This may sound like a bit of an oxymoron, however I found myself saying that to my husband only yesterday. Before we had a garden, we rented a house surrounded by a concrete heat sink. For the first month, we had no refuse collection and so our rubbish bags started to pile up. In those days, we threw all the plastic, card, tins and wet kitchen waste into the same bags, so you can imagine that after a month under the tropical Chiangmai sun, the rubbish had developed quite an interesting bouquet, and was home to what seemed like millions of buzzing insects and their young. We paid someone quite a lot of money to get rid of those!
It was only when we moved to our rural village, (which incidentally has awards for sustainability), did the head man visit us and gave us a present of 2 concrete rings, with dire warnings about termination of the village refuse collection service if any wet waste was left out in our weekly collection. The rings, we placed on top of each other hidden away in a corner of the garden. All kitchen waste, compostable garden waste and some grass trimmings ended up in this bin and after a few months we had some grade A compost for our fruit trees.
We now have 2 of these bins, which save us quite a lot on buying in organic fertilisers. We are also considering the possibility of starting a mini business, where we would charge people for removing their kitchen waste, and thus meaning that we could perhaps become 100% self sufficient in fertilizer, and get paid for it!
Looking back at the young couple that was us, 15 years ago, I cannot believe that we threw all the rubbish together! Even now in Thailand, people will wrap up and hide kitchen waste in their rubbish… I’ll let you know how the sideline business goes!
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