To mark International Compost Awareness Week this week (1-7 May), a global network of organisations devoted to organics recycling and compost use have joined to highlight the benefits of viewing organic residuals as resources rather than waste.

The European Compost Network, Composting & Anaerobic Digestion Association of Ireland, Australian Organics Recycling Association, Compost Council of Canada and the US Composting Council have joined to state how organic waste is an ‘under-recognised resource’ that can be used ‘to address a wide range of current global environmental issues’.

According to the group of organisations, the use of landfill space and incineration can be reduced by at least one-third when organics are recycled, while compost’s effect on soil structure also mitigates soil erosion and water-holding capacity. ‘Without good soil structure’, it says, ‘soil erosion can remove nutrients from the soil as well as carry sediments into waterways thereby creating new sources of pollution’.

Composting also offers a ‘significant answer’ to climate change mitigation, according to the group, with compost’s return to the soil serving as a ‘carbon bank’ that helps to store carbon, thereby removing it from the atmosphere.

Events

Throughout this week, community events will be held to encourage and celebrate organics recycling such as compost training sessions, poster and photo competitions, and potting compost comparisons.

In the UK, Garden Organic will be running compost training sessions to promote home composting. According to the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), the use of a home compost bins diverts approximately 150 kilogrammes of waste per household away from landfill sites each year.

Leicestershire Master Composters are looking to promote composting in schools and communities with a composting poster and photo competition. They are also encouraging participation in a ‘Rot, Pot, Sow and Grow’ event where plants grown in home composted soil mix is compared with a ‘control’ grown from commercially available compost.

Other events, such as workshops on building compost heaps, displays and giveaways are taking place throughout the country. An interactive map can be found on the Garden Organic website.

GORC 2016

The Global Organic Resources Congress (GORC) is also taking place in Dublin this week (3-4 May), with stakeholders from the organics industry meeting to discuss challenges and future circular bioeconomy opportunities in the biological treatment of organic resources as well as the sustainable use of its products.

One of the speakers at this year’s GORC is David Newman, Managing Director of the Bio-based and Biodegradable Industries Association (BBIA), who last week wrote to the European Union on behalf of the organisation calling for measures on organic waste to be written into the revised Circular Economy Package.

Among the measures that Newman says are required to strengthen the package and ‘drive forward environmental protection in Europe over the next two decades’ are compulsory separate collection of biowaste in certain municipalities and commercial sites and improved definitions of biowaste itself, which he says need to be broadened to include materials and products made to decompose in industrial or domestic composting. This, he says, would strengthen European industries producing compostable materials.