HCC is all about good community vibes

“Hi, I’m Ingrid and I have been part of the HCC since February 2019, after delightfully stumbling across a poster for the HCC at my local Downer cafe!

I moved to Downer last year and was struggling to figure out what to do with my kitchen waste. I’d grown up with chickens and previously lived close enough to my parents to drop my scraps back to the chicken coop, but after moving further away this didn’t suit anymore. I am aware of some of the impact of throwing food into landfill where it doesn’t break down properly, and it felt awful throwing it away.

So my housemates and I started talking about getting a little indoor compost in our townhouse. In the midst of these conversations I came across the HCC, and was so pleased to find a good way to use our scraps and divert them from landfill, with the bonus of being able to connect with others from my new local area also interested in this stuff!

It has been so great meeting Brook and others at an HCC open day, and learning about the composting process and all the neat things we can do with the converted waste (like giving it to community gardens, local school projects and peoples’ gardens!).

While we may eventually venture into small scale composting ourselves, I so enjoy connecting with others and working together locally through the HCC. Thanks Brook for making it so easy to be a part of!”

I completely agree with Ingrid, it is great to meet others in our local community who already value diverting food scraps from landfill and are willing to put in a little effort to do so. Like all the folks who drop off scraps while walking the dog, thank you! Ingrid is willing to put in even more effort as she has offered to help me turn the heap occasionally 🙂 (which she already got a taste for at the last open day). This helps hugely, especially as turning the heap regularly helps to reduce the greenhouse gases generated by the heap, by re-oxygenating pockets that may have become waterlogged and anaerobic.

I’m a strong believer in all of the little actions adding up to a significantly more climate-friendly lifestyle but it can be difficult when people don’t understand why you’re doing things the seemingly harder way. But ‘finding your tribe’ of like minded folk who can see the value in certain efforts can work wonders in keeping up the motivation to do the good work that you know will make a difference. In a similar vein, I finally went along to a Boomerang bags sewing bee the other weekend, something I’ve been meaning to do for ages. How many times have you heard people say ‘I know I should use re-usable shopping bags, but I just can’t remember to bring them to the shops’. Forming new habits can be really hard, even if you think it’s something you really want to do. Boomerang bags is now a world-wide community of people helping out of the goodness of their hearts to provide free to use re-usable shopping bags to help get you into the habit.

Hopefully the HCC is also making it easy for people to get into the habit of separating out their food scraps and sending them to a better place!

Thanks very much Ingrid for helping me out and getting hands on with the heap. If anyone else wants an upper body workout feel free to enquire at hackettcompost2602@gmail.com

-Brook