Food waste has reached such ridiculous levels that even Gordon Brown is getting worried. WRAP estimates that we throw away a third of the food we buy – a lot of binned material is food waste, even if it’s just peelings, tea bags, eggshells and so on. These can be challenging to compost for the average household, let alone canteens in schools, factories, hotels, prisons, hospitals and other institutions where amounts are staggering.

Many councils now collect food waste for composting, which is governed by extremely strict legislation, brought in during the 2001 foot-and-mouth outbreak. The legislation, however, does not cover in-situ treatment. This leaves many places where food waste composting can be carried out and can solve, rather than add to, the perceived problems of rats, flies and smells, and can make wonderful compost to restore our soils.

Many schools, prisons, National Trust properties, rural hotels and B&Bs are now composting food waste and the potential to do more is enormous.

So, how should aspiring composters go about setting up a system? Before deciding on a method, you need to assess the amounts and types of compostable waste: cooked food, preparation peelings, paper towels, cardboard etc. Food waste is dense, wet and will start to smell rapidly. In-vessel composters mix or tumble the contents, but you still must add woodchips or sawdust pellets to enable airflow through the material.

There are currently three large, commercially-available in-vessel composters and a host of other ingenious devices developed through the BREW funded ‘Compost Doctors’ programme. There’s a big gap in the market between the hand-powered devices and those requiring three phase electricity such as the Rocket, the Big Hanna and the Jora 5100. Of course, the powered composters come at a price, starting at £10,000. If the situation warrants it, then they certainly do the job and will pay for themselves over time.

The Jora 5100 will take 50 kilos a day and has a built-in macerator to pretreat material. Pelletised sawdust is mixed with incoming material and the whole mass is stirred by paddles.

Both the Rocket and the Big Hanna come in different sizes and types and have macerators and de-waterers
as extras.

Jora also make a range of small, hand-turned machines: the 270 (litre) and the 400. Many schools in Devon now combine a Jora (or two) and a Scotty’s Hot Box (or two), and a number of secondary schools are looking to house larger composters.

There is no magic fix for any of this – all systems have the potential to go wrong. Users must understand composting. Having said that, generally the more expensive the system, the less likely you are to go wrong and the more likely you are to get supplier support.

Of course, introducing a composting system also means you have to train up staff and children alike and they have to be committed to doing it: when everyone thinks it’s a good idea, it is most likely to succeed.