Recycling Champions

Adur & Worthing Councils have launched a HOTBIN trial. We have given a HOTBIN to 30 households in the area, who will regularly record the weight of their food waste and provide feedback on the bin.

We hope to offer these through our website very soon, to promote sustainable disposal of food waste.

By heating the waste up to 60°C, HOTBINs can turn food waste into compost in 30 to 90 days.

The benefits include:

• good quality compost for your garden
• the fluid (leachate) that can be drained from the base of the unit is a liquid fertiliser and has great benefits for plants and flowers
• and a reduction of food waste

Find out how some of our residents are getting on:

• Mick
• Jessica (and William)
• Chris
• Polly
• Andy

To find out more about the trial check out the following:

• Blog: Andy shares his experience of the HOTBIN trial - on the Thoughtful Gardening website

Mick

I am very happy with my HOTBIN and looking forward to getting great results. I have also reduced what is going in my waste bin.

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Jessica (and William)

I have definitely noticed a reduction in emptying our kitchen bin, along with minimal smell coming from our kitchen bin now. At first it was difficult to remember we had it, but within a week it was full swing in use. From potato peels to strawberry tops to apple peels, all had been thrown in our caddy, then when full, weighed and walked down the end of the garden.

My 3-year-old William has taken a great interest in learning where which waste goes from this, including recycling into our blue bin, and certain plastics into a bag to be taken to a plastic recycling bin we discovered locally. So this is a great thing to be able to teach him so young!

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Chris

We've been using ours for about a month now and it's going really well. We've seen a week on week increase of waste sent to the HOTBIN once we got better at identifying waste to go in. We've had leachate being produced daily and have been using this as a feed for our garden. Hopefully will have some compost to use soon!

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Polly

We love the HOTBIN!

We have more food waste than I would like and, as a keen gardener, it's nice to see it go towards something useful.

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Andy

As a keen gardener and Adur District Council allotment holder I'm keen to make my own composts - I have lots of raw materials and want to reduce what I throw away.

I thought that by taking part in the trial I might inspire others to think about their own lifestyles and perhaps find room for a HOTBIN in them.

The process is clean and easy. It has become part of my gardening and food preparation routines to complete those activities by 'popping the rest in the HOTBIN' which is outside the back door and is neat in design.

I have ready resources of green and brown materials to compost, but now I consider or use materials I can repurpose or get in the HOTBIN, like shredded paper from my office which I have previously given to a local business for their packaging.

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