Welcome to Compost This
We also have a number of short guides to help you get started composting, explore the different composting options and troubleshoot composting problems.
Why Compost?
Because it’s easy, can save you money and saves literally tons and tons of material clogging up landfill unnecessarily.
It’s green!
Wherever they are, bacteria and other micro-organisms will help food scraps, garden waste and household rubbish made from natural materials (like paper) decompose into humus: organic matter that helps keep soil healthy, moist and balanced. In a landfill, the humus is often inaccessible and can easily become unusable through contamination. If you compost though, your garden gets all that lovely humus instead.
It can save you money!
A steady supply of homegrown compost will reduce the amount of commercial compost, fertilisers and soil improvers that you need to keep your flower beds looking their best and your veg plot growing prize-winning produce.
It’s easy!
At the most basic level of composting, all you need to do is throw your suitable rubbish into a compost bin or heap and leave the little micro-organisms to do their work. If you plan to use the resulting compost, you might
Go for it!
A note about our cautiousness
Our site is primarily aimed at people new to composting.
Because of this, we’re very cautious about what you can and can’t compost because we don’t want newcomers to composting to have bad experiences of composting – things not composting down, things growing, the heap smelling or it being a draw for the local animals.
Experienced composters know, from their own experience, what’ll work in their compost heap and what won’t – and we do try to take that into consideration, but we want to be, for want of a better term, an “idiot’s guide”: if you follow our yes and nos, you’ll considerably more likely to have first composting success. We don’t like to call Compost This an “idiot’s guide” though because if you’re interested in composting, you’re not an idiot, you’re ace! :)
Please do let us know though if you think we’re steering people in the wrong direction – either suggesting composting something you think will cause problems for beginners or by overegging a problem: we read all comments left on the site.
About Compost This
Can I Compost This? began in 2006 as a logical sister site to our popular project, How Can I Recycle This?. The latter looks at reuses and recycling ideas but we quickly realised that sometimes people just want to know whether or not they can fling something in the compost.
Compost This was created and is run by Louisa Parry, with occasional tech input from her BFF John, practical composting assistance from their chickens and moral support from their dog & cats.
You can follow Compost This on Twitter: @compost_this. We don’t tweet that much.
We also have an RSS feed for new items: http://www.compostthis.co.uk/feed
Contact Compost This
You can contact us either by leaving a comment somewhere on the site (we read all comments), through Twitter or by emailing us.
Our address is hello@compostthis.co.uk