Your food and garden waste is delivered to In-Vessel Composting facilities (IVC) in the UK. An IVC is like a home compost bin, but on a massive scale. The IVC system harnesses the natural composting process to recycle your food and garden waste into compost in just 6 weeks. It gets hot in this process.
The compost produced will be used as a soil improver on agricultural land.
Most households are given free compostable food bags to collect their food scraps in. These bags are made from starch material and are 100% compostable. These dissolve away quickly in the food waste.
Problems occur when someone uses a plastic bag instead. Look out for the seedling logo. Then you know you have the approved bag for food waste.
Watch the film to see what happens when you put wrong items in the food and garden waste bin.
You could set up a composter at your venue or school? You need to explain what can go in it and how and why that is different to your food and garden bin at home. (You would not normally put meat or dairy waste in a home composter. Your material will take many months for the waste to break down into a recognisable compost).
You could gather a range of new products such as bamboo toothbrushes, that claim to be compostable and experiment to see how long it takes for them to disappear in the school composter.
Our IVC process makes compost in 6 weeks so these products would not break down in that time.
Individuals will be able to explain what happens to their food and garden waste and how to collect their food waste properly.
