According to WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Programme) gardeners are already doing their bit with 76% now recycling as much of their garden waste as possible through their local council or recycling centre, which is far better than it ending up at a landfill. The percentage of gardeners choosing to home compost has increased from 34% to 53% this year (2008) and 41% of gardeners now buy peat-free composts containing recycled materials - but it's not just the green-fingered among us that can join in.
Read our exclusive interview with Charlie in which she tells us about her passion for gardening and shares her tips on home composting.
Where does your passion for gardening stem from?
Charlie: I was very much a tomboy as a kid and I used to try and avoid my grandmother who would try and put me in pretty frocks and do my hair, so I would be outside with my granddad "helping" him with the gardening and then I got a Saturday job at a garden centre, and that was about it really.
Tell us about WRAP and your involvement with the campaign for compost awareness.
Charlie: WRAP helps individuals, businesses and local authorities to reduce waste and recycle more, making better use of resources and helping to tackle climate change. I've been involved with the WRAP campaign for quite a long time and think that we should be looking after our countryside and environment.
Composting is such a basic, straightforward simple thing to do. If you're a gardener the wonderful thing is you do get this fabulous 'black gold' which you put back into the soil to feed it, as it holds onto the moisture, helping the soil drain and make it really workable and good for the plants. At the same time, environmentally, composting is great because it means that all that sort of green organic waste doesn't go into land fill - the problem when it goes into land fill is when it rots down, because it's anaerobic, it produces methane which is one of the worst greenhouse gases, so by composting at home you stop that process.
Even if you haven't got the space to compost at home, if you separate it and ask the council to take it away, they'll compost it for you, thus saving space at land fill sites.
To begin home composting, what materials will I need?
Charlie: Firstly, you'll need a compost bin. You can either make your own but if you're new to composting I'd opt for one of those plastic Dalek-looking ones, which can be bought on recyclenow.com/compost. They're made out of recycled plastic and they hold onto moisture as well as insulate the compost, meaning that the process is much more balanced and will rot down the waste more readily.
Charlie Dimmock with her compost bin
What can I add to my compost bin?
Charlie: When adding waste to your bin, you want to mix it up, not add in great big lumps. If you get a lot of grass clippings you want to mix in, try and get a combination of the two different types ('greens' tend to be very rich and moist, so things like grass clippings, weeds, green leaves, whereas the 'browns' tend to be twiggy things and dry leaves) but you can also add things like shredded paper, crunched up corrugated paper, the contents of your hoover bag, peelings from the kitchen, old dead flowers and cut flowers, as well as bedding from pets (like rabbits) as long as they're vegetarian.
Basically the more varied the mix that you get in the better balanced it's going to be. The things you shouldn't really put into your compost bin are cooked food, meats or dairy, or any waste from cats or dogs because that's not vegetarian.
Where should a compost bin be positioned?
Charlie: Ideally, you want to put your compost bin somewhere warm and sunny and probably out of sight. Preferably not a shady, cold damp area, because the heat from the sun actually encourages the process. And it takes about six to twelve months to compost down.
Will a compost bin attract rats or unwanted animals into the garden?
Charlie: To avoid unwated garden visitors, plastic bins are much better because they can't get in. As long as you're not putting in the wrong things in (such as food products), your compost bins shouldn't atract rats. My tip would be to ensure you put your bin somewhere that you're going by all the time, because rats don't like disturbance, and to be really good you should be turning your compost bin over regularly - that really puts them off, because they're not going to want to go somewhere where there's a fork likely to go through them.
When can people go to get more information on composting?
Charlie: A useful website if you're starting off composting and you want more in-depth tips is recyclenow.com/compost but if you want to know about Compost Awareness Week and what events are on you you can check out compostawarenessweek.org.uk.
