Sarah Lagden completed her MSc in 2004, on the viability of community composting in Edinburgh. Now she’s working with the Community Recycling Network for Scotland...

Sarah writes: Whilst doing my MSc I had been working as the Community Composting Development Worker at Colinton Community Compost on the outskirts of Edinburgh. This is a small project which works with adults with learning disabilities at a Camphill Community and runs a garden waste composting service in a disused quarry on behalf of the council. Before that I set up a community composting project in a small town in central Bolivia.

Shortly after completing the MSc, I found myself with a job as the Community Composting Development Officer for Scotland with the Community Recycling Network for Scotland (CRNS).  The CRNS is a membership organisation funded predominantly by the Scottish Executive. It has six development officers who provide support and advice to community projects involved in all types of recycling, composting, waste prevention and related educational work. For more information, see www.crns.org.uk.

Within a month of starting in this post, I had been summoned to defend my position on Radio 4 after the post was nominated as Non-Job of the Year by the Daily Telegraph!

For me community composting is all about dealing with organic ‘waste’ -- or resources -- locally in as sustainable a way as possible. This eliminates the need to transport both waste or imported compost, preserves peatland, and diverts material from overflowing landfill sites where it creates methane in anaerobic conditions. It also provides precious compost which returns nutrients and organic matter to our depleted soils.

There are currently about 30 active community composting projects in Scotland, operating in different ways. Most of them are small-scale bring sites in villages or neighbourhoods. There are also two projects which run kerbside collections for garden waste, several which use in-vessel composters (enclosed machines which control the composting environment  and speed up the process) for food waste, and many which promote home composting in their local communities. Many also work with disadvantaged people and some run a community garden or local food project.

Due to the EU Landfill Directive, the UK has to divert biodegradable waste from landfill and all local authorities have targets to meet. The recently published Household Waste Prevention Action Plan has also set targets for activities including home and community composting. A lot of support and funding has been provided by the Scottish Executive.

However, there are also various pieces of legislation making it difficult to run a community composting project in terms of requirements and fees. If you are dealing with food waste, for example, you have the EU Animal By-Products Regulation to deal with. This was developed during the outbreak of Foot and Mouth disease in Britain and is interpreted in a much stricter way in the UK than elsewhere in Europe. It means that any food waste collected from more than one property or being transported to a different location has to be processed in an in-vessel composter, which costs more money than other composting methods.

Despite these barriers (mainly involving regulations and funding) there is a huge amount of interest in community composting. Over 100 additional projects have shown interest since I started my job two years ago, so I believe there is a lot of future in it: one day there will hopefully be a thriving community of sustainable projects throughout the country all dealing with organic waste locally and using it within their local communities.

If you want to learn more about community composting, then come to our next conference in Edinburgh on May 2nd. The day before there is a green waste composting training day in partnership with the Community Composting Network. This is an organisation which also provides support to community composting projects around the UK. For more info contact This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it