Welcome to the Hackett Compost Collective

Want to contribute?
Email Brook at hackettcompost2602@gmail.com

Hello World! Or rather, hello to Hackett, Canberra, Australia and surrounding suburbs. This website supports a local effort to avoid sending kitchen waste and other goodies to landfill and instead turn them into delicious compost. If you’re reading this today (June 2018) then you can see the story develop and find out if one passionate woman can successfully engage the wider community so that together we can all cut down on our household waste and make superior soil amendments at the same time. My name is Brook, and I’ll be blogging along the way as I work to set up a composting collective with hopefully many households donating waste. We already have a handful of contributors, with beautiful compost in progress and finished compost has been used to grow backyard vegetables.

What is a composting collective though? This is not a new idea. I’ve read or heard about various green/kitchen waste collection services over the years and indeed I recently just learnt about this organisation in NZ (the similarity in names is pure coincidence, but not unexpected :). These collection services exist due to committed people like myself who are willing to put in the hard work to transform waste into treasure. And due to the fact that for any ongoing composting method to be efficient you need a constant stream of feedstock materials.

I’m sure that most people have heard that composting is a good idea. Many have also tried composting but then abandoned the effort or have a neglected, unproductive compost heap tucked into a back corner of the garden. That is completely understandable! Whilst composting can be very easy, I find that it only becomes a rewarding experience once you have an efficient pile, so that you quickly get the joy of making something valuable. And for that you need a LOT of veggie scraps. I’ve been collecting kitchen waste from a handful of friend’s houses for the last few years and a common question that comes up is “what do you need so much compost for anyway?”. It’s easy to underestimate the amount of finished compost that is produced from the inputs. My friends see multiple full buckets of peelings, rinds, corn husks etc. and wonder where it all goes. I only have a small veggie garden available to grow my own but whenever I put a new mini crop in those beds are hungry for compost!

So if you would like your kitchen scraps to go to a better place (i.e. not landfill, where they can generate quite a bit of methane) then the HCC is ready to receive! Or if you’d like to join me as I learn more and more about the fascinating processes of composting and all that involves then check back here regularly as I blog my thoughts on that topic.

Email me on hackettcompost2602@gmail, and I’ll drop off a bucket.