Food waste Composting

We throw away a third of all the food we buy and at least half of this could have been eaten, if only we had managed it better. The vast majority of Westminster’s food waste ends up in landfill, where it rots and produces methane (one of the most potent greenhouse gases contributing to climate change).

To address the issue, Westminster City Council Recycling Department, CityWest Homes and Vital Regeneration have introduced a food waste composting project on Church St Estate.

Residents will collect their food waste in kitchen caddies, using biodegradable starch liners, before disposing of it in wheelie bins located throughout the estate.  All types of food waste can be put in the kitchen caddy, including cooked and uncooked food, fruit and vegetables, meat, fish and bones, bread, pasta, cereal and rice, dairy products, eggshells and even left-over pet food.

All the food waste collected will be turned into compost and will be given to residents or used to green local areas.

Kids attending the Eco Kids Club at Greenside Community Centre got creative and designed a 'Bag for Life'. This project was to raise awareness of the problems plastic bags cause and why we should encourage our friends and family to use a Bag for Life. The winning design was produced by Nana Adom and will be printed on 1000 cotton reusable bags which will be given our to residents in the local community.

The aim of ‘Faith for the Environment’ is to target the different key Faith Groups in the community to promote positive environmental actions. To do this we delivered a number of workshops focusing on recycling and reuse. We produced a newsletter ‘Creation and Conservation’ for the 3 main Faith groups in Church St - Muslim, Christian and Jewish faiths, linking the teachings of their Faith to positive environmental behaviour.  We motivated faith communities to participate in recycling schemes by relating how such actions relate to the teachings of their religion to respect the earth and conserve resources.  We intend to replicate this project in other Westminster wards in the near future.

Dragons Breathe Fire into Vital Regeneration’s Social Enterprise Vital Regeneration successfully tamed the dragons at the Delivering 4 Community conference and secured an Adventure Capital Fund Business Development Grant, moving them closer to achieving their goal of setting up a Furniture Reuse, Recycling and Training Enterprise in North Westminster. The enterprise is based on a proven business model designed to provide low cost furniture to people in need; diverting valuable resources from landfill; and, crucially, providing training and volunteering opportunities for local people. This is a great way of reducing waste, saving precious resources & eases the burden on our landfills while providing local people with necessary household items.
 
Jeannette Buckley, Chairperson of the Lisson Green Tenants and Residents Association in Church Street described the feeling of local residents. “It is great news. The environment is a huge priority for the community. Residents are working hard to protect and improve their environment and have run a number of environmental projects through Vital Regeneration. We are looking forward to the challenge of setting up a social enterprise which will greatly benefit the residents on the estate.” 
In a bid to improve the recycling performance on Fisherton Estate in Church St, we engaged residents in a project to give their recycling bins a makeover.  Children from the estate designed the bins in bright colours and made them a very visible part of the streetscape.  This project was very successful in engaging young people in recycling and the recycling rate on the estate rose from 1.49Kg/household/week to 2.86Kg/household/week after the makeover.

Past Eco projects include: Nature Wonder Kids Gardening Club
 
As many families in the area do not have a garden, this club gives the kids a place to be green-fingered and they are now involved on a weekly basis. Plant beds and a mini-allotment have been created, and children have been growing brussell sprouts, tomatoes, peppers, parsley, artichokes, broccoli and chillis. The children also designed a logo and suggested names for the club and they decided on Nature Wonder. The kids learned how to grow vegetables from seedlings, and from seed, the conditions the vegetables liked to grow in and how to look after them. The kids measured environmental variables by making weather instruments out of recycled materials. These included a rain gauge, a barometer. They also made root windows from used plastic bottles, to study plant growth beneath the soil.

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Building Wormery
 
Children at The Greenside Community Centre
 
The homework club have been learning about recycling and composting and have built a wormery for the community centre. One of the barriers faced by residents in Central London is that they have no environmentally friendly way to dispose of green waste as many do not have gardens. To show them that they can compost even without a garden, the children learned to make a wormery and what types of household waste could be composted in it.

Nappuccino
 
To celebrate Real Nappy Week 2007, a Nappuccino was held at The Greenside Community Centre to promote the use of Real Nappies to parents and nurseries. A representative from Nappy Ever After was on hand to show parents how easy it is to use Real Nappies and how it is environmentally and economically beneficial.