We are often asked what happens to the garden waste collected through the Green Waste Club. Our customers like to know that we are not only dealing with the material responsibly and diverting it from landfill, but also that it is being put to good use and being recycled into compost or soil conditioner.
When you subscribe to the Green Waste Club not only will you receive a convenient kerbside collection but you can also rest assured that all of your garden waste will be recycled into compost at a site local to your Club.
Since our Arun Green Waste Club started in 2005 we have worked with a local composting facility which is operated by the Woodhorn Group. Established in 1882, this family run business is able to turn the material collected in the Arun Green Waste Club into a fabulous range of 100% peat free soil conditioners.
How does it work?
The material is collected from your kerbside and delivered daily to the Woodhorn Group compost facility at Tangmere, where the load is ejected from our vehicle and the team at Woodhorn take over. It is shredded and placed in piles, called windrows. The temperature during the first two weeks is maintained between 65-80°C to kill all the weed seeds and pathogens. For the next 14 weeks the windrow temperature ranges between 45-80°C, gradually turning your garden waste into compost.
The windrows are turned at least three times during the 16 week process to ensure thorough mixing and aeration, and to ensure the process remains aerobic. After 16 weeks the temperatures fall and stabilise, signalling that the active composting phase is complete. The compost is then screened to remove oversize compost items and any products that require testing are sampled and sent away.
This range of Earth Cycle products are composted under carefully controlled conditions to produce high quality products, as defined by the British Standards for Composted Materials (BSI PAS100) and are available to purchase locally, representing a truly closed loop recycling service for all our green fingered customers.
