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Composting and disposing of garden and kitchen waste

Composting turns waste into valuable food for your garden. Most garden waste, including grass cuttings, prunings, leaves, hedge trimmings, aswell as uncooked vegetable waste from your kitchen, can be composted. Your local council may help you get a composter and most collect green waste at the kerbside.

Home composting

Many councils sell home composters, often at a reduced cost. You can also buy compost bins from local garden centres and DIY stores.

For advice about home composting, visit the Rethink Waste NI website

Green garden waste collection schemes

Some councils may be able to offer a collection of garden waste from your home. To find out more go to your local council website

Recycling centres

You can also take garden waste to your local household waste and recycling centre (civic amenity site). You will  find skips for garden waste, which is taken to composting facilities and either sold on or re-used locally as a soil improver.  

What you can and can't compost

You can compost:

  • fruit and vegetable scraps
  • tea bags, coffee grounds
  • crushed egg shells
  • grass cuttings, prunings and leaves
  • small amounts of shredded paper and soft cardboard
  • animal hair
  • vacuum dust (only from woollen carpets)
  • garden and pond plants

You can't compost:

  • cat or dog excrement
  • meat and fish
  • dairy products
  • diseased plants
  • disposable nappies
  • shiny card
  • hard objects

Animals and kitchen waste

Generally, keeping domestic pets doesn't prevent you using composted kitchen waste in the garden. However, animals like pigs, cattle, sheep, goats, deer or other hoofed animals mustn't be allowed near catering waste, as they could catch diseases from it.

If you keep any of these, you mustn't compost on the premises. If you keep poultry you must compost using an enclosed container so that the poultry doesn't come into contact with it.

Kitchen waste regulations

Food and kitchen waste can be composted at home or at a composting plant. If your local council sends kitchen waste to a plant, you'll be told how they collect it (you may be given a separate bin or bag for it).

All plants and schemes must be approved to handle food and kitchen waste by the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development in line with the 'Animal By-Products Regulations'. However, you can compost in your own garden without needing any approval - but you can only use the compost you make using kitchen waste in your own garden.

Composting pond plants

Some pond and water plants can cause a lot of damage to other plants and animals. For example, the floating pennywort can grow 20 centimetres a day, blocking out light and reducing the oxygen for other plants and animals.

When it’s time to thin out your pond, dispose of your plants by composting them or putting them in your council’s garden waste collection bin. Don’t dump plants in the wild as they could get into ponds or streams and start spreading.

Find out how to stop the spread of aquatic plants on the ‘Be plant wise’ page.

The wider issue

A third of people who have a garden say they compost garden or kitchen waste. The number of UK households composting both kitchen and garden waste has increased by nine per cent, to nearly a quarter (23 per cent) of the population over the past seven years, and this trend looks set to continue.

More than a third of the waste from homes is kitchen or garden waste. By composting your kitchen and garden waste, you can help improve the quality of your garden soil.

For gardeners, applying compost to soils provides an excellent conditioner and mulch, which fertilises and provides soil structure, retains moisture and can restrict weed growth. Man-made compost is an alternative to the peat-based compost extracted from important natural wildlife sites.

Some district councils may provide compost bins at a subsidised rate. For more information go to your district council website.    

More useful links

Do it online

 

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