal solution. As tyres are made from strong rubber, it takes years for them to disintegrate, hence the reason they have been banned from landfill sites.

So, by using a recycling bin to keep your tyres in, you can now get in contact with a tyre recycling company such as the one in South Wales. They will then be able to arrange something with you or tell you where you can send the tyres if need be and they will then go into the recycling process.

How Are Tyres Recycled?

So what happens to the tyres once they leave your recycling bin? Well generally they need to go to a plant to be shredded. There are roughly 50 million waste tyres that need to be dealt with in the UK and obviously that is an extraordinary amount of tyres! So the job in hand is an extremely big one and generally one of the main plants involved in the shredding process is located in Breighton which is near Selby.

Once the tyres go to the plant in South Wales, they are frozen, covered with liquid nitrogen and shattered and screened before they are treated with magnets. These magnets are used to separate it into really high quality metal, fibre and crumbs.

Now the metal that is recycled from the tyres tends to go to scrap heaps. The crumbs of rubber are usually sent off to a company knows as “FieldTurf” which uses the crumbs for artificial sports surfaces. There are also plans to start using the recycled crumbs instead of virgin rubber as that can cost around £1,000 for a tonne of it and obviously recycled crumb would cost a lot less.

So as you can see, when the tyres leave your recycling bin, they have to go through a fairly lengthy process before they can be used again. So if you have been wondering what you can do with your wasted tyres, then now you know that they can easily be recycled. You just need to ensure that you keep a recycling bin for any tyres you may have and contact an appropriate company straight away to see if you can get them recycled.

The wheelie bin and why it isn’t always a bad idea to have one

clare — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 09:28:37 +0000

If you live in the UK, you would have to have been living under a rock for the last six months to have not heard of the new wheelie bin recycling measures recently introduced. With proposed wheelie bins being introduced to every home in the UK by February 2008, the move has caused quite a lot of debate as to whether or not the bins will actually make the environment better or not.

Saving Space with Your Wheelie Bin

Now the main concern which many people have with the wheelie bin is whether they will be able to fit all of their rubbish into it or not. With the new fortnightly rubbish collections and the limited amount of space available in the bin, surely it can only mean trouble if not all of your rubbish can fit into it? It will attract pests such as flies which in turn will lay eggs and you will end up with maggots in your rubbish. Those maggots will then attract birds, foxes and rats and they can cause havoc in and around your home. It is simply not hygienic and there is certainly a fear that the new bins will cause a lot of problems with pests. However, it really doesn’t have to be that way.

The new bins being introduced are introduced alongside recycling bins. The new recycling bins are designed for you to put more of your waste into them so that you do not end up with as much ordinary waste as you usually would. Glass bottles, plastic bottles newspaper and cans can all be washed and placed into your recycle bin. If done properly, this can potentially save you quite a lot of space in your wheelie bin. So that would make things a lot easier for you.

Now some plastic cannot get recycled so you may find that it takes up most of the room in your wheelie bin. In order to save space, you should try to squash as much air out of the plastic bags as possible. This will obviously allow you to put more into the bin and the same goes for anything that you throw away. Ensure that you squash the waste items as much as possible before they get placed into the bin.

Generally you need to make sure that everybody in the house contributes the same way that you do. It is pointless doing your best to save space in the bin if somebody else just comes along behind you and throws in something that takes up more space than it needs to. So educate everyone in the home about what is expected of them. That way you will ensure that your efforts are not wasted and you should easily find that you can fit in all of your waste without any trouble.

Overall a wheelie bin takes up less space than dustbins do. For every wheelie type bin, it takes the place of three dustbins. So that means you have more room in your garden too. So if you have no idea how you are going to cope now that the rules have changed, remember that there are things you can do with your wheelie bin to make it more spacious to fit everything in.

What do you know about the waste paper in your recycling bin?

clare — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 09:20:38 +0000

Recycling is a big concern these days and almost everyone has a recycle bin within their homes. However, whilst we all throw away our spare paper, how much do we really know about where that paper goes and how it gets recycled? Most of us have no clue as to where our recycling waste goes, so wouldn’t it be a good idea to find out just where our waste does go and how exactly we are contributing to making the world a better place?

How Paper Recycling Works

Recycled paper is basically paper that has been run through a paper mill at least twice. The fibres are rescued and put back together to form a clear sheet of paper and that paper can be taken from a number of different things including:

· Newspaper
· Packaging
· Office stationery

So whatever paper you put into your recycle bin can be turned into recycled paper. But just where does it go when it leaves your recycle box?

Before any paper can be recycled, it first needs to be sorted out. So it will be taken to be sorted out into piles depending upon the grade of the paper. Now this is a fairly big job as there is known to be up to 50 different grades of paper. Each one will obviously need to be recycled differently and so they need to be put together before anything can actually be done with the pieces of paper.

Now when it comes to the quality of the paper, obviously the quality will affect what the paper can be used for. So when the piles have been sorted out, it will then be determined what they will be used to create. For example, if you are recycling low quality paper, then it will mainly end up being used as the middle layer of packaging. Higher quality paper on the other hand will be turned into either writing or printing paper.

Practically any paper that you throw into your recycle bin can be turned into something. So the next time you are considering what to throw away and what to recycle, remember that all the paper has a use.

How Waste Paper Usage Has Changed

A few years ago, waste paper would have simply just have been taken to the landfill. However, as time has gone on, waste paper has proven to be invaluable within the paper and board industry. Now it is used for a large number of things, though there are times when it simply cannot be used.

As a rule, the fibres in paper can only be recycled a certain number of times. Usually this is six times before the paper is then too weak to be created into something else. So there does come a time when you will not be able to recycle some paper that you have and generally it will let you know on the paper packaging itself whether it can be recycled or not.
Overall, if you have never wondered what happens to the paper that you put into your recycle bin, then it would definitely be a good idea to do a little research.