Peterborough residents have the opportunity to celebrate national compost week with gardening guru and editor of Gardeners' World magazine, Adam Pasco, when he visits a compost roadshow being held in Cathedral Square, Peterborough, on Wednesday 4 May at 11am.

 

The City Council is holding the roadshow from 10 am to 4 pm to promote the environmental benefits and convenience of making and using your own compost, as part of national compost week and the Recycle Now Partners' national campaign, which runs from Sunday 1 May to Saturday 7 May.

 

Adam will join the roadshow to promote the Recycle Now campaign theme, 'The possibilities are endless', by highlighting how common items of organic garden waste such as leaves, twigs and grass cuttings can be easily transformed into high quality compost by using a home compost bin or the city council's new organic garden waste brown wheeled bins.

 

The compost can then be used effectively on gardens, parks, football pitches and golf courses to produce top quality results.

 

Adam said: "National Compost Week is an ideal opportunity to promote that caring for the environment isn't someone else's problem. You can make a difference and it can start at home and in your garden."

 

He added: "Home composting really makes sense. So much of the vegetable waste we produce in our kitchen, from potato peelings to banana skins, can easily be composted. Just mix with lawn clippings, leaves and garden clippings in a home compost bin, not your new brown wheeled bin, and within a few months it will have turned into useful garden compost."

 

Residents will also have the opportunity to use their compost which was made at the Householders Recycling Centre, Welland Road, Dogsthorpe, Peterborough, by planting their own seeds at the roadshow and completing the 'Compost Competition', supported by The Barn Garden Centre.

 

Kirsty Martin, Education and Campaigns Officer for Environmental Management at the city council, said: "In Peterborough last year we landfilled 71,000 tonnes of waste and around 40.84 per cent of this waste could have been composted. When organic waste is landfilled it breaks down and produces methane and a highly polluting liquid called leachate. If we can compost this material instead, we can have better gardens and reduce the amount of pollution that this material creates. We can also reduce Peterborough's future reliance on landfilling waste."

 

Peterborough City Council currently provides the following methods for residents to compost organic waste:

 

For more details on any of these methods of composting, please call the city council on (01733) 747474.

 

Media Contact: Mike Lennox, Media Relations Manager on 452304.

 

Notes to Editors:

 

Scheduled individual media interviews with Adam Pasco can be arranged by calling Mike Lennox on (01733) 452304.

 

Recycle Now has also launched the very first composting TV commercial designed to increase public awareness of composting, which will be running alongside the national Compost week campaign.

 

1. Statistics supplied by Media Edge using BARB data for England.

2. Statistics taken from the TNS online survey of gardeners for WRAP in March 2005.

3. Statistics taken the Maximising Recycling Rates: Tackling Residuals Research Report 2002 for the community recycling network.

4. Statistics taken from The Composting Association Report 2004.

5. Statistics taken from the NOP survey on home composting for WRAP in July 2004.

6. WRAP (the Waste & Resources Action Programme) is a major UK programme established to promote resource efficiency. Its particular focus is on creating stable and efficient markets for recycled materials and products and removing the barriers to waste minimisation, re-use and recycling.

7. A not-for-profit company in the private sector, WRAP is backed by substantial Government funding from Defra, DTI and the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

8. WRAP has laid down targets across twelve programmes. Nine are focused on market development, and comprise six material streams (Paper, Plastics, Glass, Wood, Organics and Aggregates) and three generic areas (Business & Finance, Procurement, and Regional Market Development). Three new programmes relate to the wider resource efficiency remit - Collections, Communications and Awareness, and Waste Minimisation.

9. More information on all WRAP's programmes can be found at www.wrap.org.uk

For further information on Recycle Now or to find out more about home composting and details of local recycling services, log on to www.recyclenow.com or call the Home Composting Helpline on 0845 600 0323.