In Compost we Trust
The Recycle Now Home Composting Campaign has teamed up with The National Trust to encourage tenants to reduce the carbon footprint of an historic estate in St Dominick, Cornwall.
The scheme has offered free compost bins and kitchen caddies to the 60 tenants at the National Trust’s medieval manor Cotehele House so that they can compost their kitchen and garden waste.
Tenants are being urged to compost everything from fruit and vegetable peelings, grass cuttings and prunings to used tissues, animal hair and droppings from vegetarian animals. They will use the compost produced for their own gardens.
Toby Fox, National Trust Property Manager for Cotehele, said: “Some of our tenants already had home composting systems in place, but those who didn’t were really keen to take part in the scheme.
“The National Trust is concerned about the threat of climate change and as an environmental charity, we’re doing as much as we can to reduce our own carbon footprint.
“We are thrilled with the way the project is going so far and we hope to develop more ways to help reduce the impacts of climate change over the next few years.”
Carl Nichols, Head of Home Composting for Recycle Now, said: “We’re really pleased to be supporting the National Trust’s environmental efforts by working with them on this project. Home composting plays a vital role in diverting waste from landfill and we are delighted to help Cotehele Estate residents reduce their environmental impact in this way.”
The project supports a further ongoing programme to compost food waste from the trust’s 80-seater restaurant and tearoom at Cotehele House.
This project, which is being sponsored by the Government’s Environmental Action Fund, is diverting enough waste from landfill each year to fill a full-size tennis court up to the net.
The food waste is mixed with shredded paper and woodchip from the estate and is composted in a state-of-the-art ‘Rocket Composter’, which comprises a steel bin heated by an element and reduces the composting process from months to days.
These projects form part of a larger National Trust initiative to reduce the carbon footprint of the 1,300-acre Cotehele Estate, which comprises a medieval house, a water mill and a fifteenth century chapel. The National Trust is considering using its water mill to generate hydro-power and using wood chip for central heating boilers in houses on the estate instead of oil.
