Community Composting Network - Hot Rotters in the UK
by Sami Grover, Carrboro, NC, USA on 04.16.07
We’ve covered compost before. We would, we’re TreeHuggers. Collin gave us an excellent overview of compost-related posts here, and we’ve even covered Ethical Man’s musings over how to compost his corpse here. Now we’ve come across another great resource for would-be rotters – the UK-based Community Composting Network (CCN), an organization dedicated to promoting “the community management and use of waste bio-degradable resources.” The group provides information and support for community-based composting projects, it acts as an advocate for community-composting at the local, regional, national and European level, it offers a consultancy service to members who need more than just information, and it serves as a hub for a network of initiatives around the country. The groups website also includes a new section entitled 'Hot Rotters', which aims to challenge the perception of community composting as simply small-scale management of garden waste by highlighting groups taking on bigger projects, and a wider range of waste materials.
CCN describes the benefits of community-composting as follows:
- Reduction of waste going to landfill or incineration.
- Reduction of peat use, thereby preserving internationally important peatland natural habitats.
- Provision of training, employment and volunteering opportunities as well as education and awareness raising.
- Topsoil structure preservation and improvement.
- Utilising the proximity principle to convert a locally arising waste problem into a locally available resource.
Of course, aside from the immediate economic and environmental benefits, community-based projects like this are also an excellent catalyst for creating closer social ties between neighbors. We can only applaud the CCN, and we hope they keep on rotting, greening communities one banana peel at a time as they go.
