Sunday 7 May – Saturday 13 May 2023

International Compost Awareness Week is held every year in early May. It is a week aimed at raising awareness of  the many benefits of composting and aims to encourage different people and groups to get composting no matter where they are in the world.

Each year there is a theme, this year the theme is ‘for healthier soil, healthier food… compost!’.

This theme looks to explore how composting can help to increase the amount of nutrients in soils which in turn can help create better food. As Compost Awareness Week is an international campaign, this theme was chosen as it was seen to align with an issue all countries face as well as tying in with a United Nations Sustainable Development Goal: Zero Hunger. This includes aims to achieve food security and improved nutrition for people around the world.

Compost is an amazing resource and has an important role in supporting healthier soils, helping us grow healthier food and creating a more sustainable future. If you haven’t yet tried making your own compost, then this year we would really encourage you to give it a go.

Composting at home or at the allotment

Composting is an inexpensive way of recycling your fruit and veg peelings; paper and carboard and a mix of garden waste from your home. It is a natural process that creates a nutrient rich product which can improve the structure of your soil.

It’s quite a straightforward process that allows you to use a mixture of materials that we call ‘greens’ and ‘browns’ to make something that you can put back into your garden. ‘Greens’ are how we refer to fresh moist items that are high in nitrogen, such as fruit and veg peelings or grass cuttings. Your greens will then be mixed in with ‘browns’ which are items higher in carbon and are often drier, such as egg boxes or dry leaves. A good mixture helps avoid your compost heap becoming either too wet or too dry.

Even if you only have a small garden, you can still compost. You don’t necessarily need a large garden with lots of garden material to make compost; simply composting your fruit and veg peelings alongside coffee grounds and balancing these materials with a few toilet roll tubes or cardboard eggboxes will create good compost, it may just take a little longer.

If you think you would like to give composting a go, we have a variety of videos on Leicestershire County Council’s YouTube channel to help you get started or troubleshoot any issues you may encounter. We also have a Home Composting page which gives an overview of composting to get you started.

Our first video, ‘An introduction to composting’ | YouTube, talks you through the process, including the benefits both to you and the environment; what can go in; what to leave out and how it works.

If you have started composting and encountered some issues, then this ‘Composting Troubleshooting’ video on YouTube  might just be the answer. It talks you through what to do if your compost is too wet or too dry; how to speed up the composting process; how to manage tricky weeds and wildlife in your compost.

Once the compost is made then the ‘How to empty the compost bin’ video on YouTube covers how to get the compost out of the bin.

Our final video is called ‘How to use your compost’, and it gives plenty of suggestions to help you make the most of your compost to benefit your garden, patio containers or allotment.

A composting workshop will be held at Stokes Wood Allotments during the week and you can find all the details on our What’s On page.

We also have volunteers who can offer further guidance to support you in your composting endeavours. You can email wasteprevention@leics.gov.uk or phone us on 0116 305 7005 to find out more.